- Paperback: 427 pages
- Publisher: Overlook Press; Reprint edition (2 Oct 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1585679860
- ISBN-13: 978-1585679867
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 14 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 217,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a complex, long, ambitious novel, set in 1980s New York (the setting is semi-mythological) but harking back to the Renaissance; written in a careful, beautiful prose; it is a sophisticated work with lots of flashbacks, alternative paths and hidden references, some erudite, others simply literary - dramatic and psychological. The book is about history, or perhaps rather, the magic in hidden, alternate history, and especially about the writing of a history that never was and yet existed in people's minds. It may confuse some readers, and it goes slowly.
I first came across this book, the first part of an ongoing tetralogy, in the late 1980s, then lost sight of it, and could not find it anywhere (it was out of print for many years). It was never far from my mind, even as (as a Renaissance historian) I read and discarded Francis Yates and Ramon llull and moved on towards other, less Neoplatonic threads. In the meanwhile I read Little, Big, and other books by John Crowley. When Daemonomania, volume three of the series, first came out, it was upsetting that Aegypt/The Solitudes remained unavailable. Now, finally, this nice paperback reprint has given me the pleasure of a long-awaited read. This is really one long book in four parts, to be read together.
I first came across this book, the first part of an ongoing tetralogy, in the late 1980s, then lost sight of it, and could not find it anywhere (it was out of print for many years). It was never far from my mind, even as (as a Renaissance historian) I read and discarded Francis Yates and Ramon llull and moved on towards other, less Neoplatonic threads. In the meanwhile I read Little, Big, and other books by John Crowley. When Daemonomania, volume three of the series, first came out, it was upsetting that Aegypt/The Solitudes remained unavailable. Now, finally, this nice paperback reprint has given me the pleasure of a long-awaited read. This is really one long book in four parts, to be read together.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
12 reviews
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Aegypt Restored
23 Oct 2007
Format:Paperback
This volume is absolutely wonderful. It is almost ridiculously fun, informative, exhilarating. Parts of it (I'm thinking especially of Pierce's flashbacks to life in New York, scattered across the first half) seem to me to be as good as--or even better than--anything in John Crowley's transcendent 1981 masterpiece, Little, Big.
The series centers on the Platonic/Gnostic notion that we're forgetting something, and that that something is our real life. It's not happening on another planet than this one: It flows through our own best, highest, most wakeful moments, and flows into the lives of others through incessant mystery. It's very easy to lose it again, to fall into routine or depression, to lose faith in ourselves and accept false external certainties, and this process is the heart of Aegypt's second and third volumes. But this first volume is one of discovery and rediscovery, of spring awakening, of following a trail of bread crumbs up the sky.
Bless Crowley for writing this book, the happy start of the ultimate romance for intelligent people.
The series centers on the Platonic/Gnostic notion that we're forgetting something, and that that something is our real life. It's not happening on another planet than this one: It flows through our own best, highest, most wakeful moments, and flows into the lives of others through incessant mystery. It's very easy to lose it again, to fall into routine or depression, to lose faith in ourselves and accept false external certainties, and this process is the heart of Aegypt's second and third volumes. But this first volume is one of discovery and rediscovery, of spring awakening, of following a trail of bread crumbs up the sky.
Bless Crowley for writing this book, the happy start of the ultimate romance for intelligent people.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Worth the wait
11 Feb 2008
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Very few modern authors can both engage your intellect and stir your soul; even fewer can unleash your imagination. But perhaps only one writer alive today can do all that in prose that is truly awe-inspiring: John Crowley. I'd been waiting for years for Aegypt to be reissued--it says something that used copies of the first editions were going for hundreds of dollars. Finally I got my copy of Solitudes and marveled at Crowley's ability to cast a spell in only a few pages. This book takes concentration and commitment to fully appreciate, you'll also probably want to check on some other sources on topics like Hermes Trismegistus and John Dee (thank god for Wikipedia). The 1970s setting is also a bit unfortunate, as it's recent enough to carry some baggage but not recent enough for this Gen X reader to really relate to. But this book will move and transport you like nothing else out there. Find a quiet place and give it a chance.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Crowley is an alchemist
7 Jan 2009
Format:Paperback
It seems John Crowely's true work will always be largely a secret kept by the extremely passionate and relatively few readers who are his very devoted fans. Crowley insists that you climb outside the neatly kept vehicle of your world view and take a look at the scenery you can't see from inside.
As was made clear in one such reader's comment, the original title, "Aegypt", was forced on the write by the publisher, as was the ridiculous decision to take a single (if lengthy) novel and split it into four separate books, each of which was marketed without reference to the fact that it is the continuation of a single story! "The Solitudes" was Crowley's original name for this first section of his awesome tale of alternate possibilities and love in a time of Idiocy. Which is the cue for saying the person who thought this book is "the most poorly written, pathetic attempt at a story that I've come across in years" probably wouldn't know great writing if it front ended her on an expressway. Crowley is an alchemist with words and his vocabulary is rather larger than your typical pulp romance writer, which may have been the issue with that reader. In "Little, Big" he demonstrated his capacity for thinking in a limitless way about our perplexing existence in this universe and a mind-boggling talent for crafting a complex world and breathtaking sentences from such thinking.
This book does get off to a slow start, but when you realize it is the exposition of a novel that must be, in reality, 2,000 pages long, the complex exposition makes perfect sense. Crowley writes fantasy of unprecedented scope and articulacy, it is fantasy for the thinking person. The "fantasy" pigeonhole is, anyway, misleading. A person who can fully imagine and articulate an alternate way of illuminating our existence is usually called a philosopher. But that label does nothing for Crowley, either.
This book is not for everyone, especially in our short attention span culture. But I think those who are captivated by the vivid, hallucinatory thought and language in this book will be compelled to travel on to the end. If you generally read on a level above vampire stories and torrid romances, please get this book and discover an alternate reality that is the product of one of the most original and eloquent thinker/writers of our time.
As was made clear in one such reader's comment, the original title, "Aegypt", was forced on the write by the publisher, as was the ridiculous decision to take a single (if lengthy) novel and split it into four separate books, each of which was marketed without reference to the fact that it is the continuation of a single story! "The Solitudes" was Crowley's original name for this first section of his awesome tale of alternate possibilities and love in a time of Idiocy. Which is the cue for saying the person who thought this book is "the most poorly written, pathetic attempt at a story that I've come across in years" probably wouldn't know great writing if it front ended her on an expressway. Crowley is an alchemist with words and his vocabulary is rather larger than your typical pulp romance writer, which may have been the issue with that reader. In "Little, Big" he demonstrated his capacity for thinking in a limitless way about our perplexing existence in this universe and a mind-boggling talent for crafting a complex world and breathtaking sentences from such thinking.
This book does get off to a slow start, but when you realize it is the exposition of a novel that must be, in reality, 2,000 pages long, the complex exposition makes perfect sense. Crowley writes fantasy of unprecedented scope and articulacy, it is fantasy for the thinking person. The "fantasy" pigeonhole is, anyway, misleading. A person who can fully imagine and articulate an alternate way of illuminating our existence is usually called a philosopher. But that label does nothing for Crowley, either.
This book is not for everyone, especially in our short attention span culture. But I think those who are captivated by the vivid, hallucinatory thought and language in this book will be compelled to travel on to the end. If you generally read on a level above vampire stories and torrid romances, please get this book and discover an alternate reality that is the product of one of the most original and eloquent thinker/writers of our time.
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