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Home > Categories > Books > Fiction > The Crying of Lot 49 review
Suffused with rich satire, chaotic brilliance, verbal turbulence and wild humour, "The Crying of Lot 49" opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover's estate.
The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting "The Crying of Lot 49".
This is one of Pynchon's shortest novels and one of his best.
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Review by: rosielee3 (Rosie)
Dated: 31st of May, 2012
This is Thomas Pynchon's shortest and by far most accessible book for most readers. I found the book quite hard to read, and i did study this as a university English text at 200 level. Without the analysis given from the uni, or if you're not from an English based academic background, i would think this book would be awful to read. In saying this, it is enjoyable when you know what it is about.
Pynchon, is so incredibly talented, the book is full of satire and double meanings, i can't wait for the day i read this again, as I'm sure it is a text that brings many more new meanings every time you read it. The book includes allusions from the Beatles, the gold rush and couriers tragedy's, every line has a meaning of some sort! Even the characters names draw double meaning from Mass, to Dr. Hilarius to Emory Bortz - at times i wondered if Pynchon was just playing a big game on the reader!
I didn't like the size of the text, was quiet small making it even more confronting to read i believe. Its so clever and amusing - a must read if your up for some mind games!
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