[Review originally appeared in The Herald-Sun in October 2004. You have to read the book to understand why the review is in the form of a personal letter.]
The Egyptologist
Over the top, playful mystery amusing
"The Egyptologist" by Arthur Phillips -- (Random House, $24.95, 383 pages)
By J.P. Trostle
Dear Matt, Hope this note finds you well, old sport.
A while back you asked me to keep an eye out for anything new by that up-and-coming fellow Arthur Phillips. Lo and behold, the other week our assistant features editor dropped a hefty tome on my desk titled "The Egyptologist," and after many a late night I can safely report that our young Mr. Phillips has a second book in him after all. If anything he is even more clever and erudite than in his brilliant debut "Prague" -- though this time around he is so obviously over the top and playful with the language you won't mind the affectations.
His new book is a mystery spread out over many decades and continents, all centering on an Egyptian ruler who may or may not have existed, and he unravels his tall tale through a series of crisscrossing journal entries and letters (yes, I know, how pretentious, but our bright lad makes it work). Phillips' main character is quite a character indeed, a clueless and self-absorbed toff who composes insanely long love letters to his fiancee back in Boston as he strives to uncover the lost tomb of a forgotten pharaoh. Utterly obsessed with his future reputation and fame as the World's Greatest Egyptologist, Ralph Trilipush finds himself one valley over from the real-life Howard Carter who is on the verge of discovering King Tut's final resting place. Unfortunately for our would-be celebrity, Trilipush's priorities seem topsy-turvy (he debates which phonograph and records to bring along on a dig in the desert but forgets to take proper digging tools) and before long you begin to wonder if he is insane.
Or is he? A private investigator on the trail of a missing World War I soldier thinks more sinister thoughts of our protagonist. Decades after crossing Trilipush's path, a dying gumshoe named Ferrell -- who fancies himself a hardboiled Chandler or Marlowe -- goes about collecting the notes and memories of his "greatest case" in the desperate hope an interested party will turn it into a book or movie. Both Ferrell and Trilipush are consumed with the immortality their life's work will hopefully bring them, and while the book is written with an almost cartoonish absurdity, the desperate, desperate efforts the characters go to to achieve their goal gives them a believable -- though pitiful -- realism. Phillips is obviously in love with his own ability with words, but damn that boy can write.
If "Prague," with its tale of expatriates living abroad, self-consciously referred to Hemingway, "The Egyptologist" slyly evokes F. Scott Fitzgerald with his take on the darker side of the roaring '20s and his themes of reinvention, unobtainable love and deadly misunderstandings. And if Fitzgerald introduced the idea of the Untrustworthy Narrator, Phillips takes it to the nth degree: None of his narrators can be trusted. Indeed, it is obvious from the get-go all of his characters are twisting their version of events to influence posterity. Reading "The Egyptologist" is not unlike going on an archaeological dig itself: The paragraphs cascade down the page like hieroglyphs and you must sift through page after page seeking clues and artifacts as to what really happened.
Phillips is coming here Monday, you know, to give a talk at a local bookshop, and one can always hope he'll see my article running in today's paper and compliment me on my deft skills as a reviewer and we'll share a laugh (one of those droll "opera" laughs you hear so often on PBS) as he congratulates me on scintillating insight into "The Egyptologist."
OK, enough chatter ... I've got to finish my review. Give me a call next time you're stateside.
Your friend,
J.P.