[ExI] Book: Journey to Virginland

[John Grigg]

If this review is on target, this is one of the best social commentary
novels to come along in decades...

John

http://www.journeytovirginland.com/

Paul McCarthy, Prof. of English at Ulster University, Ireland, a New
York Times bestselling author whose lifelong career has included
senior-editor and acquisitions-editor posts at three of the world’s
largest publishing houses, considers Journey to Virginland as one of
the top novels in world literature. Below is the text of Prof.
McCarthy’s endorsement:

"I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I decided to read Journey to
Virginland.
But what I most certainly did not expect was to find, consistently,
one of the most creatively, philosophically, culturally, semantically,
and thematically ambitious novels I’ve ever read in my 35 years of
professional life.

In the best sense, I’m reminded of George Orwell’s classics, and other
authors of similar stature, though there is no true parallel possible
with a novel and trilogy as unique in concept and execution as Journey
to Virginland.
I am struck by the extraordinary writing, vision, and, perhaps rarest
of all, originality, which abounds in every way, and at so many levels
and depths of meaning, theme, narrative, etc., that I had to keep
slowing my pace, until I could read and “inhale” each word.

A case in point was the passage containing Dog’s dialogue with the
Padre, which I have found positively entrancing. This section’s
insights and leaps of imagination, manifested through Dog’s answers,
are as revelatory and profound as the basic aspects and elements of
his overall perceptions and conclusions about the book’s overarching
subjects, which have been gradually introduced and interwoven, from
the beginning of the novel to here, where they… explode.
Now that I’ve reached the conclusion, I’m simply in awe. Wow! In the
vernacular."

http://www.journeytovirginland.com/