”Once upon a...Time, you’ll be pleased to know--and since one must start somewhere--was created in creation.What was there before creation? is meaningless. Time is a property of creation. What there was was the Old Chap peering in a state of perpetual nowness up His own almighty sphincter trying to find out who the devil He was. His big problem was there was no way to distinguish Himself from the Void. If you’re Everything you might as well be Nothing. So He created us, and with a whiz and a bang (quite a small one, actually) Old Time was born.” When he fell it created hellEvil is supposed to be charming, seductive, handsome, beautiful, and...well... naughty in the best possible way. There are many names for the angel that personifies evil: Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, Prince of Darkness, Satan, bête noire, dastard, diablo, djinn, dybbuk, enfant terrible, evil one, and the Devil are just a few choice epithets that have been hurled at the DARK ONE, but the only name he answers to is the one that god gave him...Lucifer. Lucifer from the TV show SupernaturalThe basis of this novel is that GOD sends his emissaries to chat with Lucifer about forgiveness. The deal is that Lucifer has to spend thirty days walking the Earth as a human. Now Lucifer isn’t even sure he wants forgiveness and besides how out of balance would the world be without his seductive whisper moving things along. He decides that this experiment, at least, might be fun. Lucifer tussles with JC in the wilderness and had him right where he wanted him except GOD cheated.Lucifer ends up in the body of a suicidal writer, are there any other kind, and is less than thrilled with the chassis he has been issued. As he watches Declan Gunn’s girlfriend... ahhh... well pleasure him he makes the mistake of looking in the mirror.”Watching in the mirror turned out to be a bad idea, what with Gunn’s wayward gut and hairy legs, what with his double chin, dugs and jug-handle ears, what with his body being a sort of anti-aphrodisiac.”Lucifer is happy with the evolution of women’s looks.Women had touched themselves up--cosmetically, thank you--and their features glowed and gleamed: mouths like scimitars in claret, plum, sienna, mimosa, pearl, burgundy and puce, smokily shadowed eyes with diamond hints and sapphire glints, flecks of emerald and fragments of jade.Easy there Lucifer you are just passing through. He meets up with Lady Harriet Marsh who is made to order for a fallen angel obsessed with sin. Lady Harriet Marsh, you’d think, what with the bevelled vowels and Susanna-York-on-smack looks. Sixty years old now (quite a while since I’d last seen her) with a freckled body of complicated wiriness under a black halter-neck cocktail dress. Magnificently bored green eyes. Hair dyed a colour between platinum and pale pink, pinned up, with wispy bits dangling. The odd liver spot. Brazenly crafted Los Angeles teeth. Susanna York had the devil in her eye.I gotta hand it to Harriet with most of the female population younger than her she still had the goods to catch the eye of the devil himself. It wasn’t so much how she looked, but how her life’s resume is red inked with sordid behavior. Lucifer decides to write a novel about himself, after all he is supposed to be a writer and wouldn’t it be great to make Declan Gunn rich. The added bonus of this idea is that after he vacates the body he would have one more potential sinner to cultivate. As the story progresses and his sense of himself becomes more and more murky he starts to write less about himself and more about Declan Gunn. I read The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan and thought it was snarky and witty and fun. When I discovered that he had written a book about Lucifer I thought... wow... what a perfect idea for this writer. Maybe my expectations were too high. Is it possible I failed as a reader? Well maybe, but the one thing I can not abide is a book to be BORING. The book had some wonderful lines, but the chatterbox, whiny, nagging voice of Lucifer took all the sparkle out of what should have been a slam dunk wonderful novel. I will end with a dash of Duncan getting it right. ’Do you ever have those dreams,’ Harriet rasped, slowly, ‘where you’ve done something, something terrible and irreversible? Something horrific, and no matter how much you’re sorry it’s no good? It’s indelible?’‘No.’I didn’t look at her. Didn’t need to. I knew what she’d look like, lying on her side, face to the window, the city’s lights minutely captured in the glossy convexities of her tired eyes. I knew she’d be unblinking, her cheek squashed in the deep pillow, her mouth dripping a single strand of spittle. I knew she’d look sad as hell.‘I have that dream all the time,’ she said. ‘Except when I’m asleep.’
Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and taste I've been around for a long, long year Stole many a man's soul and faith...-Sympathy for the Devil, the Rolling StonesA positively wicked romp through what the titular character calls "the concussive world of matter." The book chronicles Lucifer's brief reincarnation and experiences in fleshy form. Like Roald Dahl's My Uncle Oswald, I, Lucifer is explicit without being raunchy, vivid without being too overt, and tastefully navigates the temptations of the flesh (in all its forms).The book's greatest credit is Duncan's positively elegant prose; he is at once conversational and engaging, teasing and seriously provocative, challenging and supplicant. His tongue-in-cheek pop culture references and name drops are hilariously apt. His unexpected turns of phrase are exquisite. He is understated where understatement is called for, and exceeds expectations throughout. I literally laughed out loud, often, and found myself grinning foolishly a good deal of the rest of the time.Notable quotes:"I, Lucifer, Fallen Angel, Prince of Darkness, Bringer of Light, Ruler of Hell, Lord of the Flies, Father of Lies, Apostate Supreme, Tempter of Mankind, Old Serpent, Prince of This World, Seducer, Accuser, Tormentor, Blasphemer, and without doubt Best Fuck in the Seen and Unseen Universe (ask Eve, that minx) have decided - oo-la-la! - to tell all." (introductory paragraph)"(Not that I can claim any credit for 'Sympathy for the Devil', by the way. You'd think, wouldn't you? But no, that was Mick and Keith all on their own.)""(This thing about AIDS being God's punishment kills me. It's mine, you sillies. It's a nose-thumb to Himself: Look, even when it's killing them they can't stop.)""Welcome, Lucifer, to the concussive world of matter.""A lawless horde of smells: soap, chalk, rotting wood, limescale, sweat, semen, vaginal juice, toothpaste, ammonia, stale tea, vomit, linoleum, rust, chlorine - a stampede of whiffs, a roistering cavalcade of reeks, stinks and perfumes in Bacchanalian cahoots... all are weeuylcum . . . all are weeyulcum . . . Yes, they certainly were, though they fairly gang-banged my virgin nostrils." (upon his first sensory experience)"(I've rubbed my nose in a good many places since then, but I'm damned if I've found much to compare with the honk of a dog's foot. It's the smell of idiotic and inexhaustible optimism.)""Some humans survive concentration camps, others are driven over the edge by a broken fingernail, a forgotten birthday, an unpayable phone bill. Gunn's somewhere in-between. Somewhere in-between's where I do much of my finest work.""Truth is Adam and Eve had sex a few times [...:]; it just hadn't been much fun. It hadn't been unpleasant, but it hadn't been sex as you know it. [...:] It was just another thing they did because that was the way they were made. Edenic sex didn't feel good and it didn't feel bad. How times have changed, n'est-ce pas? Now it feels so gerd. Now it feels so bayered. Yes? No, really, you're too kind."Those are only to name a few. One of the most delightful books I've read in a while. Not recommended for young readers.
What do You think about I, Lucifer (2003)?
Ok, this book....I still can't decide how I feel about it. I will say, it was an interesting concept, but overall, I think the writing failed it. The author had great references, great quotes and one-liners but they got overwhelmed by his insistence on using as many similes as he could fit into one sentence. I felt like I wish the book would've come with the same thesaurus this guy was using when writing so we could translate the text. It gave it color, yes, but it also made it difficult to put the book down and pick back up later because the text didn't flow together. The story was so saturated with words that the meaning was oftentimes lost. Lucifer was an interesting character, though. His sarcasm and arrogance was pretty consistent and made you immediately connect with a set of feelings for him, whether good or bad. But he still had room for growth and depth. You could see his pain through his malice but, as they describe towards the end, it's much like he never moves past adolescence. This book was recommended to me by someone who'd just started reading it. I'm glad I read it but I don't know yet that I'd recommend it to anyone else. Unless they are ravenous readers who'd not be put off by the writing style. And speaking of, why did Lucifer have to be SO British? He wad around before time was time and before the Earth, let alone Britain. Yet his entire character is dripping with British phrasing and slang that it made it sometimes difficult for an American (who's been to London several times) to get references and jokes. I thought it'd have been nice if he'd have been more worldly and taken different cultures into himself. It may have given him more believability as a real Satan. Oh and, his obsessive chain-smoking made me crave one for myself! BAD Satan!
—Rhys
Ili su moja očekivanja bila preeeeeeevelika ili je Dankan ovde žestoko omašio...Odmah da napišem - nisam čitao nijedan od njegovih romana iz sveta vukodlaka (iako mi lagano hvataju prašinu na polici jer ne mogu da stignu na red od nekih drugih knjiga) i iskreno se nadam da dotični romani nisu ovakvi...Dankan i ja se već na prvih dvadesetak strana nismo našli. Iako su mi mnogi nahvalili ovaj roman i pročitao sam dosta pozitivnih kritika, jednostavno ne mogu da nađem dovoljno razloga kako bi ovaj roman dobio više od dve zvezdice, ali da krenem redom...Reklamiran kao urnebesno smešan, roman je pao već na prvoj četvrtini... Do samog kraja Dankan je uspeo da mi izmami dva smeška (jedno na račun prizivanja Lucifera i drugo na račun (da prostite) prdenja u kadi i Krakena). Roman je nažalost suv, suvoparan, sa mnogo humorističnog potencijala, ali avaj neiskorištenog...Na previše mesta sam zevao ili me je hvatao san... Previše prazne priče, nasilno detaljnih opisa, premalo radnje. A ovo tematski nije knjiga kod koje bih očekivao toliko opisa. Znam, znam, zaštitnici i pobornici ove knjige će reći kako to mora biti tako jer Lucifer ulazi u telo prozaičnog pisca itd, itd... Lep izgovor para vredi, međutim previše pasusa smaraju.Likovi su nažalost bledi i dvodimenzionalni, Luciferovi izleti u treću dimenziju ličnosti deluju usiljeno i veštački i nekako totalno neusklađeno sa onim što Lucifer arhetipski predstavlja. Aman jesi li (ili nisi) vrhovno zlo ili si neki tamo cmizdravac?!? Ono što je simpatično (iako to nije novotarija u književnosti) jeste anagramska igra imenom pisca - Declan Gunn = Glen Duncan.Druga stvar koja je doprinela tome da roman ocenim sa dve zvezdice jeste intertekstualnost sa Miltonom (i još nekim piscima) i preplitanje sa elementima popularne kulture (čitao sam hrvatsko izdanje i svaka čast prevodiocu koji je ukazao na neke stvari koje mogu lako da pobegnu iz vidokruga). A blasfemija? Meeeeeeeeh... Thumbs down! Ako je već planirao da napiše nešto blasfemično, Dankanu je očigledno nedostajalo hrabrosti da to uradi onako kako treba. Ovako je roman ispao površan (i pored svoje intertekstualnosti) i smešan (ali ne u onom humorističnom smislu ove reči) pre svega zbog silnog potencijala koji je skoro pa uludo protraćen.Ukoliko želite pravu blasfemiju koja vrca odličnim humorom, satirom, ironijom,... onda se držite Saramagovog Kaina a ovu knjigu slobodno ostavite na dnu reading liste, negde iza drugih knjiga na polici...
—Kristijan
The true genius here is in whoever wrote the description on the back of this book and, without lying, made it sound interesting. Because when it comes down to it, this book was really quite awful. The worst part about it is that the idea of the story had merit (Lucifer is given a second chance to redeem himself by spending a month as a mortal) and the writing showed so much potential, but it turned out to just suck. Unless you think reading about someone drinking a lot, doing all sorts of drugs, having lots of weird sex and copious diarrhea is fun, I don't really see how you could enjoy this. It's a boring and rambling piece of meanness. Obviously this is not going to be recommended by me to anyone.
—Kim
