Rating: 
Summary: Confidentially, It's Walker Percy's Best Book . . .
Review: After I read this book I had no choice but to immediately consume Walker Percy's novels. Reading Lancelot was like having the top of my head blown off and surviving the experience more awake and alive than ever. In an era where no one is really sure what they believe anymore, Percy sets out an interesting test. If you discovered clear evidence of evil, what would that tell you about the existence of good and maybe even God? I strongly suggest you take this journey and pay very close attention to the parallel travels of the main character's confidant, a priest-psychologist who is himself in crisis. If you do so, the ending will make the hairs stand up on the back on your neck.
Rating:
Summary: Confidentially, It's Walker Percy's Best Book . . .
Review: After I read this book I had no choice but to immediately consume Walker Percy's novels. Reading Lancelot was like having the top of my head blown off and surviving the experience more awake and alive than ever. In an era where no one is really sure what they believe anymore, Percy sets out an interesting test. If you discovered clear evidence of evil, what would that tell you about the existence of good and maybe even God? I strongly suggest you take this journey and pay very close attention to the parallel travels of the main character's confidant, a priest-psychologist who is himself in crisis. If you do so, the ending will make the hairs stand up on the back on your neck.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to read, difficult to digest ...
Review: I can overlook that Percy basically stole Machado De Assis' "Don Casmurro," but only because the latter tackles such difficult issues, and is a VERY difficult read. And yet, Percy pulls it off. Just as we begin sympathizing with Lancelot, we're sprung forward again from our LAZ-E-BOY recliners and are reminded of the reality of his actions. I kinda wish Percy hadn't written the book in Second Person, as if WE were the therapist or something, but if THAT'S what it takes to reassure us that WE'RE not mad, so be it. A very uncomfortable, un-pretty, DISTURBING read -- worth the effort, but hard to recommend to anyone else.
Rating: 
Summary: Redundant and plodding
Review: I would NEVER recommend this book to anyone. I threw away my copy when I was through reading it so that I wouldn't be responsible for anyone else wasting their time with it. I found the book to be tedious, mind-numbingly redundant, misogynistic & racist. The main character whines about the state of society oblivous to the fact he is one of the horribly twisted reasons why society is the way it is. There were no surprises to be found anywhere in the book since the author apparently mistook foreshadowing for plot AND character, thus focusing mainly on foreshadowing. In case we readers are too thick to miss any of it, repetition pounds it into our heads. I found nothing new or noteworthy in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Sour taste, unpleasant purpose
Review: In Lancelot Walker Percy builds on the theme of awakening he plays with in The Moviegoer and queries exactly what choices an awakened man has in the face of a degenerate culture. For Percy there are only two, the path taken by the narrator, Lancelot, and the path taken by the friend to which he narrates his tale, Percival.Lancelot is an excellent book. I highly recommend it to mature readers. Be aware that Percy's Lancelot colorfully describes the dirtiness around him. Consequently, the book is a bit vulgar in places.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning.
Review: In Lancelot Walker Percy builds on the theme of awakening he plays with in The Moviegoer and queries exactly what choices an awakened man has in the face of a degenerate culture. For Percy there are only two, the path taken by the narrator, Lancelot, and the path taken by the friend to which he narrates his tale, Percival. Lancelot is an excellent book. I highly recommend it to mature readers. Be aware that Percy's Lancelot colorfully describes the dirtiness around him. Consequently, the book is a bit vulgar in places.
Rating: 
Summary: A message we have continued to miss
Review: Lancelot is an engrossing book. Moral issues are batted around and the nature of an individual's frame of reality completely shifts. I recommend this book to everyone. Everyone should read it. With the hurry and bustle of today's world I fear few will read it beyond a couple chapters...this book is not "hard." ...I recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Percy's Best, But...
Review: Quite frankly, I found this the most difficult and least enjoyable of Percy's books. Percy is at his usual cranky self, poking at the delusions of modern life and ridiculing our self-assurance in spite of the fact that we're all rather lost. Good questions are asked. What is love and is it real? Is secular liberalism or Christianity true? What does sex mean? How can we escape boredom? Is life just some cosmic joke? What is missing in Lancelot, in my opinion, is the sly humour found in The Second Coming or Love in the Ruins. Lancelot is a departure from Percy's typical protagonist, not because he is some crazy, libidinal loner who concocts an apocalyptic scheme to prove some cosmic point (because all of Percy's protagonists fit that bill), but because he isn't particularly funny. Lancelot lacks the sense that the world is bigger than himself, and is so serious that he rarely cracks a joke. His soliloquies, therefore, end up as overly explicit narratives concerning other humourless characters. This is especially true of the play within the play --- the movie making subplot which gets a little self-referential (after all, isn't this the most cinematic of Percy's novels?). Still, enjoy Percy's craftsmanship, for there are far too few of his novels to be too fussy. What else is a crazy, libidinal, apocalyptic loner to do?
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Summary: Arthurian Romance meets Existentialism and Christianity
Review: This book changed my life, as cliche as that sounds. I would reccomend this book to anyone interested in intense philosophical and religious issues. Also any fans of southern writers like Faulkner will probably enjoy this book. It is also, however dense and confusing, like Faulkner, until you get into the swing of Percy's intriguing writing style, and religious philosophy. This is one book worth consulting critical essays on even if you are not a student. A familiarity with either existentialist thought, or a working knowledge of the Arthurian tales will aid you tremendously. Where other modern novels are like taking a stroll through the park this book is like running three marathons. Worth it all the same, very worth it.
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Summary: Vintage Percy
Review: This book is a conversation between Lancelot Lamar and Percival. Lancelot, once a member of New Orleans' landed gentry, is now confined to a mental institution. Percival is a priest who went to medical school, and has devoted his life to altruistic endeavors. Lancelot was a "liberal" southern lawyer who validated his existence by working in civil rights litigation before a discovery that changed his life. This discovery causes a great awakening. This theme of awakening is prominent in Percy's works. A character arrives at an existential moment in which he realizes that his life to this point has been as a dream: "Do you know what happened to me during the past twenty years? A gradual, ever so gradual, slipping away of my life into a kind of dream state in which finally I could not be sure that anything was happening at all. Perhaps nothing happened." As Lancelot retraces the events in this monologue, we watch the progress of his mental state, and his weighing of possible world views. His selection of a world view will determine his actions. Another of Walker Percy's major literary themes is captured in an encounter between Lancelot and Elgin, a black MIT student. Lancelot mused, "Unlike him I had been unable to escape into the simple complexities of science. All he had to do was solve the mystery of the universe, which may be difficult but is not as difficult as living an ordinary life." On another level, Lancelot is a southern white who has roiling feelings about women. His struggle to allow women to be sexual creatures is mirrored in his expressed feelings about his mother, then about his wife, Margot. The reader senses a that Lancelot's feelings toward women are a river of ambivalence. Curiously, this is similar to Pat Conroy's characters, whose southern white characters either lust after or endure their mother, depending on the moment. If you like Walker Percy, you'll love this book. I do, and I recommend it.
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