YOU'VE HAD YOUR TIME- Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess - Anthony Burgess

I was lucky enough to walk into Arty Bee's Second Hand Book Store in Wellington last week and found this 1st edition sitting waiting for me, excellent.

This second volume carries straight on from part one. He has been mistakenly diagnosed with a brain tumour and begins writing flat out to make some money for his wife. She, unfortunately is drinking herself to death something at which she manages to succeed 8 years later.

After the death of Lynne he marries his second wife Liana with whom he had a illegitimate child he did not know about from an earlier fling.

We have explained the circumstances of how his novels were written and his stage and musical work compiled.

This is all fascinating especially how he compiled his novels. Everyone of them are written on several levels - I believe to "get all" of what he was trying say you would have to have been as clever as he was.

Again there are great anecdotes regarding people he meets as his celebrity grows.

At a dinner with Groucho Marx:

......It was on this occasion that a lady was mentioned who had ten children because she loved her husband. "I love my cigar," Groucho said " but I take it out sometimes"

Burgess was elitist in his writing and his music, I don't think this is a bad thing because he was a genius but there is a sense of grievance in a lot of this writing when he doesn't get the recognition that he believes he deserves.

This is most apparent when he relates how novelist Shirley Cronan receives a million dollar advance for a novel, which is many hundreds of times more than anything he received in his life time.

There is also bitterness when Stanley Kubrick garners all the praise for " A Clockwork Orange". Burgess is forgotten as the author - and Kubrick does little to dispel peoples perception that the entire concept was his creation.

This volume still has major soul baring but nothing on the scale of volume one. This is explained by his second marriage making him happy, so we have none of the infidelities and behaviour that were quite striking in part one.

Again, highly recommended , get both volumes together and read as one would be my suggestion and then you could happily start again and be just as happy.