[In the review below, the critic admires The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl, but dislikes Brophy's "ostentatious" display of her own erudition and "verbal dexterity."]

It was Brigid Brophy who "devised" that enjoyable literary game in which television viewers could try identifying quotations quicker than the pundits. They would have had fun guessing the author of some items in Miss Brophy's new volume [The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl]—a bedside book for the irreverent intellectual. There are some Swiftian fables, a conte or two to please bright kids, and chop-logical conversations such as Lewis Carroll would have appreciated; the title refers to a Socratic dialogue, with echoes of Peacock, a cast that includes Voltaire, Samuel Butler and (of course) "the elderly gentleman with white hair and a white beard" who introduces himself with a page of Irish historical diatribe before delightedly joining the "celestial Fabian Society".

Miss Brophy is always sui generis, despite her fondness for playing jokes with her favourite authors, and makes good use of this Shavian bran-tub to provoke, shock or argue the reader into sharing at least some of her preoccupations—vegetarianism, feminism, atheism, and pacifism. A great many bees buzz energetically away, so that the dialogue of the dead is just as likely to include a harangue on characterization in Shakespeare, a plan for public library royalties, and a comparison of the literary merits of Genesis and Treasure Island as a metaphysical discussion on human and divine love. There is no doubt that Miss Brophy is exceedingly funny when she is also impassioned—how, for instance, does God reply to "the humble Christian's" ardent prayers? Since the whole debate has arisen because God is determined to demonstrate for good and all that he is a fiction, he merely complains gloomily that his followers are

like an officious secretary who considers herself a "treasure" because she keeps a pop-up card index that reminds her to remind the boss when his aunt's birthday is coming along … only, in my case, it's of my own birthday that they insist on giving me warning weeks in advance.

And it turns out that the Black Girl (who has become one Hector Erasmus Mkolo on a pilgrimage to Rome and Western Success) originated as a female version of Candide—a tribute that Voltaire, who appears here as more of an atheist than most historians might accept, receives without comment.

Elysian Fabians may not have been quite what Gibbon, credited with this particular literary game, had in mind. Certainly Shaw's prudish and aseptic ghost would be shocked by Miss Brophy's "Homage to Back to Methuselah", in which Corydon and Co. learn the corruption of materialism by discovering that a ruby lasts longer and shines more brightly than the menstrual blood previously thought of as their greatest treasure. Nor do we all find a ghoulish pastiche of Agatha Christie-ish detection, in which the assembled house-party guests realize that they are accused of murdering kidney, bacon and haddock (not to mention the leather-covered books and desk) quite the witty exposé of our carnivorous customs Miss Brophy intends. The bad taste is, of course, a deliberate challenge to smug indifference. Aspects of society we pretend to deplore invite this kind of satire; Emperors of East and West might one day swim to an ocean chat and agree to total disarmament; it is not altogether preposterous to argue that "poverty is the commonest crime" when the poor suffer very similar deprivations to convicted felons.

Where Miss Brophy tends to lose sympathy—for which this book so entertainingly begs and bullies—is in wearing her "quiz-game" erudition (snippets of half-digested knowledge) and her very considerable verbal dexterity quite so ostentatiously. Far too many puns are of the order of the Minotaur saying he's now a minotaurist attraction, too many good ideas—like the reluctant millionaire who demands amputation of any of his own limbs that contribute nothing to efficiency—are extended just beyond our initial appreciation of the paradox. Like Fifty Works of English Literature We Could Do Without, this is Miss Brophy taking the mickey—and if it weren't for the vigour and blarney of her approach, one would be inclined to dismiss her as wasting talent on readers she clearly doesn't much like.