SOURCE: Walters, Michael. “Intertexting with a Vital Function.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4555 (20 July 1990): 782.

In the following review, Walters explores the thematic significance of the interruption and breakdown of communication in Verbivore.

At the end of her last novel, Xorandor, to which Verbivore is a kind of sequel, Christine Brooke-Rose has her pubescent protagonists agree to “dump the whole thing”—that is, to erase all the material on disc and print-out that constituted a record of their adventures with the eponymous stone/computer. After the Manning twins have exchanged promises, the instruction “END XORANDOR” ends the book. Although concluded, however, the book of course survives, and, further, the well-intentioned treachery of Jip (John Ivor Paul), in not keeping to the bargain, is part of the drama of Verbivore, set more than two decades later. (The year is roughly 2020.)

Readers familiar with the earlier exploits of Jip and Zab (Isabel...