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Brilliant Creatures
The debut novel from much-loved writer, poet and broadcaster Clive James, Brilliant Creatures is a bold, hilarious satire of the media industry.'Clive James doesn't miss a trick' – The TimesLancelot Windhover used to be famous, but that was a long, long time ago. And so now, when his extramarital affair is on the path to becoming a subject for the gossip columns, it is at least some consolation to know he is remembered.A romping satire of London literary life in the Eighties, Brilliant Creatures describes an incestuous circle of writers, journalists, publishers, and a network of characters whose chatter and manoeuvres are so terribly important to one another, it is surely inevitable that someone will write a novel about it all. With critical notes from Peter C. Bartelski, the polymath don of Sydney, Sussex and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, this is that novel.'James is up on a tightrope of style, wobbling away, relentlessly funny. James's achievement, beyond the fizz and the jokes, is to have created characters who begin to be likeable, and who make and live with a decision worth pondering' – London Review of Books
400 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 21, 1983
6 people are currently reading
180 people want to read
About the author
Clive James
94 books289 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
An expatriate Australian broadcast personality and author of cultural criticism, memoir, fiction, travelogue and poetry. Translator of Dante.
An expatriate Australian broadcast personality and author of cultural criticism, memoir, fiction, travelogue and poetry. Translator of Dante.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 15, 2017
There was a time when I couldn't get enough of Mr James. Superior wit and an excellent style. I can feel a re-read session coming on!
August 26, 2012
Not for the first time, I find myself disappointed by a book written by someone I find very entertaining on the telly (cf Jonathan Meades). Clive James is as good as ever at conjuring the witty one-liner but over 300 pages, the (to be fair, deliberately) cardboard cut-out characters and the lack of much in the way of a story gets rather wearing.
April 19, 2016
I used to love Clive James on the TV - and certainly he brings his endless wit, cleverness and intellect into this book. However, there's a little bit too much 'author's voice' at the beginning of the book for me, and I started to get quite irritated. I very nearly stopped reading - but then the story began and the characters took off, and I suddenly started enjoying it.
Written in the 80s - and with quite a bit of contemporary observation it now feels quite dated. But it is a fun comment on the antics of the literati of the day, and it's worth a read if you enjoyed Clive James's humour.
Written in the 80s - and with quite a bit of contemporary observation it now feels quite dated. But it is a fun comment on the antics of the literati of the day, and it's worth a read if you enjoyed Clive James's humour.
June 28, 2016
Absolutely brilliant book about writers, aspiring writers and want-to-be-published writers with a liberal dose of literary references and tongue in cheek near Brit humor. A must read if you like P. G. Woodhouse.
April 17, 2023
While Brilliant Creatures may not be a brilliant novel - with its tales of sexual improprieties, literary sharp practice, and financial scheming among the wealthiest of the literati it tries to outshine Dallas or Dynasty – the satire is sharp and filled with observations as witty as a Borscht Belt one-liner. I am sure those more knowledgeable than I would be able to identify the characters with real people of the time - I was only reasonably certain that Victor Ludorum was Robert Maxwell. That really doesn't matter much now, the jokes remain funny as they are.
Perhaps one could point out that, while Mr. James was happy to poke fun at his rivals, he seemed a little more reticent when it came to potential future employers. The Murdochs are barely seen and even with Victor Ludorum, while he is depicted as an ageing playboy philanderer he is also shown as being intelligent and, in terms of business dealings, ruthlessly astute and even sagacious. Satire is one thing but survival in the world of journalism must take precedence.
The (Clive) Jamesian humour begins almost at once. Opening page and Lancelot Windhover is getting out of bed:
“...looking like the corporeal manifestation of a fit man half his age – which would have been, should you have made it, a pretty fair assessment of his true emotional development, since nobody so old can look so young without a certain deficiency for self-criticism.”
You can see from the start it's not a book for the lexically timid.
Sally Draycott, British TV's latest Queen of the Presenters, is having a meeting to discuss her career in America with Saul Newman, not Paul Newman, Saul Newman:
“The man who did most of the talking was so visionary that even his dandruff looked enthusiastic.”
My favourite single sentence describes Deirdre Childworth's, “an ageing Deb of the Year,” jewellery:
“Her diamond-studded head-band sparkled angrily, like a migraine worn externally.”
Unfortunately this is followed, one page later, with one of several examples of Mr. James' slip into a casual racism that is painful to read. Lancelot meets a Japanese teenage model and Clive James becomes Benny Hill at his most cringeworthy:
“'Do you rike the moobies?' she asked. It turned out that she rubbed them. Her favourite moobie stars were Carorah Rombard and Rosarind Russerroo.”
It doesn't work now as some form of debased observational comedy and I am not sure it even worked in 1983. If you can forgive that then the book will keep you laughing at the real jokes and puns, they never stop, and successfully obscure the lack of a real story.
