Entertaining the Alien

30. The Egyptologist, Arthur Phillips

Yet another ARC (Advance Reader's Copy) picked up at work. This one will be released in September sometime, and if you like literary fiction that's sort of quirky (it reminded me a little of Margaret Atwood, in a weird almost-but-not-quite way), it's well worth a read.

I'd been seeing the book all over the office, and finally picked it up because of the title, and because the main part of the action takes place in Egypt around the same time that Howard Carter was doing his thing. I thought, "Huh, Mer or Julie might be interested in this" and then promptly devoured it myself.

Since Wuthering Heights is one of my favorite novels, it's probably no surprise that I'm intrigued by the use of a unreliable narrator. Well, frankly, you can't believe anything any of the narrators of The Egyptologist says. The most entertaining part of reading the book was taking the different narratives (which take the form of letters, journals, and most entertainingly, the very rough draft of a pseudo-scholarly text) and putting them together, trying to read between the lines to figure out what was really going on.

I couldn't tell you how well this one will sell, but I'm definitely checking out Phillips' other books and keeping my eye out for more.