Anima: Signs of Life/Course of the Heart (Gollancz S.F.)
 
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Anima: Signs of Life/Course of the Heart (Gollancz S.F.) [Paperback]

M. John Harrison (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz; paperback / softback edition (14 April 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0575075945
  • ISBN-13: 978-0575075948
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 3.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank:: 367,761 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

M. John Harrison
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Product Description

Product Description

When a writer like M. John Harrison looks at love, you know the results will be unusual and compelling, evocative and imaginative, dark, depressing and transcendent. In SIGNS OF LIFE, the beautiful Isobel Avens dreams of flying like a bird; Mick 'China' Rose runs a fast (and sometimes illegal) courier service to the genetics industry. When they meet and become lovers, it sets off an unstoppable train of events. Set in London and Budapest, against a backdrop of cosmetic surgery, genetic engineering and medical waste-dumping, SIGNS OF LIFE is both a sparely written thriller and an unforgettable love story. THE COURSE OF THE HEART follows three students whose lives are changed forever by the ritual they carry out one May night in a Cambridge meadow. To escape the consequences, they seek out the Coeur, a country which emerges from the shifting borders of Europe under only the most special conditions. In the Coeur anything is possible: even hope; even redemption.

About the Author

M. John Harrison was born in the Peak District and now lives in London.

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Britain's greatest living writer., 20 Aug 2005
By A Customer
This review is from: Anima: Signs of Life/Course of the Heart (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
If you've never read any M.John Harrison before, this would be a great place to start. The Course of the Heart is in my opinion his greatest novel. The story revolves around three friends who, as students, become entangled with a strange magician/con-man/nut-case called Lucas Medlar. Through him they experience something so terrifying that they spend the rest of their lives coming to terms with it.
Signs of Life is also brilliant. It shares some qualities with The Course of the Heart, but it has a harder, more angry, more satirical heart.Despite this, it's characters are all real and human, sympathetic and completely compelling. Again it involves the relationship between three main characters. Again, two males and one female. As the female characters obssession with flying begins to take a dark turn, the relationship between the three falls apart. It's a vicious satire and critique of post-Thatcherite Britain, but it's a page-turning thriller and it's a heart-breaking depiction of a failing relationship.
But above all this, apart from the complex, multi-faceted, multi-layed nature of any Harrison book, what you get is the best, most seductive prose of any writer I can think of. He just writes the best sentences.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful writing, 22 July 2007
By S. Bentley "stuarthoratiobentley" (North Yorkshire) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Anima: Signs of Life/Course of the Heart (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
Elsewhere I wrote a review of the Glamour by Christopher Priest, which I described as having a science fiction/fantasy element that didn't necessarily exist, depending on how you read the novel. Anima, which is an omnibus of two novels Harrison has written about one of the big themes, Love, also has fantasy elements that almost don't need to be part of the story but add something extra to the richness of both stories when they do appear.

In Course of the Heart, the fantasy element is deep at the centre of the story. Three people have been bound together by their experiences with a wannabe Aleister Crowley, a strangely charismatic but repulsive man, who has a bizarre hold over the narrator of the tale. The narrator is tied to two friends who are lovers but who have seen something, experienced something that has tainted them both, that haunts their lives. The story is about what love is, the strange forms it takes, and the pain and the joy, the give and the take, the use and abuse it engenders.

In Signs of Life, which is even blacker in some ways, Mick Rose battles through his relationships with his best friend, the sociopathic Choe, and his lover, Isobel, whose dreams and desires take over her life. It's hard to put the plot into words. As another reviewer has mentioned, it is a satire on the eighties, planted squarely in the world occupied by Only Fools and Horses, of Jamie Delano's Hellblazer and Edge of Darkness. Gangsters, transgenics, and wheeler dealers all play a part in the tale. Even Rude Dog and the Dweebs.

Again, love is something fleeting, wonderful and terrible. The end of Signs of Life is where the fantasy element comes in and in a way, it's a shame, because the tale works well as mainstream fiction. But the mythological resonances do have a lot to say about what has come before and the parallels between the fates of Choe and Isobel.

I think this volume is wonderful. It's not necessarily what you'd call an uplifting read, but I think the writing is fantastic.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and enjoyable, 13 July 2005
By Tom (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Anima: Signs of Life/Course of the Heart (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)
The writing was faultless for the main part, vivid and affecting as all literary books should be. The plot of the second story bemused me by its absence, along with a number of completely unlovable characters, but this is still worth reading whatever flaws it might have.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars A dull and tedious read
I purchased this book after reading 'Light' by the same author - a book that I liked a lot. This book is very slow and pretty uninteresting.
Published 15 months ago by M. Clare

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