The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold by Evelyn Waugh was published in July 1957. It was Waugh's penultimate full length work of fiction and is a largely autobiographical account of a period of hallucinations caused by bromide poisoning that he'd experienced in early 1954. If the novel is accurate this must......more

As a "semi-autobiographical work of fiction", perhaps The Ordeal Of Gilbert Pinfold can only really be understood and appreciated through the lens of the author's real life ordeal. Like the eponymous Gilbert Pinfold, Evelyn Waugh was feeling ill and, suffering from insomnia, self-medicated with powe......more

I never thought I would write a negative review of a novel by Evelyn Waugh. Evelyn Waugh is one of my top two or three favorite authors, and "The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold," until last week, was the last of his novels that I had not read (including his unfinished novel, "Work Suspended"). I was disa......more

What a great, weird book this is, Waugh´s penultimate. Really, this is fictionalised biography - telling the story of a time Waugh was drinking and drugging so much that he managed to give himself a kind of invasive persection complex. While on a cruise to recover his health he heard voices, conversa......more

I read this novel years ago and I find it hard to rate because I don't know who, except for a Waugh obsessive, would want to read it. I will never read it again but, elements of it has remained with me for half-a-century, I am not sure it is a good novel, but I think it provides some very interestin......more