The Witches of Chiswick

by Robert Rankin

Book Overview

We have all been lied to. A great and sinister conspiracy exists to keep us from uncovering the truth about our past.Have you ever wondered how Victorians dreamed up all that fantastic futuristic... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0575075457
• ISBN13: 9780575075450
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
• Length: 434 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.4" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

this guy is brilliant

I love love love Robert Rankin. This was one of my favorites. Read anything of his you can get your hands on. He is very hard to find in the states.

passing it on

In our 37 years of acquaintance, my brother has never recommended a book to me to read. The other day he called me from the cab of the truck he drives at work. He had to tell me about the book he was listening to on CD as he drove. That book was (of course) Robert Rankins Witches of Chiswick. On that recommendation, I went out the next day, purchased the book, interrupted the book I was reading at the time and began to read. Aside from periods of work (necessary to get money to buy books) and eating (necessary to keep energy up to read books) and sleeping (necessary... ahh who am I kidding? I didn't sleep) I read and finished the book. When it was done I was sorry there wasn't more. Funny, irreverent, at times irrelevent, and all together a rollicking, ride through the future, the past (more than one of each) and who knows where, this book is a must buy/borrow/steal/read. Oh, and there is more... Knees Up Mother Earth is the second book in the series. I'm passing on my brother's recommendation to you, the lusty reader of this review (if you're not so lusty, that's o.k. I'll recommend it to you too. However, if you can... get lusty, it'll help in the future. I'm not sure what it'll help with, just take my word for it, lusty is helpful). In regards to the distressing plot point near the beginning... I was able to get past it and I wasn't disappointed. I have been known, in the past, to quit reading a book due to such things but, this book was all too compelling to give up on. Perhaps it was the continued references to a certain Governators movies, perhaps not (probably not but, it's as good a reason as any) but, I had to continue, you will too. If not, do it anyway. Compelling? Ahh, why not? Compelling it shall stay.

thoroughly entertaining comic fantasy

Highly recommended for its comic riffs, manic flights of fantasy and wildly speculative science fiction - that is, its imagination. When so many books serve up all-too-predictable plot lines and dialogue, it's refreshing to find fiction that treats the reader to a smorgasboard of Imagination.

The most hilarious and brilliant book I've ever encountered

I listened to this book on CD and I think it is terrific. I recommend this book to those of you who are tired of all that hum drum crud out there. I love the strange and silly things that this author has to offer out to us readers. Yes, things do get kind of crazy somewhere in the middle of the book, but it is well worth it to check it out. I am a die hard Harry Potter fan and I found this book to be even more entertaining than old Harry. As Tim Macgregor would say "I'm lovin it, it is brilliant!"

A Treasure Waiting (all too patiently) to be Discovered

If anyone reads my reviews, they will realize that I only bother with either outstanding works or, conversely, those that are ridiculously over-praised about which the reader must be warned. Every once in a while, however, I write to correct a grievous wrong. Robert Rankin is the British author of over 20 novels few of which have even made it to this country; none of which have been given the credit they deserve. This is a crime against nature that makes global warming appear no more than a pin-prick. Most, if not all, of Rankin's work could fall under the rubric of "Science-Fiction". But that genre isn't nearly large enough to hold the mind of Robert Rankin. It is impossible, in so limited a space, to even begin to describe the plot of "Witches of Chiswick". Suffice to say it is about time-travel. But that's not the point. As Roger Ebert has noted about films (and by extension any work of art) it's not "what they are about, but how they are about it." And, oh, how this is "about it". There has rarely been as funny, as inventive, as complex, as clever, as... well, you get the idea... as this. In fact, with the exception of the (later-in-time) works of Jasper Fforde, I can only think of a slew of books bearing the name "Rankin" that even come close. Will you like it? Simple test; here are some other Rankin titles: "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse", "Nostradamus Ate My Hamster", "The Raiders of the Lost Carpark", "Armageddon the Musical". If these titles alone do NOT make you an instant fan who wants IMMEDIATELY to read the books, then, no, you will not like them. You will also be marked a wrong-thinker who should be drummed out of the literary establishment, but, hey! it's up to you.