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NEED A READ? The Golden Menagerie
Review by Tim West
The Golden Menagerie by Allan Cameron [PBK, £9.99] is a complex,
intelligent and rewarding novel that is difficult to define in terms
of rigid genre, and quite unlike anything that has been written for centuries.
It is part fantasy, part fable, part philosophical dissertation and part
political treatise, riddled throughout with - sometimes rather ribald
- humour.
It is the story of a young punk from Croydon, the memorably named Lucian Heatherington-Jones, whose carnal urges lead him to a mirth-seeking cult of Bacchanalians who make their home in an abandoned church. There, lust sated for the time being, his unchecked curiosity causes him to smear a magical ointment upon his body and he undergoes a bizarre series of metamorphoses, becoming in turn a dog, a parrot, a cat and a vulture. The consequences of these transformations are sometimes funny, sometimes terrible, and often profound.
In relating Lucian's story, Cameron is recalling a classical text - The Golden Ass by Apuleius, written around eighteen hundred years ago. The Golden Menagerie is part homage and part update, a reworking of the tale in accord with modern morality.
Quite unlike anything else available in print, The Golden Menagerie will appeal to fans of Candide or Orwell, or to anyone who loves the esoteric and enjoys novelty in their reading. If you are looking for something intelligent, witty and different, you should investigate this fascinating fantasy.
Allan Cameron has recently completed The Berlusconi Bonus, an attack on free-market philosophy, and is currently working on Being and Belonging, a philosophical work on identity.
Buy The Golden Menagerie from Luath Press.
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