Perhaps one could point out that, while Mr. James was happy to poke fun at his rivals, he seemed a little more reticent when it came to potential future employers. The Murdochs are barely seen and even with Victor Ludorum, while he is depicted as an ageing playboy philanderer he is also shown as being intelligent and, in terms of business dealings, ruthlessly astute and even sagacious. Satire is one thing but survival in the world of journalism must take precedence.
The (Clive) Jamesian humour begins almost at once. Opening page and Lancelot Windhover is getting out of bed:
“...looking like the corporeal manifestation of a fit man half his age – which would have been, should you have made it, a pretty fair assessment of his true emotional development, since nobody so old can look so young without a certain deficiency for self-criticism.”
You can see from the start it's not a book for the lexically timid.
Sally Draycott, British TV's latest Queen of the Presenters, is having a meeting to discuss her career in America with Saul Newman, not Paul Newman, Saul Newman:
“The man who did most of the talking was so visionary that even his dandruff looked enthusiastic.”
My favourite single sentence describes Deirdre Childworth's, “an ageing Deb of the Year,” jewellery:
“Her diamond-studded head-band sparkled angrily, like a migraine worn externally.”
Unfortunately this is followed, one page later, with one of several examples of Mr. James' slip into a casual racism that is painful to read. Lancelot meets a Japanese teenage model and Clive James becomes Benny Hill at his most cringeworthy:
“'Do you rike the moobies?' she asked. It turned out that she rubbed them. Her favourite moobie stars were Carorah Rombard and Rosarind Russerroo.”
It doesn't work now as some form of debased observational comedy and I am not sure it even worked in 1983. If you can forgive that then the book will keep you laughing at the real jokes and puns, they never stop, and successfully obscure the lack of a real story.
July 12, 2023
I was reminded of Clive James by a TV documentary and thought: I used to love that guy. He was clever, he was eloquent, he was a brilliant TV critic. I was going to read one of his books.
I should have read his collected TV criticism. Or Unreliable Memoirs. Or just about anything other than this. Set in the world of 1970s/80s publishing where all the characters are dislikeable and a woman can’t enter a room without the author describing her breasts, I was about half way through when I realised I could barely tell the people apart and the prose wasn’t so much clear as obscured by as many erudite references as James could squeeze in. Skimming through to the end on my Kindle I noticed the last 10% or more is taken up with an afterword and worse, notes explaining all the cultural references the author has crammed in.
He was a terrific writer and I’ll go back and read some more. If this is anything to go by, however, I doubt that it will be a novel. I rarely give up on a book and am only sorry this time it was one by someone for whom I have such a high regard but notwithstanding Clive James’ many talents; a novelist he was not.
I should have read his collected TV criticism. Or Unreliable Memoirs. Or just about anything other than this. Set in the world of 1970s/80s publishing where all the characters are dislikeable and a woman can’t enter a room without the author describing her breasts, I was about half way through when I realised I could barely tell the people apart and the prose wasn’t so much clear as obscured by as many erudite references as James could squeeze in. Skimming through to the end on my Kindle I noticed the last 10% or more is taken up with an afterword and worse, notes explaining all the cultural references the author has crammed in.
He was a terrific writer and I’ll go back and read some more. If this is anything to go by, however, I doubt that it will be a novel. I rarely give up on a book and am only sorry this time it was one by someone for whom I have such a high regard but notwithstanding Clive James’ many talents; a novelist he was not.
October 18, 2019
By James' own admission, an autobiography dressed up as a novel, there are times this feels too like an Oxbridge don's in-joke (the spoof Notes and Index section at the end, whilst an amusing touch, seems mainly to serve as evidence of the author's extreme well-readness), but nevertheless this is an uxuberant, relentlessly witty look at the pitfalls of the publishing industry in the 1980s and its attendant social circles. Enjoyable dinner-party reading, if you're not successful or popular enough to go to dinner parties.
September 1, 2023
There is no doubt this author is intelligent and clever. His novel is loading with sharp wit and great exaggerated comparisons that are unusual and downright funny. So why the average rating?
Mainly because the book's actual plot wasn't much. The story line mostly concerned various members of the publishing/writing industries hopping in and out of bed with one another and expressing their feelings about their activities.
I'll be the first to say this would rate higher in others' estimations, but it wasn't to my taste.
Lots of cultural references and definitely clever though.
Mainly because the book's actual plot wasn't much. The story line mostly concerned various members of the publishing/writing industries hopping in and out of bed with one another and expressing their feelings about their activities.
I'll be the first to say this would rate higher in others' estimations, but it wasn't to my taste.
Lots of cultural references and definitely clever though.
November 29, 2017
hahaha this is so nice one to read ...
January 29, 2021
A bit self consciously intellectual but worth reading all the same.
