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The Affirmation (Gollancz)

3.98 of 5 stars 3.98 · rating details · 368 ratings · 42 reviews

Peter Sinclair is tormented by bereavement and failure. In an attempt to conjure some meaning from his life, he embarks on an autobiography, but he finds himself writing the story of another man in another, imagines, world whose insidious attraction draws him even further in...

Published (first published January 1st 1981)

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Dec 19, 2011 Felix Zilich rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: in-a-dream, paranoid-food

Питеру Синклеру было 28, когда за считанные дни он лишился работы, дома, любимой девушки и родного отца. Не успел парень даже заметить, как работа неожиданно закончилась, квартиру продали новым хозяевам, отец умер от инсульта, а девушка ушла и попыталась покончить с собой. Лишившись всех прежних жизненных ориентиров, Питер осознал, что в этой жизни ему больше не на что надеяться, следовательно, все лучшее уже далеко позади.

Поселившись в загородном коттедже, любезно представленном ему на время д...more Питеру Синклеру было 28, когда за считанные дни он лишился работы, дома, любимой девушки и родного отца. Не успел парень даже заметить, как работа неожиданно закончилась, квартиру продали новым хозяевам, отец умер от инсульта, а девушка ушла и попыталась покончить с собой. Лишившись всех прежних жизненных ориентиров, Питер осознал, что в этой жизни ему больше не на что надеяться, следовательно, все лучшее уже далеко позади.

Поселившись в загородном коттедже, любезно представленном ему на время другом его отца, Питер приступил к написанию собственной автобиографии. Вскоре он заметил, что с каждой новой страницей вымысла в его мемуарах становится все больше и больше. Всего через пару недель парень уже стал осознавать, что реальность романа полностью заменила для него окружающий его подлинный мир

И это было далеко не самым последним его открытием. Питер Синклер понял, что мир описанного им острова Коллаго абсолютно реален. Именно на нем он получил в свое время дар бессмертия, стоившей ему всех его прежних воспоминаний. И именно теперь в Лондоне образца 1976 года Питеру Синклеру придется оценить масштабы собственной жертвы и попытаться вспомнить все…

Еще “одна страна чудес без тормозов». Еще одно “престижное” повествование от мастера художественной мистификации. От писателя, к которому очень хочется упорно приклеивать ярлычок “постмодернист”, несмотря на то, что этот ярлычок постоянно отклеивается и отваливается. Язык и персонажи как у Фаулза, приемы и идеи как у Мураками. Все вместе – идеальная смесь британской фантастики эпохи заката.

Перед нами два параллельных повествования, у которых есть только одна общая черта – герой по имени Питер Синклер. При этом Синклер Номер Один пишет книгу про Синклера Номер Два. Синклер Номер два пишет книгу про Синклера Номер Один. В результате, истины нет, а есть только два набора параллельных букв. “Раньше я верил, что с помощью правильно подобранных знаков можно прикоснуться к объективной реальности. Теперь же я знаю, что это не так”. Аминь. (2006.06.14)
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Jul 07, 2011 Wastrel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Lovers of accessible, mind-bending literary fiction on the border of fantasy

Shelves: read-in-london, peculiar-fiction, reviewed, genre, westeros-org-book-list, brilliant-books

Not recommended for: people who like their books to be straightforward, easily understandable, and conventional. Also people who want their books to include Exciting Things Happening.

Special Interests covered: mental illness, philosophy.

--

A plain description of the novel would make it sound like a firework display of postmodern literary exuberance; but in fact it is anything but. It's a surprisingly low-key work, in its prose (quite quotidian), pacing (very measured), and mood (ruminating). It d...more Not recommended for: people who like their books to be straightforward, easily understandable, and conventional. Also people who want their books to include Exciting Things Happening.

Special Interests covered: mental illness, philosophy.

