Where Three Roads Meet (Canongate Myths)
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"* 'The novel is a bright, hard, fine-cut gem' - The Sunday Times * 'Simply and strongly done, laying bare many of our mortal anxieties' - The Times * 'This is a book to dwell on, to ponder, and delight in' - Scotsman"
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Simply and strongly done, laying bare many of our mortal anxieties
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56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Only Vickers could pull this off,
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This review is from: Where Three Roads Meet: The Myth of Oedipus (Canongate Myths) (Hardcover)
WHERE THREE ROADS MEET is a retelling of the Oedipus myth, famous within the world of literaure but also psychology and psychanalysis, thanks to Sigmund Freud who developed the 'Oedipus Complex' to explain early infantile sexuality.
Vickers takes the figure of Freud in his last years, when he is suffering from cancer, as one of the characters within this retelling. Freud is visited by a mysterious man who is blind and comes to him to recount a story about Oedipus. This mysterious visitor claims that he thinks Freud has missed something in his own Oedipus theory, and so he tells the story in order to help the famed psychoanalyst 'see' another point. For Vickers' retelling, the important point about the story is that Oedipus pushed and pushed for the knowledge that would be his downfall, despite being warned that there really are some things that should remain unsaid: '"Events must be endured if they are to disclose their meaning." "Or unfold untold meanings? And no one, even you, Doctor, has ever quite accounted for humankind's resistance to letting well alone."' (p173). What makes this novel truely memorable is that Vickers plays around with language and words - as Freud and his visitor discuss the Oedipus story as well as Freud himself, they muse on the origins of words and how that may relate to the story they are discussing. This results in the book staying with you long after you have finished reading its lines. As any good psychoanalyst should, Vickers is able to make you stop and think and relfect on what has just been said, slowly showing you alternative perspectives or issues to consider. This is a fantastic read - highly recommneded.
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Crackles with intelligence,
By
This review is from: Where Three Roads Meet: The Myth of Oedipus (Canongate Myths) (Hardcover)
I heard Ms Vickers on Start the Week and rushed out and bought this. I read a review which said it lacked emotion. Don't believe it. My guess is the reviewer didn't have time to read and absorb this book properly which, as all Vickers fans know, is essential where she is concerned. In an interview she claimed to be 'lazy'. My guess is this is extreme modesty. She's a deep thinker and a tough one, and as with her writing understates her own worth. This book crackles with emotional intelligence and her take on the Oedipus myth is highly original. Her main thesis is that human beings don't know what they think they know but do know what they think they don't know - and that this is an element in the myth which Freud recognised, but passed over in his eagerness to pursue his new theory of infantile sexuality. Having Tiresias, the blind seer, come to tell Freud what really happened as he is dying is a brilliant conception and as always with Vickers it is done with a straight forwardness which belies its bold originality. I especially liked her idea that Jocasta (whom she does wonderfully well) knew she was sleeping with her own son - and that she sought to do away with him the first place out of a fear of losing him later. This is a profoundly shocking idea but one that has a clear ring of truth. And the motif of the three roads is also brilliantly handled. I suspect Freud would have enjoyed Vickers take on his own life and work. A real 'novel' - ie truly original.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mythos & metaphysics,
By
This review is from: Where Three Roads Meet: The Myth of Oedipus (Canongate Myths) (Hardcover)
'Where Three Roads Meet' is a brilliant literary interpretation of the Oedipus myth, with as many layers as the proverbial onion, - haunting, subtly humorous, occasionally shocking in its surgically-precise skill. No one but Salley Vickers could have written with such psycho-analytic insight and yet retained the multiple mythopoeic threads that reach back to the Ancient Greeks' intuitive knowledge and understanding of both man's temporal existence and his interaction with, and conflict with, the 'divine'.
As with Vickers' previous novels, the story remains with you long after the last page has been read.
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