From the Publisher
Witty and delightfully written.”—Geoff Ryman, New York Times
“Probably a crank, possibly a genius, certainly an original and independent voice, Alasdair Gray . . . has the look of a latter-day William Blake, with his extravagant myth-making, his strong social conscience, his liberating vision of sexuality and his flashes of righteous indignation tempered with scathing wit and sly self-mockery.”—Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Lewis Carroll and Conan Doyle are acknowledged, but the authors Gray really revises are Sterne and Diderot, both comically self-analytic, Defoe, the creator of strong women, and Samuel Johnson or Voltaire, profound allegorists of the search for a good society . . . Poor Things is amusing and admirably angry, compassionate, and ironic as it looks in 1992 at the early days—modern as well Victorian—of a better nation.”—Times Literary Supplement
The Boston Globe
A riotously comic, up-to-date Victorian romance . . . deft and frolicsome.
Spectator
An unexpected final twist doesn't make the novel seem trivial but, on the contrary, gives the vivid melodrama a retrospective gravity. You become aware that this odd book has been a great deal more than entertaining only on finishing it. Then your strongest desire is to start reading it again.
Washington Post Book World
Gray here retells a tale that amalgamates Frankenstein and Candide . . . Along the way Gray offers delightful conversation, a tricksy triple ending, and some very witty writing.”
Chicago Tribune
Bella Baxter surely merits a place among the holy innocents of literature—Lemuel Gulliver, Don Quixote, Huck Finn, Prince Kropotkin and Holden Caulfield . . . Bound to call to mind other acidic commentaries on human folly—Rasselas, Tristram Shandy, Candide. But can it be that Gray, with his fierce Hibernian contempt for 20th Century solutions for age-old problems, is the most piercing thorn on the bush?”
Barbara Hardy - Times Literary Supplement
Lewis Carroll and Conan Doyle are acknowledged, but the authors Gray really revises are Sterne and Diderot, both comically self-analytic, Defoe, the creator of strong women, and Samuel Johnson or Voltaire, profound allegorists of the search for a good society . . . Poor Things is amusing and admirably angry, compassionate, and ironic as it looks in 1992 at the early days—modern as well Victorian—of a better nation.”
Merle Rubin - Los Angeles Times Book Review
Probably a crank, possibly a genius, certainly an original and independent voice, Alasdair Gray . . . has the look of a latter-day
William Blake, with his extravagant myth-making, his strong social conscience, his liberating vision of sexuality and his flashes of righteous indignation tempered with scathing wit and sly self-mockery.
Geoff Ryman - The New York Times
Witty and delightfully written.”