--

A plain description of the novel would make it sound like a firework display of postmodern literary exuberance; but in fact it is anything but. It's a surprisingly low-key work, in its prose (quite quotidian), pacing (very measured), and mood (ruminating). It doesn't assault the reader with its brilliance; what it DOES do is crawl under your skin and refuse to leave. I found myself increasingly gripped, even though there was nothing much going on. In some ways, it has a bit of the sensibility of an old horror film, although there's not much actual horror. Or maybe there is, but it's genuine horror and dread, not the sort that is just code for monsters and serial killers. I suppose you could call it a novel of "psychological suspense". It's also exceptionally clever.

This may not be the best place to get into Priest - try "The Prestige" instead - and I can see how this might be very much a love-it-or-hate-it book. I think I may actually both love AND hate it. But if you like serious literary fiction, and are willing to take novels with fantasy elements seriously, it's a must-read; likewise, if you're a genre reader who's also willing to give themselves a headache now and then, this is considerably easier to get through than, say, Gene Wolfe. In fact, it's very easy to read, because it's written very simply and honestly. The difficulty comes after you've read it, when you're trying to decide what you feel about it.

It's not a perfect book - it's a little too emotionally cold, and a little too slow, particularly at the start - but it's powerful, memorable, highly intellectual, and brilliantly constructed.

If you want a longer review, which goes more deeply into my feelings about it and its strengths and weaknesses, here's the review I put on my blog when I read it: full review.

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Jul 02, 2010 David Hebblethwaite rated it 5 of 5 stars

Having lost his father, job, home, and relationship, all in quick succession, Peter Sinclair is at his lowest ebb. He takes on some work helping to renovate a friend’s country cottage; inspired by his ability to turn his vision for one of the room’s into reality, Peter resolves to write his autobiography, in the hope that, by doing so, he can make some sense of his life. After trying various approaches, he decides that the best way to achieve what he wants is to write metaphorically about his li...more Having lost his father, job, home, and relationship, all in quick succession, Peter Sinclair is at his lowest ebb. He takes on some work helping to renovate a friend’s country cottage; inspired by his ability to turn his vision for one of the room’s into reality, Peter resolves to write his autobiography, in the hope that, by doing so, he can make some sense of his life. After trying various approaches, he decides that the best way to achieve what he wants is to write metaphorically about his life; it won’t be what ‘actually’ happened, but it will attain (what Peter sees as) the ‘higher truth’ of capturing what the events of his twenty-nine years meant to him.

So, Peter creates an alternative version of himself, with the same name, but living in an imaginary world, and all the key people in his life given different names – and writes this Peter’s life story to represent the ‘higher truth’ of his won. Peter has almost completed the manuscript when he is interrupted by the arrival of his estranged sister, Felicity, and is forced to break off his work mid-sentence.

All this happens in the first four chapters of The Affirmation; the fifth is again narrated by Peter Sinclair (his voice is recognisably the same), but it’s the Peter of the imaginary world (a world, incidentally, also used by Priest as the setting for his ‘Dream Archipelago’ stories), who is sailing south to a clinic, having won a lottery to undergo a medical procedure which will effectively confer immortality on him. Okay, one supposes, this must be an extract from the ‘real’ Peter’s manuscript – but, no: the Peter in this world has also written a fictionalised autobiography; and the events of this strand subtly contradict what we know of the other Peter’s manuscript. One is left with no option but to conclude that the ‘imaginary’ world has its own valid reality.

And so, as the novel continues, the two realities shift back and forth, with the reader never allowed to pin down one of them as being more real than the other. Even the nature of the text presented to us is uncertain: we never knowingly get to read any of the manuscripts referred to, so what exactly is the testimony that we’re reading? And we only know Peter Sinclair through his words on the page, so what can we trust? This is what Priest is so good at: undermining our expectations, hiding the truth, making the realities of his stories profoundly uncertain.

