Awful writing and shallow psychology meet to make a lackluster story.

Erbert called the movie a paranoid right-wing fantasy. Is it? While inexplicable cruelty can exist in society, and while juvenile crime can be a part of it too, this does feel missing in something to be make it feel plausible. The movie is staged like a ridiculous hyperbole, but the novel is a bit more confused about what it wants to be, and here I'm not sure if I want to defend the movie either because it's never been my favorite by Kubrick.

However... the anxieties that seem to preoccupy Burgess regarding poorly applied psychology are interesting. The book is good to gather questions because of its interesting premise and sequence of scenes. I just don't think it's a good read.


P. S: Kubrick was right, that last chapter was awful. It says a lot that the author fights so much for its inclusion as if to save face for a failed experiment. Because of it, the whiny remarks of Burgess on the preface and the translation itself, I'm giving this one a "screw you" one star. Don't bother in any other language that isn't English.