{"id":224,"date":"2018-08-28T14:39:15","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T12:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/readerwitch.com\/?p=224"},"modified":"2018-08-28T14:39:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T12:39:15","slug":"the-third-policeman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/2018\/08\/28\/the-third-policeman\/","title":{"rendered":"If Alice in Wonderland had a wooden leg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Genre: philosophical dark comedy. Stars from Goodreads: 4.02<\/strong>. Stars from me: 4<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Third Policeman<\/em><\/a> was written by a person called Brian O\u2019Nolan under the pseudonym Flann O\u2019Brien. It was written between 1939 and 1940 but was published only much later by O\u2019Nolan\u2019s widow. It was called a masterpiece, but O\u2019Nolan never learned about this. During his life two publishers refused to publish his book. One of the publishers told O\u2019Nolan to \u201cbecome less fantastic\u201d. O\u2019Nolan then placed the manuscript in his kitchen where he could see it, but told his friends that the manuscript was lost when it flew out of his car, page by page.<\/p>\n

The Third Policeman<\/em> is surreal, absurd and funny. I listened to the audiobook<\/a> which is not the best medium for this book. It should be read to be understood better. Still,\u00a0it seems like at some places the book is supposed to be too absurd to comprehend.<\/p>\n

The Third Policeman<\/em> is like Alice in Wonderland<\/em> where Alice is a one-legged criminal and the Wonderland is macabre and even more surreal.<\/p>\n

The aftertaste of the book is dark and haunting but you will laugh a lot while reading it. I laughed so hard I disturbed people around me. At some places, though, the book gets so tedious it feels like toothache. It is boring for the same reason as it is genius. The book\u2019s essence is in its dialogues and philosophy. There are many references to the works of a fictional philosopher called De Selby<\/a>. De Selby has lots of peculiar beliefs. For example, one of his theories is that the Earth is not a sphere but a sausage. For each such theory De Selby provides a proof. It gets simultaneously boring and funny, you never know which one will happen next. De Selby as a creation was so successful that he was used in other books too, one of which\u00a0was written by a different author.<\/p>\n

The ideas of The Third Policeman<\/em> were used for Lost<\/em> TV series. Also, I can see the resemblance between the book\u2019s ideas and the ones of Lucifer<\/em> TV series.<\/p>\n

The Third Policeman<\/em><\/a> is an influential book. It might be disliked by readers who prefer more action, but it’s the right book for people with an unconventional sense of humor who wouldn’t mind to be puzzled by impossible ideas.<\/p>\n

Use the button in the top right corner to follow my blog for daily spoiler-free book posts.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Third Policeman is like Alice in Wonderland where Alice is a one-legged criminal and the Wonderland is macabre. Yet you will laugh so much you will scare people around. More about the book in the post. Continue reading If Alice in Wonderland had a wooden leg<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[123,207,221,266,371,428,436,500,555,639],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readerwitch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}