There are imaginative pleasures a-plenty in The Affirmation, then; but the novel also works on other levels. It’s a fine meditation on memory, and how it can make us who we are. Peter believes that memory is central to the creation of identity, but he also knows how fallible our memories can be; this is played out in several different ways in the novel, including a quite literal one in the shape of the athanasia treatment – a side effect of the procedure is to erase patients’ memories; they’re required to complete a questionnaire beforehand, which will be used to reconstruct their memories – but can they possibly be the same people afterwards?

The Affirmation is also an acute portrayal of a man in a fragile mental state (though, as noted, it resists being interpreted as solely a tale of delusion). We discover early on that Peter hasn’t actually painted his ‘white room’ at all (though he imagines it painted, and it’s that ‘higher truth’, he insists, that really matters); this is only one of the first indications that the world viewed through Peter’s eyes may not be what a third party would see. This leads the protagonist into difficulties relating to other people. For example, Peter’s ideas of what his girlfriends (in both worlds) are like don’t reflect the reality, which puts a strain on his relationships; the way Priest reveals the ramifications of this is simply superb.

I’ve read three of Chris Priest’s novels now, and they have all been excellent. Seriously, if you have yet to read him, you’re missing out. As for me, I doubt it will be long before I read another of his books, and I very much look forward to doing so.(less)

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Oct 24, 2009 Ben Loory rated it 3 of 5 stars

of all the writers i don't like, christopher priest is probably my favorite. i first found him through his book The Inverted World, which was on david pringle's top 100 sci-fi books of all time list (and has since been re-released by nyrb books, one of their only sf titles). that was a dazzlingly smart book about a warped world where civilization was driven around on rails to stay at the center of a kind of gravity well or something, i don't know, told in a kind of detached, reticent manner that...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Molly Ison rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: westeros-sff-book-list

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 20, 2011 Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Kevin by: Bart Everson

I'm not sure what I just read but I am sure of two things: I loved it, and I will re-read it. I will read it again not just because I loved it, but because I want to understand it better, and want to pick it apart, and put it back together even though I'm not confident that it can be done.

I was captivated at first with some fairly mundane parallels to my life, an easy attraction to an everyday protagonist that just happens to share some of my mannerisms, feelings, thought processes.

Then around p...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Michael Pryor rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm probably making too much of things if I dwell on the sense of dislocation and dissociation in this early 80s novel and try to draw parallels with the travails of Thatcherite Britain of the time, but the recent death of M. Thatcher inevitably brings it to mind ...
Regardless, this novel is a masterly exploration of the disintegration of Peter Sinclair. What's real and what lies in his imagination? Priest's handling of this is masterly, with characters overlapping and intersecting while Sinclai...more

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May 03, 2013 Adam Siegel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Minor spoilers below:

I loved not knowing which world was the 'real' one, at least until fairly deep into the novel. Even so, the fact that the protagonist exists in both modern-day Britain and the Dream Archipelago doesn't necessarily make our world the 'true' one. While I was reading, I was confident that this was a story about a crazy man and his delusions, but after some reflection, I'm biased towards the real world because I happen to live in it! This is a pure story - none of it actually ha...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Klytia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Mi chiedo se Nolan non si sia anche lontanamente ispirato a questo romanzo per il suo Inception.
Come Cobb anche Peter Sinclair, il protagonista, vive una problematica vita tra la realtà, Londra, la sua famiglia, la fidanzata, e una sorta di sogno, il Dream Achipelago, la lotteria per l'immortalità di Collago, una nuova amante di nome Seri. In entrambe queste vite Peter cerca di definire se stesso attraverso i suoi ricordi che ha riversato in due manoscritti. Ma i ricordi sono mischiati, manipol...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Jan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"There is a deeper truth in fiction because memory is faulty." - This is an unusual book about a young man, Peter, who is experiencing a crisis of identity. His girlfriend left him, his father has died and he lost his job. A friend of his late father organizes a run-down place for him to stay at, which he is supposed to renovate. Peter believes that to know himself he needs to write down his own story, something that will define him. He starts an autobiography that he increasingly fictionalizes;...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Rahul Nair rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Christopher Priest is a genius, he writes in what we can call his own genre of science fiction. There hasnt been any before him and don't think there would be any after. And that tells you why this author remains one of the most grossly underrated among the literary giants we keep hearing in day to day life.

