The Egyptologist: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: 'All that glisters is not Gold'
Review: Arthur Phillips is a fine wordsmith and a gifted technical craftsman of the letters. While nearly every page of his two novels (PRAGUE and now THE EGYPTOLOGIST) reinforce his skills as a writer, those same skills have a tendency to draw too much attention to themselves, leaving the story line of a novel at times tedious and taxing to read. Yet, given these inherent 'flaws', THE EGYPTOLOGIST is an entertaining read, an acceptable mystery whose other face is comedic, and a serious commitment on the part of the reader to stay with him to the (seemingly interminable) end.

The plot is well described on this site: suffice it to say that the story involves two versions of one Ralph Trilipush, an Egyptologist of questionable origins, who corresponds to his Boston 'sweetheart' (who just happens to be 1) the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur subsidizing Trilipush's Egypt digs and 2) an opium addict), while concurrently a Private Investigator is exploring odd deaths and inheritance issues and is bent on unmasking Trilipush's credentials and identity.

Subplots abound and tend to muddy the waters at times, but the bifurcation of the two-voiced narrative is ultimately worthwhile as we learn a lot about archeology, the fascination with Egyptian Pharaohs' tombs, and the universal preoccupation with immortality.

While it is evident that Arthur Phillips is a gifted writer, at times it feels like the end does not justify the means. It would be very informative to read a group of short stories by this young star and see if the story would become more primary in his focus. THE EGYPTOLOGIST makes demands on the reader, and if you are one who doesn't mind a bit of work, then this is a book for you. Grady Harp, January 2005

Rating:
Summary: Black Humor: Clever, Intelligent, Spellbinding
Review: Arthur Phillips' "The Egyptologist", is an ambitious novel, notably unique in the style, subject matter, and complexity. That this was a risky venture for Phillips is evident in the reviews: seems readers either love it or late it. I'm in the former camp: "Egyptologist" is a literary tour de force, clearly one of the best novels of the year - a haunting and darkly humorous expose into the soul, set in the social strata and relations between America, England, and Egypt mostly during and just after WWI.

Phillips chooses as the narrative the journals of Ralph Trilipush, an insufferably egocentric and arrogant archaeologist on a quixotic quest to uncover the tomb of equivocal Egyptian pharaoh, the prurient Atum-hadu, alleged author of pornographic hieroglyphic verse. In parallel to Trilipush's bombastic and self-adulatory journals, the story is told through correspondence three-decades hence from Harold Ferrell, a broken down an embittered Australian private investigator recounting a case in which he was tracking down the illegitimate offspring of a repentant multi-millionaire. If this sounds convoluted, well, it is, but it is through this intrigue that the reader is slowly drawn into the story, not so much in finding out what happened, but how. Those who would criticize Phillips for dropping clues blatantly and early have missed the point. This is not a mystery per se, but rather a farce of unparalleled dimensions, as the reader chuckles at Ferrell, totally oblivious to his ham-handed detective work, and Trilipush's deliciously obnoxious and self-delusional ramblings chronicling his talents and rightful place in history.

To disclose more risks spoiling some of the fun, but suffice to say that "The Egyptologist" is an extraordinarily clever novel, rich and authentic in detail, setting a platform through which Phillips unveils an uncanny talent for unsympathetically skewering human emotions of greed, love, ambition, and envy. Phillips is not (thankfully) Agatha Christie - keep that in mind and you're likely enjoy an unhurried and thoughtful, if brutal, journey through Man's continued quest for immortality. Well done, Mr. Phillips!


Rating:
Summary: Remarkably good
Review: I haven't read Prague, so I can't really make comparisons between that book and The Egyptologist. All I really can do is say how immensely I enjoyed this book. With just the right kind of ironic humor, Arthur Phillps tries to capture the life of an egyptologist, Ralph M. Trlipush, in the latter pater of the year 1922.