April 10, 2021
Always interesting to read a intelligent reviews and opinions expressed in elegant and witty language
May 23, 2025
A box of tricks
My wife bought this novel for me shortly after its publication in 1983, and I read it a couple of times in delight. I picked it up again to re-read a week or so ago, and found that it's lost none of its appeal. Coming hard on the heels of the author's classic Unreliable Memoirs, it employed a lot of the same stylistic tricks, many of which would cause the unsuspecting reader to explode with laughter. Take, for example, this passage on p39, describing the fashion in which the hero's loud-voiced, large-bottomed secretary leaves the office: "The electric clock always gave a soft click when the minute hand was exactly vertical. At five o'clock that click would not have been over before Janice was out of the starting blocks and barrelling down the street towards the tube station, with unwary subcontinentals bowled off their feet and unrolling out of their saris."
However, it's not all laughs. The author's use of metaphor is illuminating and memorable (e.g. "He made a resolution to call her less often and felt himself breaking it even as he made it, like the Hunchback of Notre Dane trying to construct a balsawood model aircraft" [p80]). Besides the hero, the central characters are sympathetically portrayed as well-rounded, interesting people who make decisions in their relationships and then live with the consequences, and the story has an arc that keeps you turning the pages in wonder. When the attention starts to wander, you can speculate on the identity of the real-life models for some of the characters, who inhabit a world of publishing, TV and consultancy that can't be a million miles from that of the author's. Writing about what he knows gives the proceedings an immediacy and realism which was perhaps slightly lost in his subsequent novels (such as, say, The Remake).
And there's another sense in which the author makes use of what he knows: this is a novel with a preface, scholarly footnotes and (most unusually) an index. To compound the joke, the footnotes are attributed to one Peter C Bartelski; this seems to be a pseudonym for the author, who thus ends up commenting on his own work. Allusive and wide-ranging, the comments display an impressive degree of erudition, so I still remember the pleasure with which I detected a (microscopic) error: on p295, there's a reference to a story about Bertrand Russell realizing he no longer loved Ottoline Morrell and cycling home to tell her; although this is all true, the author has confused Russell's wife (Alys Pearsall Smith) with his mistress (Morrell). But this is to pick a tiny hole in an enormously impressive fabric, which still gives great pleasure.
My wife bought this novel for me shortly after its publication in 1983, and I read it a couple of times in delight. I picked it up again to re-read a week or so ago, and found that it's lost none of its appeal. Coming hard on the heels of the author's classic Unreliable Memoirs, it employed a lot of the same stylistic tricks, many of which would cause the unsuspecting reader to explode with laughter. Take, for example, this passage on p39, describing the fashion in which the hero's loud-voiced, large-bottomed secretary leaves the office: "The electric clock always gave a soft click when the minute hand was exactly vertical. At five o'clock that click would not have been over before Janice was out of the starting blocks and barrelling down the street towards the tube station, with unwary subcontinentals bowled off their feet and unrolling out of their saris."
However, it's not all laughs. The author's use of metaphor is illuminating and memorable (e.g. "He made a resolution to call her less often and felt himself breaking it even as he made it, like the Hunchback of Notre Dane trying to construct a balsawood model aircraft" [p80]). Besides the hero, the central characters are sympathetically portrayed as well-rounded, interesting people who make decisions in their relationships and then live with the consequences, and the story has an arc that keeps you turning the pages in wonder. When the attention starts to wander, you can speculate on the identity of the real-life models for some of the characters, who inhabit a world of publishing, TV and consultancy that can't be a million miles from that of the author's. Writing about what he knows gives the proceedings an immediacy and realism which was perhaps slightly lost in his subsequent novels (such as, say, The Remake).
And there's another sense in which the author makes use of what he knows: this is a novel with a preface, scholarly footnotes and (most unusually) an index. To compound the joke, the footnotes are attributed to one Peter C Bartelski; this seems to be a pseudonym for the author, who thus ends up commenting on his own work. Allusive and wide-ranging, the comments display an impressive degree of erudition, so I still remember the pleasure with which I detected a (microscopic) error: on p295, there's a reference to a story about Bertrand Russell realizing he no longer loved Ottoline Morrell and cycling home to tell her; although this is all true, the author has confused Russell's wife (Alys Pearsall Smith) with his mistress (Morrell). But this is to pick a tiny hole in an enormously impressive fabric, which still gives great pleasure.
November 15, 2015
A book about people who write books and publish books and are rich wouldn’t be my first choice for reading usually but I bought this book because I loved Clive James autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs. It’s a fascinating group of characters but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a lot of the symbolism and cultural references went over my head. However, the rich inner lives of James’ characters kept me reading. This is the sort of book that should end up on an A Level syllabus.
September 22, 2015
Dazzling, dizzying exercise of high comic style-- and jam packed with tidbits such as Modigliani's height, minor opera characters, and more literary references than I could keep up with. But great fun trying,
August 16, 2020
Hilarious.
October 10, 2015
I adore Clive James and you can hear his voice through this but the darkness of the humour was off-putting for me.
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December 22, 2016Rather fun, including the tongue-in-cheek annotations which follow the narrative and present a Pan-like case for "the cleverness of me" on the part of the narrator, if not directly the author.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews