Review

“The Affirmation” by Christopher Priest is a fabulous book, albeit heart-wrenching. Rarely have I had the pleasure to read such an articulate book, which at the same time managed to give me the clear impression of what it must be like to completely and utterly lose your mind. Throughout the book you find yourself guessing and wondering at what is real. The characters and the journey they go on is both ordinary and realistic, which allows the reader to clearly empathise with them, which is what makes the story such a powerful read. I found that many of the patterns portrayed by the main character and experiences he’s gone through I have myself experienced in recent years, which makes the escapes he invents even more compelling. In some way one can wonder, does it matter if what you experience is real or not as long as it’s real to you?

Christopher Priest manages to do one of the things he, in my experience, does so well - Through a focus of duality he both puts up the two alternate views of the world and drives the story through these two opposing views. In this case he keeps the reader constantly guessing, while constantly shifting the point of view of the character, so you can never quite be certain whether the conclusion you’ve reached is right or wrong. This is exactly what makes it feel like you are losing your mind alongside the main character. It is very skillfully done and I have yet to read a book that manages to hit such a fine balance of keeping the reader in doubt about reality throughout.

“The Affirmation” is probably best compared to other books by Christopher Priest as he has a very distinctive style. I found this book to be almost as mind-bending as “The Inverted World” also by Christopher Priest, while I imagine that it draws strong parallels to “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk (A book I reserved from the library immediately after reading this one in order to be able to confirm whether or not they are similar.). Without knowing more I imagine that few writers are as solid as Christopher Priest, so it will be interesting to compare the two.

Score: 8/10

I have grown very fond of Christopher Priest as a writer. His style is steady and solid, with nothing flashy. I imagine that many would find his books slightly boring, but I personally appreciate the way he builds a world that is so close to reality, that it might just as well be. This way he doesn’t have to invent a lot of technological advances or star systems, but he can keep the story at the centre and slightly bend one small thing in our reality and examine this small change in an almost ideal theoretical scientific setting. Perhaps he should have his own genre of speculative science fiction.

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