Book Review: "Puma" by Anthony Burgess

I've been to the library on my trips around town and I picked up a couple of books and now, here we are. Anthony Burgess as we know, was a great writer. The creator of the controversial A Clockwork Orange, I think many of us have at least read or seen one or two works by him. If you're looking for something other than his most famed novel then you can read my review of another novel by him below...

Anyways, Puma is a sci-fi novel where we must also consider whether (and how much) is A Clockwork Orange sci-fi as well (according to the introduction). With the suggestion of A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe also being science fiction, there's some dark humour to this book that cannot be ignored. If there's any modern author who's writing style you can recognise without their name on it, it would be Anthony Burgess...

A rogue planet named Puma is set to collide with earth and this is about to go exactly the way you think it will. The world goes into panic-mode as Anthony Burgess shows off his finest sardonic writing as we are taken through the lengthy dialogue and pointless bureaucracy related to everything in between helping out the normal person (which nobody wants to do) and being morbidly fascinated with the idea of everyone on earth being blown to hell by the collision. I felt bad for laughing sometimes.

Of course, it wouldn't be science fiction without a bit of science. And so, as the rogue planet moves closer, we see masses of natural disasters take place. Tidal waves rise high, earthquakes form and there are so many things that happen that align with a planet entering the gravitational pull of planet earth. It's honestly terrifying and hilarious at the same time. As humanity starts to collapse, we get a plan drawn up by scientists who state that only the best of humanity should be saved by an ark-type spaceship. Anthony Burgess definitely takes the whole thing to a new level with the idea of sci-fi. He makes us feel almost angry at this nightmare because whilst people are suffering, we have a bunch of people who believe they are the best and brightest discussing the outcome of humanity. They make a super computer do it.

Inside this narrative, we have Valentine and his wife, Vanessa. Valentine is deemed useless and so is doomed to be left behind whereas his wife, secures herself a seat on the spaceship. Valentine isn't going to take this lying down though, he wants to get on that spaceship and thus, we are taken on an adventure with Val across the United States as the world crumbles around him so that he may be saved alongside his wife. Anthony Burgess turns the sci-fi and satire novel into something of a weird apocalyptic adventure whilst also keeping the comedic side alive and well. We have characters who are egotistical and narcissistic told that they are of no use to humanity whatsoever and then other characters who state that we have no more use for the moon.

If I'm going to be perfectly honest, I think that Puma might be Anthony Burgess's best example of writing dialogue. Yes, it's even better than the dialogue in A Clockwork Orange. I have to say I have been reminded of how much I enjoy the novels of Anthony Burgess and if you read the introduction to this particular edition, you will be taken deep into the world of sci-fi and how important it was to the author.

All in all, I hope you have enjoyed reading this review and I also hope you pick up this book if it crosses you. Anthony Burgess has written plenty of amazing novels and it makes me uncomfortable that most of his bibliography is ignored for perhaps one or two books. He is to science fiction what Vladimir Nabokov is to social commentary and perhaps even better when it comes to the written word. In my edition as well, there's a whole notes section which tells you about all the intertextuality within the book. I'm not going to lie, this was a near-perfect reading experience.

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