Where do you start to describe a novel of 1120 pages whose first paragraph, "encompasses the cosmos," according to one reviewer? A book that Colin Wilson calls a "New Age Novel." A book that contains in its pages the Holy Grail, the haunts of King Arthur and Merlin, the Druids, the blood of Christ and the tomb of the man who carried the blood to Glastonbury, Joseph of Arimathea.
Between its covers the following happens:
1.) a midsummer festival with crucifixion
2.) a capitalist, a communist, and an anarchist forms a Glastonbury commune
3.) a miracle cure
4.) a resurrection
5.) a conscious suicide by drowning
Powys glues these isolated events together in a web of interconnections and liaisons of various town people that is reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel or the dark TV series, Twin Peaks.
Overarching all the events of the novel is Powys's penchant for the spiritual interconnection of all life and life processes. A step down from the 17:10 train reverberates with movements in the far reaches of the farthermost galaxies. Or in the middle of the night, the here-and-now action resonates with the energies of the Druids, the Arthurian crew, the microbes and the dust-laden wind from the sea. As the wind blows across the various inhabitants of Glaston, we are given a complete genealogy of the constituent dust particles. Such breath-taking visas of descriptive prose are trance-inducing and the reader's soul is sucked into resonance with all life. Does an insect have a soul? After reading Powys's novel one cannot but wonder at the possibility.
The Somerset dialect, while important to the realism of the novel's setting, is difficult to read since all the dialect uses the first person, e.g., "he gave to I what they gave to he." By the end of the book, however, the dialect's sounds began to reverberate in my head, and it seemed natural for me.
By the end of the book Glastonbury had also entered my list of must places around the world to visit.
[See Additional Review at: http://www.doyletics.com/_arj1/agr88rvw.htm ]
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