An eccentric old man named Barnabas Davies dies, with the intent to find, and compensate, illegitimate children he has scattered all over the world. The investigation leads to one Paul Caldwell of Sydney, Australia, born in the early 1890's and vanished mysteriously in the Egyptian dessert in the First World War. Who was Paul Caldwell? And who is (or was) Ralph Trilipush, the supposed English professor of Egyptology at Harvard University and engaged to the American heiress, Margaret Finneran? Through diary entries and letters, the author follows two stories: Trilipush's, as he prepares to uncover the tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharoah named Atum-hadu; and that of an Australian detective, Harold Ferrell as he recounts his story from a retiring home in the 1950's. The various perspectives each of these two narrators have on the events contained herein are fascinating. Personal bias really and truly does have an effect on the way we view the world.

"Just how secret is secret enough?" is a question Trilipush poses on the matter of Atum-hadu and his buried tomb; but that same question might easily be asked of Trilipush's own life. Ralph gives us marvelous, self-centered accounts of growing up in Trilipush Hall in Kent, which, as the reader will find, are untrue; might also his account of discovering the tomb prove to be a fabrication? There are also mixed accounts of Trilipush's education, as well as his sexuality. The more one plunges into the story line, the more one finds that the stories of Ralph Trilipush and his Egyptian king are remarkably similar. Both seek to achieve immortality through a "third birth." This book is filled with Egyptian lore and trivia, as well as the fictional account of the life of Atum-hadu.

On the flip side is the story of Trilipush's fiancee, Margaret Finneran, and her father, who owns a department store chain in Boston. Both of these characters keep secrets from Trilipush which threaten to destroy the relationship between the egyptologist and the American girl.

What I thought was marvelous was the deprecating way in which Trilipush describes Howard Carter, who at the moment this narrative takes place uncovers the tomb of Tutankhamen. Lord Carnarvon is secretly called "Lord Cashbags." I also loved the comments Trilipush makes about American tourists and the Egyptian natives.

There is, of course, the highly-touted "mystery," which can easily be solved. But the mystery is NOT the point of this novel. This excellent book is a detailed account of a man struggling with his own identity.

Rating:
Summary: So Misunderstood It's a Crime
Review: It's so nice to be able to read a novel and let it take you where it wants to go. Raymond John does a wonderful job whisking you off to Malta in The Cellini Masterpiece; Arthur Phillips is just as skillful in transporting you back to Egypt in the 1920s. Those who pan the book are missing the point. I don't know much about Egyptology and some of the explication about translating the Egyptian characters had me skipping over a page or two, but Phillips is a genius at illustrating interesting characters by what they write. He also has a rare gift for making the settings and people come alive through his character's words. And though undeniably a rogue, Ralph Trillipush is much more likable than his opponents. The main point of the novel is the question of how will we be remembered if some cataclysmic event removes all evidence of our existence. The query is as profound as it is unanswerable. I can hardly wait to read Phillips' next book.

Rating:
Summary: Clever, but not clever enough
Review: Like some of the other reviewers here, I found the central mystery a bit obvious. Phillips is a talented and witty writer, but I can't escape the feeling that this novel, clever as it is, is missing something.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Be Looking for a Mystery
Review: Readers/reviewers who dislike this book because they "figured it out early on" are, in my opinion, missing the point. It's not a typical mystery. The interest here is in the gradual unfolding of the mysteries surrounding our desire for immortality and the vagaries of self-delusion that most of us engage in on a daily basis. Honestly, I found the structure of the novel annoying and confusing. (I agree with another review who suggested that Phillips has doubts about his writing skills and resorted to the letter/journal format to overcome them). I felt at times that the author was playing with my mind----way too clever. I stuck with it to the end, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone. There is one exception however: the discussion of "the end of everything" beginning on page 340 of the hardcover edition was beautiful writing. I'm surprised I paid attention at that point because I was ready to throw the book in the fireplace, put it was worth staying with it just to read that passage.

