Customer Reviews

The Second Coming: A Novel

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When I read books, I mark up the text and write in the margins pretty thoroughly, and when I am finished with the book, I go back through and copy down my favorite passages. Usually there is only one or two quotes to write down, but The Second Coming was a different matter. Walker Percy has such extraordinary insights and power with words that passage after passage, with their humor, wisdom, and beauty, pierces straight through me. It took me two hours to copy all of the passages I wanted.

The Second Coming is one of the greatest novels that I have ever read, and that is partly because of the quirky story at its heart. Will Barrett, a rich and successful widower, is trapped in his life, a sort of living death. His big first step begins to happen in the first wonderful episode of the novel when he is playing golf and begins to realize it. "Knowing about what is going to happen is having a chance to escape it. If you don't know about it, it will certainly happen to you." From there, Will begins to try to find how to live his life. The other primary character is Allison, a girl escaped from a mental hospital now trying to find out how to live in a world totally new to her. Together, they embark on a quest to be born again into life.

The Second Coming is one of the greatest novels I have ever read. Percy was trained as a physician, and he took those skills to literature. In The Second Coming, he diagnoses American society and tries to find a cure. There is some real wisdom there and most importantly, some real hope. This is a novel that is vastly underrated and one that should not be missed (along with all of Percy's other novels).

I've long been familiar with the name, Walker Percy, and of his well-known relative who helped settle the Mississippi Delta, and was one of the most powerful and wealthy planters in that region. But it wasn't until I finally picked up "The Moviegoer" to figure out why that book is so well-respected, that I finally understood why Percy was considered such a phenomonal writer by those in the know. His style is PERFECT. His themes -- PERFECT. I have never read a writer I am more enthralled with. And I like "The Second Coming," too. This guy, if anything, is UNDERRATED. He is as profound as Faulkner, but EASY TO UNDERSTAND (my 11th grade English teacher always taught that you can be as profound as you wish, as long as you make your writing understandable to EVERYONE, ranging from an educated king, to the lowliest peasant, which is a policy that I have personally tried to follow as a published author myself). The Second Coming is an excellent story that explores human depths that so many novelists don't even begin to reach. I now intend to read everything I can get my hands on that this outstanding writer ever wrote.

Memorable book.

Recommended to many people, especially literate patients and family.

An education in the reality of psychosis, ... its cruelty and its wisdom.

-Psychiatrist

Do not think of Walker Percy's work as Southern literature. I say this not because it isn't Southern literature, but because hardly anybody seems to understand what Southern literature is. Percy, himself, noted this.
Think of Percy's work as good books that deal with the South, but more importantly with people -- with what it means to be human.
The Second Coming is one of my favorite novels. It deals with the existence of God, the fecklessness of modern life, and any number of other banal, overworked subjects that you might find in any other contemporary novel, but they are enlivened by Percy's malicious wit (he called himself malicious, though his doing so was simply an instance of his peculiar malice, which is not really malice, though its sting is the same). The response to the question of God's existence is a toothache.
Percy writes in a straight-forward, ironic manner, but where normal irony is double-voiced, Percy's is triple-voiced. One must always ask oneself if one is really getting the joke even when one is laughing out loud.
Don't think of Percy as a Southern writer because you can't help but shortchange him when you do so. He presents himself with a Southern drawl, and a casual wit, but behind this is incisive social and psychological commentary, and behind this is yet another layer.
The Second Coming is a fine novel -- a good love story if you can stand the fact that the lovers are a mental patient and a horny widower. Percy tells fine jokes, and tosses you on your rear every other page. This is enough, but it is not all. You can enjoy this novel if you just want to be entertained, but if you are willing to look for it, there is an undertone of malice that isn't malice, and yet deeper, a still, small voice.

The Second Coming sold surprisingly well, probably because it features a quirky love story and has one of the most original openings I've ever encountered. The young heroine has just completed a course of electroshock therapy. Although the procedure leaves her amnesic, she is able to learn what she needs to know by consulting a letter she wrote to herself prior to the last session.

Based on that tantalizing start, you might expect a quick moving plot and a tale of conspiracy. No dice. This is Walker Percy. What you're going to get is an exploration of the human psyche and how we manage to get lost from ourselves. It's not a roller coaster ride, but that's not why we read Walker Percy. His readers sail into uncharted oceans.

My used copy of this book has a quote that refers to Percy as "our cool Dostoevsky," which begins to make sense after reading The Second Coming. I'd previously read The Moviegoer, and while I enjoyed it, it seemed more psychological than the Southern literature with which I was familiar.

The Second Coming did little to change this, incidentally. It's told from the perspective of two people in different stages of losing their minds. It's exceedingly dry and hard to read at some points, but at others it flies by. There is little "redemption" in the Christian sense to speak of until the very last page of the book, but one still walks away feeling cleansed in some way. It's odd, and hard to review.

As another reviewer has noted, the characters do seem to be devoid of emotion at points, but I prefer to believe that this is on purpose--as Percy points out, both believers and unbelievers have lost their way in the South, and, as Allie and Will are caught in between these two groups, it makes sense to have them confused and emotionless at times.

The Second Coming was good enough to make me want to check out some more of Percy's novels, but it wasn't earth-shatteringly good. It's still worth you're time if you're interested in psychology, the South, or religion and how they relate to individuals.

Will and Allie search for...what? Each at some point in his/her journey comes to realize that he finds joy in the "ordinariness" of life---there is a beautiful passage which follows Allie as she goes exultantly about the task of completing her "to do" list. The list is the type familiar to us all: go to the doctor; go to the market; check the car, etc. (albeit her missions at each are perhaps not so familiar to us all). But whereas most of us weary sometime at even the thought of all the things "to do," Allie revels in completing each job. The last speech (a soliloquy of thought) by Father Weatherbee should be reread by most of us everyday and committed to memory till we are happy! Mr. Percy has written a book which lets us know that we can find what we do not even know we are missing.

My title for my review sums up how I ended up feeling about this book. I bought this book based on not only the other reviews for this book but also some of the reviews I read for his other books. It is probably a style issue but I have a real problem with his style.

If you don't mind having a story told to you as if the 2 central characters are having an out of body experience then it's ok. The female and male characters seem devoid of emotion. At first I thought it was just the beginning that as the book continued it would change but day to day living experiences to life altering decisions about giving up money and security are both equally described in the same lack luster manner. I ended up not caring that the two characters decided they were in love and wanted to live the rest of their lives together. By that time I was yawning so much it was a 'so what.'

Oh yeah, I didn't get any particular message out of the book either. I will give you the only one I could scrounge up and that was you should just follow your heart.

Percy is a brilliant writer to say the least. Here is a tale which has been masterfully concieved and beautifully told. There are many things going on in the story, but to me it is a story of never giving up. It is a story that anyone who has called themself a Christian, then an atheist, then neither, can relate to. It is the story of suffering and rebirth. It is indeed the story of a second coming.

One of my all-time favorite novels; I've probably read it four or five times. Percy is a writer of intense depth and subtlety. He embraces existentialism on his own terms (Southern, Catholic, ingenious...) and gives the reader clues about finding authenticity in his or her own life. The most amazing part of this book is the ending, which gives us a sad hope in a world that has been made flat with smiling, jocular hopelessness. Read this book, then read it again.