Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #624782 in Books
• Published on: 1997-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 175 pages

Review
'Ominous, classical, dark and romantic' Louis de Bernieres 'If you buy one book make it Hallucinating Foucault ... Not to be taken at face value, this novel leaves you perspiring, but chillingly inspired' Observer 'Stylish, surprising, teasing, but above all grippingly readable' Margaret Drabble 'A brilliant first novel - dark, romantic and scholarly' Fay Weldon, Sunday Times

Observer
‘If you buy one book make it Hallucinating Foucault … this novel leaves you perspiring, but chillingly inspired’

Margaret Drabble
‘Stylish, surprising, teasing, but above all grippingly readable’

Customer Reviews

A little gem
A simply wonderful little book which I would not hesitate to recommend. Its packed full of ideas and makes one cogitate about life as each page is turned. The main success and the principle delight of the novel for me was in its evocation of falling in love and being in love. A book for all those who have ever been a student or admired or just simply longed for someone.

Formidable
Thanks, Patricia Duncker - this was probably one of the best books I have read in the last two years. Not only the style that turns it into a real "page-turner" but the plot, the words - they all helped to construct a wonderful yet still challenging atmophere. I even found myself (or at least a part of myself) in the pedantic student of German Literature. In a German newspaper, the jouranlist regarded the story as humorous - no, it's not. It might seem like that, but in fact it is s story about passion, about love and about desire - and all those affections are bound to literature.
So are mine to that book. Brilliant.

A fascinating book - full of surprises.
This novel was passed on to me by a friend with excellent taste. So I feared the worst. The mention of a doyen of lit crit in a title was an initial turn-off for me, but then one can never tell a book by either its cover or title. Having read it - and I don't propose to give even a hint of the story; it would feel like a theft from the author - I am inclined to give Foucault a go. Patricia Duncker has managed many difficult tricks with great nerve and verve. A book partly about why people write...for readers of course, but especially for that special person, that dearest him or her who dwells invisible. Writing is a kind of prayer. And writers seldom receive an answer from the ether. I'd say that writers often tend to lose sight of their readers. After all they can get to know their text so well that they can easily forget how difficult it can be for that first-time, waiting-to-be-won-over, reader. Duncker never forgets that she is not only writing for herself. From start to finish I felt included and not at all the bemused onlooker feeling thick. But behind the friendliness of the book is something deeper: the love that a satisfied reader can develop for the invisible author. It's the sort of affection that seldom speaks its name. How many of us write to an author who has moved or changed us? I suppose this sort of review sent off into the ether is the nearest I've ever come to that sort of thing. But that relationship between reader and writer - between creator and 'consumer' of art, is really what this book is about. It's also a most compelling story. I thought I had sussed how things were going to turn out on several occasions, but Ms Duncker was way ahead of me and the real twist in the narrative caught me completely off-guard. A delightful book. I'm on the look-out for more from this invisible author.