Rating:
Summary: A fun study of unreliability in Egypt and beyond
Review: THE EGYPTOLOGIST is Arthur Phillips' follow-up to his successful "Prague." It's as different from his first novel as it is the same. They have a confident humor and an enjoyment of the tricks of the written word and its accompanying devices, but they are wildly different in setting and theme. I like them both.

The Egyptologist is a clever, epistolary novel that follows the dig that Harvard Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush may (or may not) be staging in Egypt in 1922, around the same time that Howard Carter discovers King Tut's tomb. (Carter is a character in the novel.) It seems that Trilipush may (or may not) be linked to a missing persons case that Australian Detective Harold Ferrell is pursuing, also in 1922, but Ferrell's letters about his case, which are intermingled with Trilipush's journals and letters from his department store-heir fiancée Margaret Finneran in Boston to create the storyline, are written 30 years later in the 1950s to the fiancée's nephew. (I liked the way the book was designed, with different fonts for the different letter writers and notes and diagrams from Trilipush's journals, etc.)

Ferrell writes to Macy about the case: "it started as an odd-duck inheritance task, then it was a missing-person case with a dozen different clients, then a double murder, a prenuptial background investigation, then a debt-collection case, and suddenly quite a different double murder" (p. 10). Yes it is.

And no it isn't, because many readers (based on my experience and reader reviews here) will figure out a key aspect of the mystery very early on. The fun of the book is figuring out the how and the why as viewed through the keenly unreliable voices of Trilipush and Ferrell (a short section of letters from two others in the end sort out some of the questions). The real attraction of the book is that Phillips plays so enjoyably with the narrators and shows very humorously and well their own agendas and unreliability.

Egyptologist Trilipush is obsessed with his own immortality as the discoverer of the tomb of Atum-Hadu (who may or may not have been a king of Egypt, and whose name means "Atum is Aroused"! tee hee). He uses his journal to write his book about finding him before he finds him, and even writes the date of when he will find him and what it will be like before he does so. His personal obsession, overweening ego and pretentious frittering away of time and money in support of that ego are very funny. At the same time, Harold Ferrell, writing from a nursing home in Australia 30 years later is also preoccupied with his name living on in history, and turns his letters to Mr. Macy, the Margaret Finneran's nephew, into notes for a mystery novel, and he turns Macy into a character, so that one has to sort out what happened in actuality and what Ferrell is projecting on to the character of Macy who was never there at all.

One funny and pointed example that Phillips uses, I think, to establish the unreliability of narrators due to personal translation is the examples he gives of various scholars' translations of Atum-Hadu's personal poetry, found in three papyrus fragments in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries. Trilipush's translations are exceedingly blue (so much so that when he meets Howard Carter and states his name, Carter responds, "The pornographer?" J)

There are many funny instances like this, and all the characters' obsessions with their legacies, their reputations and their work is presented humorously, but along the theme that the Egyptian kings' tombs imply: How is immortality achieved?

There is a section that I thought was weak, and that is the one in which Trilipush is transcribing hieroglyphs and art that he finds on a tomb wall. The conceit was interesting, telling what may (or may not have been) Trilipush's own story through his transcription, but I found this method went on too long. I was looking ahead to see when it would stop. This was the one place my interest flagged.

Interestingly, only the reader of the book and Mr. Macy will ever have all the information to understand the more complete picture of events in 1922, and those leading up to them during World War I, and that seems to me to be the real suspense of the book. I really enjoyed it, and will happily read Phillips' next novel.


Rating:
Summary: How clever. The Egyptians would have been pleased.
Review: This book takes a while to get started. I was only reading it because my sister nagged me to, me being an Egyptologist, but by the half-way point I could not put it down.

This is an epistolary novel, which makes it hard to keep track of the plot and characters. This is my only gripe, because as good as the reveal is, I can't help but wonder if I missed something along the way, and that I'm not understanding the twist completely. It is a good twist, in a novel that begins humorously and ends horrifically.

I recommend this to people who are not usually fond of mysteries. It is a rewarding, fun read, though nothing that will last forever.