The Affirmation is about our narrator (Peter Sinclair) for who has been struggling to somehow stabilize his life together. All this only happens till he decides to write about himself

From the...more

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Dec 05, 2012 Ricardo Mendes rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: tenho

Depois de terminar a sua relação de forma dramática com Gracia, Peter Sinclair resolve escrever a sua autobiografia. Uma biografia baseada unicamente na memória com o objectivo de obter a mais pura da verdade, mas para isso Peter começou a usar a ficção pois a realidade não era suficientemente boa para descrever a verdade. Tudo isto é confuso mas no fim temos uma autobiografia verdadeira mas ao mesmo tempo ficcional.

No seu manuscrito as pessoas que com quem se cruzou durante a vida tem outros no...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Dark-Draco rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, fantasy

I have literally just finished the last page of this book and all I can say is WOW! I really didn't think I was going to enjoy this, but as the stories of the two Peter's started to overlap and then bleed into each other, I got more and more engrossed. The ending was really good, like a gentle blow to the head!

The reason that I picked this out of my TBR pile was that I had just read an article on it in a magazine. I now understand what they mean about the book being it's own sequel - you could r...more

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Jul 28, 2010 Fence rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Peter Sinclair is 29, and, following his girlfriend’s attempted suicide he runs away from London, to the countryside. There he is supposed to be redecorating and doing up a family friend’s cottage in return for being allowed to stay there. But he gets distracted and begins to write his autobiography. In the course of writing this he discovers that the real truth can only be found within metaphors and through creating an alternate version of his past. And so he begins to write of his past in Jeth...more

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May 15, 2012 AC rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

This is closer to 4 then 3 stars, but I've decided at this point - having just finished it -- to downgrade it. The book began with a brilliant and brilliantly inventive premise -- and carried it through 2/3rds of the way; but the author then couldn't see any clear resolution to it, and so began an endless recursive loop that was fairly pointless over the last 1/3rd of the book. Plus, the book had Jeremy Irons (whom I hate) written all of it -- the movie version, had there been one... that is. An...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Daniel Salvo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Una novela difícil de reseñar, como muchas de las cosas que he leído de Priest. El tipo de ciencia ficción que escribe es mas bien introspectiva, muy centrada en los cambios que se producen en la percepción y en la personalidad humana ante lo maravilloso o extraño, aún cuando se trate de fenómenos que podrían tener una explicación racional, vulgar inclusive. El "sentido de la maravilla" propio de la ciencia ficción no está ausente pues, en su obra, pero Priest lo presenta de una manera muy britá...more Una novela difícil de reseñar, como muchas de las cosas que he leído de Priest. El tipo de ciencia ficción que escribe es mas bien introspectiva, muy centrada en los cambios que se producen en la percepción y en la personalidad humana ante lo maravilloso o extraño, aún cuando se trate de fenómenos que podrían tener una explicación racional, vulgar inclusive. El "sentido de la maravilla" propio de la ciencia ficción no está ausente pues, en su obra, pero Priest lo presenta de una manera muy británica acaso, con un estilo mas bien parco, de resonancias ballardianas.
Con todo, La afirmación inicia de una manera que pone sobreaviso al lector de que no se trata de un texto de narrativa realista, por decir lo menos. En efecto, las primeras líneas son todo un ejemplo de cómo enganchar al lector en lo fantástico casi sin proponérselo:

De ciertas cosas al menos estoy seguro:
Me llamo Peter Sinclair, soy inglés y tengo, o tenía, veintinueve años. Ya aquí hay una incertidumbre, y mi seguridad vacila. La edad es una variable: ya no tengo veintinueve años.

