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Outstanding
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Chicago Sun-Times Roger K. Miller
Nothing or nobody is what it seems, in this awesomely clever fiction.
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Outstanding
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San Francisco Chronicle Andrew Roe
A wonder, a work of imaginative prowess that more than fulfills the promise of "Prague." It's ambitious. It's inventive. It's challenging. And it's the kind of book that puts a writer's career on track without his having to endure murmurings of slipping on the second try.
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Barbara Mertz
A tour de force of plotting and narrative technique; the intertwining storylines lead with mounting inevitability to one of the most horrendously, hideously humorous endings in modern fiction.
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Favorable
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USA Today Melanie Danburg
It's well worth the careful excavation it requires.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Alexis Soloski
Phillips succeeds best when he leaves mystery alone to linger over wordplay, exotic detail, and remarkable acts of self-deceit and self-creation.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal John Freeman
Trapped inside this maze of unreliable testimony is a thoughtful meditation on the untrustworthiness of the past.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Phillips is a master manipulator, able to assume a dozen convincingly different voices at will, and his book is vastly entertaining.
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Favorable
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Salon Laura Miller
It's an adventure in unreliable narration, and replete with old-fashioned charms.
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Favorable
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Christian Science Monitor Ron Charles
Beneath all his comic ventriloquism and ribald parody of academia, Phillips is reaching for something more profound: the sad ways people represent and misrepresent themselves, shifting awkwardly from confidence to self-delusion.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Phillips's formidable research and witty prose make this one well worth your time. He's quite possibly a major novelist in the making.
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Favorable
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Library Journal Edward Cone
Unlike "Prague," whose characters moved at a leisurely pace, this work offers, quite tongue in cheek, a tableau of action and adventure in a 1920s setting. Highly recommended for everyone in search of buried treasure. [July 2004, p.73]
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times Heller McAlpin
Phillips relies on several running gags to propel his plot, some of which show early signs of decay from overexposure. Astute readers may surmise where he's going early on -- leading to some impatience with the extended ruse.
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Mixed
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Chicago Tribune Claire Dederer
Astute readers will solve one of the major mysteries about halfway through the novel, if not before. Once that particular game is up, it gets a little tiresome to watch Phillips spin out his plot. Meanwhile, we have to slog through a lot of details of Egyptology that are, frankly, on the boring side.
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Mixed
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Booklist Joanne Wilkinson
Some readers might find the amount of pharaonic minutiae tedious reading, but it all serves to support the novel's shocking yet entirely credible ending and its themes of the longing for immortality and the nature of identity. [1 June 2004, p.1671]
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Tom Bissel
Whereas ''Prague'' seemed like a beautiful, riffing, agitated, worldly novel, The Egyptologist has an occasionally ossified texture, despite its many moments of genuinely high comedy.
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Mixed
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The New Yorker
Unfortunately, he tricks up his plot by adding a dull detective who labors to expose Trilipush's lies, and by stealing a twist from "The Talented Mr. Ripley."
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Unfavorable
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
Mr. Phillips's own storytelling, sadly, grows increasingly self-indulgent and bloated as the book progresses, and combined with the reader's knowledge of the ''surprise ending,'' it makes for a disappointing conclusion to a novel that got off to such a promising and bouncy start.
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