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the complete review - fiction

The Helmet of Horror

by
Victor Pelevin

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B- : often clever labyrinthine tale, but not entirely successful

See our review for fuller assessment.

  Review Consensus:

  No consensus, though many do find it appealing or intriguing

  From the Reviews:

• "With its web-symposium format (bits of text appended to wacky names) and its quasi-philosophical content, it reads like the minutes from some Socratic chatroom. (...) One wants to applaud a writer for trying something new, but it has to be said that he is not working to his strengths here. (...) But where a Borges might have built a compelling narrative out of these elements, Pelevin goes at them with a fly, half-hearted jokiness; scattering some incidental brilliance, but more often trailing off into high-end gobbledegook. It's all moderately engaging, but it doesn't do justice to his own particular gifts." - James Lasdun, The Guardian
  
  
• "Pelevin's dramatic form has plenty of pace, and enjoys a generally higher quality of exchange than chatroom average. (...) The Helmet of Horror is funny, sportive, possibly meaningful, and preoccupied with Pelevin's interest in reality, virtuality and deceptive surfaces - be they the surreal boundaries of his present labyrinth, or the more Potemkin village-like qualities he has found in his native Russia." - James Urquhart, The Independent
  
  
• "But while Pelevin likes to raise a question -- is myth the opposite of progress ? -- he does not like to stay with it long enough for it to acquire any weight. Ditto with his satirical sallies. He inserts references to contemporary politics randomly, but without force. (...) Pelevin has acquired a reputation as a clever writer, but the turn to myth has freed him from too many responsibilities. This is a clever man writing self-indulgently." - John Mullan, New Statesman
  
  
• "Pelevin discovers a fascinating perspective on the subject, so it's a pity that he undercuts it with showiness and a clutch of facile jokes. There is a sense that if anything can progress here, it is the author's talent, which would benefit greatly from a dose of maturity. None the less, The Helmet of Horror is an intriguing work, liable to frustrate and reward in equal measure." - Killian Fox, The Observer
  
  
• "(W)acky and absorbing.(...) The helmet of horror that holds us in thrall is the mind, and chat about its nature is couched in philosophical puzzles. (...) Were it not for his characters' human touches, a great deal of this book would be hard going. Low humour too frequently comes to the rescue (...) As often with Pelevin, this book is a mixture of the witty, the brilliant and the barking mad." - George Walden, Sunday Telegraph
  
  
• "The novel may seem airy-fairy, and Dr Johnson would give it a good kick, but it presents ideas that the wider European mind finds useful, and it is sharp, funny and, what’s the word, numinous." - Hugo Barnacle, Sunday Times
  
  
• "He has brilliantly made his chosen myth into a metaphor for all myths and their workings in the mind. (...) The dialogue between these characters is both snappy and moving. They are, as we all are, trying to make sense of the mystery of how they came to be as and where they are, of what is real and what merely a product of the mind. (...) The Helmet of Horror is a brilliant postmodern, eclectic vision of myth, mind and meaning. And of the human dilemma and its horns, ancient and modern." - The Times
  
  
• "In The Helmet of Horror, Victor Pelevin's drubbing of the new virtual reality has been banged up inside the virtual-reality helmet, where its visionary exuberance is somewhat muffled. (...) The Helmet of Horror is Pelevin's most gnomic work to date: an absurdist satire in which plot is replaced by a perpetual question-and-answer session, and characters are downsized, context-stripped and confined in apparently customized labyrinths where they are waiting for Theseus." - Caroline Mcginn, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       In The Helmet of Horror Victor Pelevin re-sets the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur in a very modern setting -- what has the appearance of an Internet chatroom. After a 'Mythcellaneous' prologue, the entire text consists of dialogue, between a group of people who find themselves in similar mysterious circumstances, isolated, and connected only to each other via computer screen and keyboard.
       It's not quite the Internet:

Seems like this isn't the Internet, just looks like it. You can't link to anywhere else from here.

The helmet of horror fractionates the one thing that is, into the multitude of things that are not. But since the helmet of horror is in no way the one thing that is, it is also one of the multitude of things that are not.

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Links:

• Canongate publicity page
• The Myths publicity page

• Adventures in Reading
• Collected Miscellany
• erasing clouds
• feeding the pigeons, one last time
• 42opus
• Gravedigger's Local 16
• The Guardian
• The Independent
• New Statesman
• The Observer (1)
• The Observer (2)
• Rush-That-Speaks
• Sandammeer (German)
• Sunday Telegraph
• Sycamore Review
• Sydney Morning Herald
• things mean a lot

• Victor Pelevin site (Russian)
• Q & A at Bomb

• Empire V
• The Hall of the Singing Caryatids
• The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

• Other books in the Canongate - The Myths-series
• See Index of literature from Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union
• See Index of Interviews, conversations, and dialogues

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About the Author:

       Russian author Victor Pelevin (Виктор Пелевин) was born in 1962.

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© 2006-2024 the complete review

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