When I started this book, I was very surprised to find that it heavily featured a gay character. Some would even say that he is the main protagonist of this book. In a way, this character was what made me go through this book in its entirety.

Even though we hear the whole story through Kenneth Toomey, it felt like the actual main character in the novel was Carlo Campanati and through him Christianity. The book has a huge scope as the title Earthly Powers suggests. We start the novel at the beginning of 20th Century and move our way almost till the end of the same. Since this covers the two major World Wars, that is quite a lot of ground. The book felt like it was mostly about reconciling these two Wars with the idea of a friendly and forgiving God.

I was initially very happy that the gay angle was done well. It gets muddled in the middle. The character inexplicably turns asexual and then turns into a pervert of sorts. There is also a lot of equating homosexuality with pedophilia. Given that this book came out in 1980 and that it is mostly set in the early 19th centuries where, I assume, this idea were very prevalent - it makes sense. But the asexuality was confounding. Somewhere in the initial pages, Toomey the pseudo-protagonist writes a virulently heterosexual novel and views it as an experiment in how his imagination works. Perhaps Anthony Burgess also tried the same with this novel. From whatever historical evidence I could gather, he seemed to have been very straight. I must say that for a straight guy from the 20th Century, the representation is surprisingly good. The few acts of the gay movement that appear are covered properly and have the right views. The problem with the book however is that this is just a small part of it. How I wish this had been the mainstay!

The main parts of the book are about religion. There are not really any new ideas that are expounded here. Man is inherently good and everything evil is perpetrated because of the Devil's action. How that can be misunderstood and misused is covered in the last part of the novel. Burgess stays away from concluding anything. He presents mysterious ailments from East and exoticizes the people there, which is nothing new. It is supposed to give a counterfoil to the logical thinking that the West expounds. He also presents Tamil people and the Tamil language as something which is very crass. As a Tamil person, I did feel a little attacked by it. He also attacks other languages and cultures while he is at it though, so I can forgive him.

I have to say that I did not feel any type of way about Carlo Campanati as a character. He just seemed so tiresomely heroic. He somehow always has the right view and the right reaction to everything. Burgess tries to compensate this with quirks like his gambling and excessive eating, but they don't really take. If you find this character fascinating, your reading of this novel might be entirely different to my own. I found him quite humdrum and not compelling enough for such a huge tome.

Having read A Clockwork Orange first, I think my expectations of this novel were widely different. This book is nothing like that one. I think part of the problem with this one is the sheer length of it. Burgess could have reduced the scope and focused on just some of the events with greater clarity. It would have made for an infinitely better book. When not pontificating about Christianity, Burgess does take the time to make the novel very humourous and that helps with the flow. It is just too many things at the same time which is the biggest deterrent.

Worth a read, partly just so you can proclaim that you've read this monstrously huge classic.

One of my nearest and dearest sent me her old mass-market copy years ago in one of her purging moods. And, in a deeply unusual act, I've read it twice!

I see lots of breakdowns of this story's alleged core, the Problem of Evil that besets monotheistic religions. In my own opinion, Burgess's point was less simple, as the Problem of Evil is easily resolved (you're wrong, there is no gawd so there is no problem): How, when a man is inextricably linked to another, "superior" or "better" man in the public's awareness, does one contextualize the richness of either's soul in simple material terms?

...you know, come to think of it, I can't figure out a non-spoilery way to review the book...one can't explain the power dynamic that undergirds every single decision and shapes every attitude in the men's long, untangential involvement without being either coy or obscurantist. So what can one do to discuss it? I believe my enduring puzzlement at the impossibility of writing a satisfying review has been puzzled out.

This is an epic novel of epic length. The first person story spans from the first world war to the 1980s. Ken Toomey is an English gay novelist and playwriter, of French and Irish decent and his sister Hortense marries into the Italian Campati family. Her husband is composer Dominico who has two brothers Carlo a catholic priest and Raffaele is an importer. The story basically starts with Ken outlining a past event to be used for canonization where Carlo a life long friend, in his youth and prior to now being a dead pope, saved a child from death - the finale, after so so many events in the narrative, are the ramifications of that event.

There is so much travelling around the world, interactions with and of the interesting and well developed characters and extended family (e.g. Hortense has two kids John and Anne), overlaid onto the history of the time, locales, overlaid with Ken's gay life (he gets through quite a few interesting partners in different places) and the religious, multicultural, social times and the media that it really is so difficult to take it all in. It is also very erudite (as you might expect from Burgess) with reference to contemporary authors, historical characters of the time etc.

The book appears very modern for its time with every one at root (except instances of court cases against explicit gay text) accepting Ken (and later Hortense) for their personalities and their lives' contribution to events; even Ken wrt the Catholics and interracial partnering. Just one example might help: Ken arrives at a 60s gay commune and discovers a gay marriage ceremony using his words from a court case about loving relationships.

A quote "But, since God had made me a homosexual, I had to believe that there was another God forbidding me to be so"

I really don't think I can do justice to this excellent writing in my review - it is an epic 'live and let live' tale. It is very long so it might have helped to have a character list and possibly more prominently the year and country in which each of the 82 chapters takes place but that's just being picky.

I finally completed this monster of a book, this masterpiece of post-war literature, which to my great embarrassment, completely escaped me when it was published in 1980. I was maybe too much focused on Vladimir Nabobov at the time, who I believed was the best author of fiction of all times, but who is now, I should admit, surpassed by Anthony Burgess on my list. I so much enjoyed the witticisms and erudition of Burgess' writing, his multilingual jokes, the many, often warped, references to 20th century history and its writers, his struggle with Catholicism; it all passes by in a moving story. The book is stuff for years of study since about every sentence has some interesting, funny or just incomprehensible thought behind it. Thank you very much Anthony in heaven.