¿Quién inicia una narración de su propia vida informando que "tenía" veintinueve años, o que los sigue teniendo? Lo que continúa es la narración en primera persona de alguien que ha pasado por período de mala racha total, que ha padecido una serie de catástrofes personales terribles pero nada fantásticas (muere su padre, es abandonado por su esposa, pierde el empleo). Su entorno de amigos y parientes le ofrece ayuda, la cual se concreta en la posibilidad de pasar una temporada en una casa de campo, cómodamente pertrechada para permitirle cierta holgura y paz. En este ambiente, no tan bucólico como pudiera pensarse, Peter Sinclair se embarcará en un nuevo proyecto: escribir su biografía, en un intento expreso de recuperarse a sí mismo.
Su estrategia como escritor en ciernes será idear una suerte de mundo alternativo en el cual él y otros personajes desempeñarán, de manera simbólica, los roles que en la realidad han llevado a cabo. Pero en algún momento, Peter dejará de ser un inglés afincado en una casa de campo para convertirse en el ganador de una lotería única en su género, pues el premio principal es nada menos que un tratamiento que asegura la inmortalidad, la cual podrá disfrutar por siempre (sic) en cualquiera de las innumerables (o infinitas) islas del Archipiélago de Sueños.
Si. De lo fantástico (el posible e inexplicable salto de una realidad a otra, que bién podría explicarse como un delirio del personaje) pasamos a la ciencia ficción en su aspecto más especulativo, el otorgamiento de una de las cosas que más ha soñado la humanidad durante milenios, la posibilidad de ser inmortal. Claro que a la manera de Priest. Es decir, ser inmortal en un mundo que apenas ofrece otros retos a los inmortales que dedicarse a escribir, fundaciones de caridad o resolver crucigramas. Además de la certeza de ver morir, uno tras otro, a quienes dan sentido a la existencia.
Podría parecer que Priest se explaya demasiado en describir el entorno emocional de los protagonistas, siempre desde el punto de vista de Peter Sinclair. Pero esto es coherente con la historia, pues proporciona al lector una explicación de cómo es que se pudo producir ese cambio de una realidad a otra, jugando con la ambigüedad propia de lo fantástico: ¿ha tenido lugar realmente? Y de ser así, ¿cuál es la "verdadera" realidad? ¿La realidad final es producto de las vivencias que ha tenido Sinclair en el pasado, o éste se pasado se ha creado como un subproducto del impacto emocional que se avizora hacia el final de la novela?
Habrá quienes cuestionen el hecho de considerar La afirmación como una novela de ciencia ficción. Pero si queda claro de que se trata de un gran libro.

http://cifiperu.blogspot.com/2013/04/...(less)

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Jul 13, 2010 Simon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf, fantasy

This book resists all efforts to define and pin it down. I would say that essentially this is a story of a man and his troubled relationship with the people around him, in particular his lover Glacia, and most importantly his self. But there are elements and themes that one might well find in SF or fantasy.

He attempts to define himself by writing down his past. But he is dissatisfied and rewrites it, each time becoming more abstract, more inventive until he constructs a fully imagined world but...more

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Nov 13, 2011 My Inner Shelf rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporains, science-fiction

Oubliez ce que je viens de dire sur La séparation, ici c’est encore pire. Après la mort de son père, son licenciement et une rupture amoureuse, Peter Sinclair se refugie dans le cottage d’un ami et s’engage à y faire des travaux en guise de loyer. Il se lance alors dans l’écriture hallucinée de son autobiographie, jusqu’à ce que ce qu’il semble vivre et décrit au lecteur comme étant sa réalité s’avère être complètement biaisé. On comprend dès lors que sa réalité n’est pas la vérité, et inverseme...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Arnab rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-this-year-2013

I should have been impressed by this novel, and yet it left me, by the end of it, bored. A read like this will almost always have enthusiastic reviews saying how it touched upon important questions such as "Is there at all something called identity" and so on and so forth, but by now these questions seem tired. Perhaps I've read too many Philip K Dicks and Paul Austers.