Rating:
Summary: A Profound Archaelogical Dig into the Human Psyche
Review: This was the first book that I had read by Phillips, so I had no preconceived notions prior to reading it. I thoroughly enjoyed the dark humor and Phillips' style of allowing the characters to reveal their own weaknesses and darkest, innermost secrets through their writing. This is, after all, written as a historical account, piecing together letters and journal entries from the various characters in chronological order to tell the story, but it comes across as something so much more personal to all involved.

I will not disagree with those reviewers who have complained that the "mystery" was too easy to figure out. But that did not detract from the book; rather, I enjoyed the sense that I had throughout the read that even though I knew what the truth must be, I had to keep reading just to see if things were really as I feared - because the truth was deeply disturbing. This took nothing away from the book for me - in fact, it enhanced it. Anyway, the outcome is not quite as obvious as others have suggested, since there are multiple possible explanations up to the end. Even in the end, Phillips does not come right out and tell us the secrets, but allows us to draw our own conclusions.

The characters are funny, outrageous, fascinating. Ferrell's dim-witted self-importance and Trilipush's attempt to portray the high-class British facade, even as he regresses into utter filth and squalor, are often humorous.

In addition to all of this, the most enjoyable, and gut-wrenching, part of the book for me was the profound human desire of acceptance that is unveiled - how neglect, mistreatment, and disappointment can mold an innocent young person into a deeply troubled adult.

I recommend this book to those who enjoy historical novels, as well as mystery-lovers. This one is certainly creative. I further recommend the audio recording of the novel even over the book, as the narrators do a great job in nailing down the personalities of the characters, and they truly bring the story to life.

Rating:
Summary: A misunderstood gem
Review: While "The Egyptologist" is not without its flaws, an average three-star rating is the result of its having been dragged down by misunderstanding and unfair judgment. Agreed: the uncovering of a false identity is telegraphed early in the story, and so is not a huge shock when it is later explicitly disclosed. However, this is NOT the much-vaunted twist, and so those readers who judge it overrated because they "solved the mystery" on page 50 have quite missed the point. This is not a mystery story: it doesn't purport to be, and isn't sold as such, and a reader who believes private detective Harold Farrell when he calls it one is guilty of believing too readily in a fictional character -- doesn't that speak WELL of the book?

It is, rather, a damning portrait of man's quest for immortality: he wants to be remembered, and what's more, he wants to decide precisely HOW he wants to be remembered. While Ralph M. Trilipush, our titular Egyptologist has the knowledge, the narcissism, and the forum (in the form of letters and private notes) to elucidate in great detail how immortality was pursued by the Egyptian kings, he provides quite a different example of how one might seek it in our own age. Ferrell has this in common with him: both men wish to preserve their name and their works through publishing their stories, in their own words -- though each is guilty of twisting the facts to suit their needs, with varying degrees of awareness.

The Egyptian kings, explains Trilipush, believed that, when the tomb was sealed, the occupant returned to life, living forever with all that was sealed within. What would be the value to the king, then, if it was not his own body in the sarcophagus? This is the question our narrators fail to ask themselves when they offer up for immortality not themselves, but merely a fictional surrogate. Apparently, some reviewers share that failing.

In a story told entirely by unreliable narrators, it is to the Arthur Phillips's credit that their distortions are so readily apparent to the reader, even in those cases that the narrator deludes himself. His mastery of different voices, and their various self-delusions, is brilliant. I have the benefit of reviewing the Unabridged Audio CD of this book, in which of course there really ARE different voices, each excellently acted to bring to life these flawed, frustrated characters (although I can't help hearing Trilipush as older than he is) in a way that the book's different typefaces might, perhaps, not. It's an enjoyable and engaging first read, and rewarding the second time around, full of new revelation and insight, the puzzle of two men imprisoned by their own bizarre versions of the so-called Tomb Paradox and their attempts to pass from life into legend. Recommended with a solid four stars.