SOURCE: Powers, Elizabeth. Review of Subscript, by Christine Brooke-Rose. World Literature Today 74, no. 3 (summer 2000): 592.

In the following review, Powers evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Subscript, noting that the work functions as “an impressive addition to Brooke-Rose's challenging oeuvre.”

It is always wise to have a look at the jacket blurb before climbing into a novel by Christine Brooke-Rose (b. 1926). Though this newest work by the prolific creator of experimental fiction has a linear narration, so to speak, a reader may wonder where it is heading. In Brooke-Rose's The Dear Deceit (1960), the narration went backward, from protagonist's funeral to early life. Subscript works forward, from incipient human life about 4,500 million years ago, as a cell fought its way to formation and unity out of a chemical reaction, to the likewise incipient attempts at agriculture fifty thousand short years ago. Got that?

Actually, this may be Brooke-Rose's most engaging...