But I have to give credit where its due. In parts, the novel is almost too good to be true.

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Dec 21, 2012 Sue Davis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: parallel-worlds, british, fiction, science-fiction

Wonderful. The image mentioned in the introduction of the two hands drawing each other in the M.C. Escher drawing provided the basis for my understanding of the novel. British Borges with elements of Cortazar? The narrator is trying to establish his identity by writing down his memories but he gets off the track or does he? I was intrigued by the comment that one of the countries at war was feudal while the other was socialist--the author left it at that.

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Feb 14, 2012 Jonathan Norton rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This could have been a very good novel by Paul Auster or Ian McEwan, but unfortunately Christopher Priest had the idea and didn't have the talent to bring it off. The narrator is too dull and pedestrian, grindingly expository and draining any life from the whole business, utterly unevocative of any sense of mystery or fantasy unfolding. No surprises to see the twists that come along on cue.

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Nov 13, 2011 Tudor Ciocarlie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A dazzling meditation on memory and how it defines us, on schizophrenia, on reality and fiction, on the writer and his creation.

The Dream Archipelago, The Islanders and The Affirmation are together a masterpiece of literary fiction. I cannot imagine a reader who (regardless of what she/he normally reads) is not touched and whose life is not a little changed after the encounter with these wonderful writings.

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Feb 18, 2013 Rob Adey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd have hated this book instinctively if it'd been described to me - in
capsule form, it sounds like the sort of postmodern metaliterary 'Ahhhh,
but isn't everything fiction?' things that Paul Auster or Salman Rushdie
might write (I imagine). And technically it *is* that (and it's much
more that than the SF it's badged out - it's actually fairly difficult
to categorise it as SF, not that it matters).

But it's by Christopher Priest, which is why I read it without first
reading anything about it, and wh...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Snorlax rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A couple of weeks after reading this, I read Arthur's Dream Boat by Polly Dunbar. Yes, it's a children's book, but it works surprisingly well as a family-friendly distillation of this story. Is our imagination derived from our experience, or is our experience shaped, distorted, even decided by our imagination? Certainly.

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Jan 01, 2012 Dot Holly rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was given to me by a dear friend and it one of my favourite books of all time - a truly moving book that allows you to take a journey into the mind of a fascinating character into parallel worlds. It explores the question of self-concept, truth and reality. Compelling and beautiful.

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Sep 13, 2012 Paul Cowling rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Rare is the book that can blow my mind – Murakami, Auster, DeLillo and Priest himself have done so in the past – but this simply deceptive mind-trip had me completely enthralled and now it's over, will have me thinking about it and analyzing it for weeks, I'm sure. Not wanting to give anything specific away, it's about memory, identity, regret, and possibly....

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Sep 08, 2011 Liviu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-sf, read_2010, aq_more_favorites

So far I have read 3 C Priest novels and I utterly love the style of the author and the books are so compelling that you do not want to stop, though The Prestige kind of faded quickly from my memory, while The Separation left me with a somewhat bitter taste ( on further reflection, i think that's a book that people with an emotional connection to Britain will enjoy most, rather than a pure nationalistic British book that I originally thought)

The Affirmation gets back to the personal stage and fo...more

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Apr 13, 2011 Joey O'Donnell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

My favorite read of the year so far. I think I'll be pondering this one for a while. In fact, I may reread it very soon to see what I think of it from a fresh perspective. Really interesting concept and awesome execution.

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Sep 23, 2010 Dave rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

this book is subtle yet effective at changing your perspective. a book that explores the notions of reality versus imagination and the effects of memory without ever becoming preachy. one of the finest novels i have read.

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Jun 12, 2012 Jonathan Oliver rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Priest's novel is a an extraordinary exploration of the creative process and a man undergoing a massive nervous breakdown. Brilliantly written and wonderfully plotted, a true modern classic.

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About Christopher Priest

Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.

He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.

He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In...more

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The Affirmation (Gollancz)

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