Perhaps the best known novel by Joyce Cary this is a wonderful book indeed!. (The movie is a close representation.) Although the focus is on Gulley, an artist with outrageous methods and lifestyle, readers will greet Sara Monday's return to his life. ( )

Cary would belong on the list of greats even if his only achievement had been to create Gully Jimson, painter, anarchist and genius, antihero of The Horse’s Mouth. But in novel after novel, Cary wrote from inside his characters, using only subtle technique — never the pyrotechnics of writers like Faulkner and Dos Passos (both of whom are favorites — don’t get me wrong). Artists, politicians, army men, children, wives and lovers all came under his pen with equal conviction, all caught out to one degree or another at the defining (and frequently the most humiliating) moments of their lives. If writers are dramatists, directors and actors, then, more than any other writer on this list, Cary mastered the “acting” part. ( )

This book is like wallpaper. I read it, but it made no impression on me whatsoever. ( )

Everything you've ever wanted to know about artists, warty wens and all. A treasure. ( )

The picaresque novel has a noble tradition reaching back to Don Quixote. In his novel, The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary created a picaresque hero for the twentieth century. Gully Jimson is the epitome of a life force and his creativity in life as well as art carries him forward and wins the reader's heart. Cary's theme is one of the creative artist pitted against authority of all kinds. The novel opens with opens with Jimson, newly released from prison, reveling in his freedom admiring the clouds in the sky and the murky waters of the Thames. The adventures begin as Jimson caroms from one episode to another leading to his ultimate creation, a great mural that will be the culmination of his art. The combination of exalting prose (Cary is after all, Irish by birth) and a wonderful story make this book a true pleasure to read. ( )