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| The Glamour (Gollancz S.F.) | 
 enlarge | Author: Christopher Priest
Publisher: Gollancz
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £0.01
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 72526
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0575075791
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780575075795
ASIN: 0575075791
Publication Date: June 9, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Is it just me? January 23, 2007
4 out of 10 found this review helpful
SPOILERS FOLLOW
I have to admit this is a superbly written book and it had me gripped until the very last page but, and I'm going to stick my neck out here as I know this guy is revered by a good many people, what a cop out of an ending! I was mortified and actually really angry when I read it. I totally get the ambiguous nature of what's going and I love that up to a point but he's gone too far with this one.
I remember as a child having to write an essay for English homework and I had nearly finished it when my mum called me for my tea so I scribbled a quick rubbish ending just so I could have my fish fingers. I'm thinking Mr Priest may have found himself in the reshaped-fish-bits based situation!
Also, I understand the version I read has the revised ending. I really hate to think what the original was like.
I read The Separation before this book and again, it was great up to a point but the end of that one also negates the entire novel. I think I will have to steer clear of this guy in future as I can't take the stress.
 Truth and fiction October 18, 2006
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
The Glamour is a wonderful story of a man who, caught by the blast from a car bomb, is trying to recover his memory, with the best hope apparently a woman who claims to have been his lover.
But this being a Christopher Priest book more is going on than that. Priest uses his trick of changing the perspective on the story, without suggesting that any particular point of view is more valid than another, leaving you guessing as to what is going on.
I always think of Priest as being the British Philip K. Dick, a man who loves writing about shifting realities. The difference being that whereas Dick seemed compelled to write and would often write hurriedly, Priest is a more considered writer, his prose is more elegant. Similarly Priest is more concerned with the middle classes than Dick's blue collar heroes. And in this book, Priest is doing what Dick would have done more of, had his publishers been more daring, he writes a book that seems like science fiction but isn't. Not really. It's more about relationships and stories and glamour. The science fiction or fantasy element is very slight and if you look at the story in a certain way, does not necessarily exist.
The book is beautifully ambiguous and the fractured nature of this review just testifies to the fact that no review can do it justice. You just have to read it. And then all of Priest's other books. He's that good.
Superlatives begin to fail.... December 20, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Christopher Priest is a superb writer. Using simple direct and unornamented prose he weaves a world where nothing is quite what it seems but where the impact of what he writes is stupendous.
To reveal the storyline in a review like this would be grossly unfair but this is probably one of the two best books I have read this year -- and I read lots.
The writing is crystal clear and unaffected. The story is superbly constructed with the author fully in command of the twists of the plot. Priest's writing is absolutely unimprovable. Why isn't this man at the top of the best-seller lists?
Maddening and superb January 7, 1999
19 out of 23 found this review helpful
I have read and reread this book, and it still drives me up the wall! No other book has ever had such an effect on me or on the other people I gave the book to. This edition (1996) is actually a rewritten version of the original.The author had received such a large amount of mail from similarly maddened readers, that he decided to change a couple of details. Whether he created a better book or not is debateable, but the essential twists and turns of story and narrator remain. To say too much about the story would spoil the surprise of potential readers, but I can say that the inherent mystery will change the way you look at the world. Read, read and read again. Remember, the best books make you think for a long time after you have turned the last page.
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