 It is a puzzle and on its own terms forbids solutions.But Burgess is rather movingly putting to use the self-begotten system of his own imagination and language to protest against spurious disorder in art and life.This is too solemn an account of a book so bewilderingly funny ... Its fertility is fantastic, and so is its ingenuity ... Perhaps all one ought to do is to characterise the book as a riddling Sphinx, and abstain from guessing further, but it should be added that it is a work of astonishing narrative and intellectual energy, and that everybody who thinks the English novel lacking in those qualities should read it, twice.