Book 428: The Double Tongue

The Double Tongue, by William Golding, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.


This book did feel a bit incomplete and unfinished.  Because it was incomplete and unfinished.  Because the author died before he had a final manuscript.  In spite of that, this book is brilliant.

First he gives an incredibly sympathetic portrait of a young girl.  Then he perfectly portrays that young girl becoming the Pythia.  And finally, through the narrative, of a believing woman who was used by the gods.

I have read this book at least four, probably five times, and every time I read it, I pick up on something new.  The manuscript may just be a sketch, but it is a sketch by a master.  And every time I read this book, I want to go back and re-read C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces.