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Crow Mellow
A playful novel based on Aldous Huxley's early social satire, Crome yellow, transferred to contemporary Australia - a lively collaboration between Davies and Phil Day whose drawings illustrate every page of the book.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 20, 2016
Crow Mellow is a most unusual book, not like any other that I’ve read. A collaboration between the artist Phil Day and the author Julian Davies, it’s a reinterpretation of Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow which I re-read a little while ago. I read it then because I wanted to see how this new novel by Julian Davies played with the original…
The answer is quite a lot. Apart from its playful title, Crow Mellow is, like the original, a social satire that uses a gathering in a country house in order to poke fun at contemporary fads and fashions. Davies borrows the structure of the Huxley novel, and his characters, transplanted into contemporary Australia, follow the Huxley script to such an extent that if you’ve read the original recently as I have, the interest lies not so much in the plot but in the witty correspondences. So there is a pompous, confused young would-be writer called Phil Day who corresponds to Denis Stone; there is his lady-love Anna Rimbush (Anne Wimbush) who’s more interested in the artist Paul (Gombauld). Mr. Scogan becomes Scrogum whose name with the transposition of a consonant allows Davies some rather adolescent humour. And so on.
The satire covers all sorts of contemporary issues, not just literary and artistic pretensions but also capitalism, consumerism, gender politics and a parody of our not-so esteemed prime minister at a fancy dress party.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/11/23/cr...
The answer is quite a lot. Apart from its playful title, Crow Mellow is, like the original, a social satire that uses a gathering in a country house in order to poke fun at contemporary fads and fashions. Davies borrows the structure of the Huxley novel, and his characters, transplanted into contemporary Australia, follow the Huxley script to such an extent that if you’ve read the original recently as I have, the interest lies not so much in the plot but in the witty correspondences. So there is a pompous, confused young would-be writer called Phil Day who corresponds to Denis Stone; there is his lady-love Anna Rimbush (Anne Wimbush) who’s more interested in the artist Paul (Gombauld). Mr. Scogan becomes Scrogum whose name with the transposition of a consonant allows Davies some rather adolescent humour. And so on.
The satire covers all sorts of contemporary issues, not just literary and artistic pretensions but also capitalism, consumerism, gender politics and a parody of our not-so esteemed prime minister at a fancy dress party.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2014/11/23/cr...
March 14, 2016
A very different book, a country-house satire combining text and illustrations, riffing Aldous Huxley's Crome yellow. For my full review please see: http://whisperinggums.com/2015/01/12/...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews