The Year in Fiction (Vol. 109) | The Year in Fictionby Bruce Allen
The Year in Fiction by Bruce Allen
The year 1997 was highlighted by new books from several of the English-speaking world's indisputably major writers. And no reappearance was more surprising than that of the late Anthony Burgess (1917–93), whose last completed fiction, Byrne ("a novel in verse"), was published posthumously to high praise in Great Britain and rather more tempered admiration in the U.S.
Byrne relates, primarily in ottava rima (the verse form most famously employed in Byron's Don Juan), the rambunctious artistic and amatory career of Michael Byrne, the scion of Irish potato farmers and shopkeepers, a gifted composer and a great success throughout Europe—most notoriously in Nazi Germany, where he successfully collaborates with a musical Joseph Goebbels. Then, in a surprising about-face, the focus shifts to Byrne's middle-aged children ("the fruits of my insemination"), struggling with unresolved feelings...
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