The Chymical Wedding

This item was listed as being in "good condition," but to me it looks practically new! Very happy about that. As for the book itself, there's a lot that I enjoy: 1. Clarke weaves explanations of alchemical ideas throughout the story. These explanations are enlightening and beautifully written (as is the entire book). If you like these sorts of topics, read this book! 2. The story blends reality and fantasy very well. Imitates the mystical experience that many of us more "spiritual" readers have experienced. 3. The composition: alternating between a story 100 years in the past and a story set in modern times makes this book feel like a cozy mystery. One of the better books I've read in several years. Glad to have picked it up initially, and very happy to have finally purchased a copy for myself.

A wonderful book: a thrilling intellectual romance and a serious meditation on the nature of love. Far and away the best of the strange spate of parallel-lives historical romances of the past several years. Readers of Fowles, Eco, Morrison, and even Bradbury and Arthur Clarke will enjoy "The Chymical Wedding" immensely. Profoundly moving, quite unforgettable.

I am so grateful to have a friend that passed this book on to me when she found a copy in a used bookstore. It is among the best works I have read. Lindsay Clarke has crafted a tightly woven bewitching story that draws the reader in from the start. The characters are engaging for both their strengths and their foibles, making them both real and complete. And their respective evolving quests, both within themselves and with the world around them, are so common to us all that the reader will probably see something of him/herself in all of the characters. I know little of alchemy but came away from the book wanting to read more on the topic, as well as embarking on a search for more of Mr. Clarke's novels. Never in my experience has a work of fiction prompted such simple but transformative revelations of consciousness - shifts in thought and perspective that come from the spell of the tale itself, not the preachings of either the author or one of the characters. By all means, read it!

It was a brief comment (surprisingly, a review of a different book) that caused me to seek Lindsay Clarke's *The Chymical Wedding;* so, during a recent trip to England, I haunted the bookstores. My wife grew frustrated ("This is a vacation!") and I grew frustrated ("Where is this danged book?!") but frustration became success, and then pleasure.Based solely on the (English edition's) cover art and blurbs, I thought this novel would include some measure of the fantastic, of magic. There is magic, but it is in author Lindsay Clarke's prose - limpid, lambent, poetic - and in his wonderful, bewitching tale.Clarke's conflation of poetry, magic, alchemy, relationships (strong and closely bound; failed and lacking the ties that bind), and time (as expressed via the parallel stories, and the demi-bridge between them that aging and reclusive Edward Nesbit manifests) simply fascinates the reader. Protagonist Alex Darken (clever name!) intrigues: the success he enjoys as poet is insufficient to overcome his failings as teacher, as husband, as person. His maladroit handling of his life leads him to `take a retreat,' the better to reassess the shambles. Once ensconced in Pigthle (the name of the rented cottage), he goes out for a walk and espies Edward and Laura, and then meets the town locals; there went his planned retreat from life...I dare you to click on the link above and read the sample pages; I dare you to stop reading. I clicked the link, and found myself once again enchanted, bewitched, and down from the shelf came the novel to savor once again its heady brew. Highest recommendation.

Simply put, this is a wonderful book -- a thrilling intellectual romance whose complexity is used to reveal that when all is (literally) said and done, what lasts is what is simple and true. Readers of John Fowles, Umberto Eco, Toni Morrison, and even Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke will enjoy "The Chymical Wedding" immensely. Profoundly moving and deserving of a very wide audience.

If, as I was, you were put off by the synopsis of The Chymical Wedding, don't be. Normally I never read a book with the word "obsessive" in the blurb, and for those of you who don't either, I'd like to set the record straight. Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding is one of the best novels I have ever read. It may contain obessions, dark sides, self-centred fathers and tormented ministers but the mood of the novel is completely at odds with this description. It sits light to life. It's capable of encompassing all the vagaries of human existence in the way that the best nineteenth century novels did (I'm thinking particularly of Middlemarch). It deals with some very dark topics, true, but it's wistful, rather than tormented, and in a way that is very English. Of course it tells a story -- two stories, which are woven together compellingly. The characters in the present have to try to unravel what happened to people in the same place a hundred years ago. (If you liked Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, or are a fan of Penelope Lively, then you'll like this bit.) The Chymical Wedding has some pertinent things to say about the difficulties of being a man (or indeed human) in the late twentieth century. It looks at some aspects of the occult without the credulousness of the New Age movement, and finds them to occupy a very necessary, and long-forgotten place in our culture. They have been neglected to the detriment of our collective mental health. But, best of all, it has an effect at a very deep level. It tugs at you, as life tugs at Alex Darken, makes you sit up and take notice. The whole book is suffused with a greenish, golden light, which will stay with you long after you put it down.