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the complete review - fiction

Remainder

by
Tom McCarthy

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

A- : well-executed, and good (if peculiar) fun

See our review for fuller assessment.

  Review Consensus:

  Very impressed

  From the Reviews:

• "(A) tightly knit, suspenseful, and cold book about disconnection (induced by posttraumatic stress and, to some degree, consumer culture), with echoes of Huysmans and Heidegger. Nihilistically modern and classically structured" - Lenora Todaro, Bookforum
  
  
• "In taut and chilly prose, McCarthy describes how this mission becomes a disturbing obsession; the horrifying conclusion is visible 30 pages off, but it's no less shocking when it arrives." - Michael Endelman, Entertainment Weekly
  
  
• "There are some bumps on the way. (...) Still, this is a refreshingly idiosyncratic, enjoyably intelligent read by a writer with ideas and talent." - Patrick Ness, The Guardian
  
  
• "Do not be deterred by Remainder's elevated associations, because it wears its high-art attire discreetly. McCarthy's prose is precise and unpretentious. His anti-hero is a sympathetic Everyman, and it is difficult to resist the dominion of his obsession. It has to be said that the title is not a positive portent for future sales, and Remainder might amount to no more than a cult. This would be unfortunate, because its minatory brilliance calls for classic status." - Peter Carty, The Independent
  
  
• "How authentic might a re-enactment become? How real can a copy be? Dark and witty, Remainder poses some very interesting questions." - Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski, Independent on Sunday
  
  
• "This isn't what we expect a novel to be, but it's why it it's a very good novel indeed." - Daniel Soar, London Review of Books
  
  
• "Those looking for a neat finish will be disappointed. Remainder isn't a mystery novel -- there's no villain here apart from time and space -- so if its core ripples with ambiguity, all the better for the reader, as this is a book to be read and then reread, rich as it is with its insights, daring as it is with its contradictions." - Tod Goldberg, The Los Angeles Times
  
  
• "The story is told in the charming, light, witty style of the kind endemic to British comic novels, leading us to expect it to unwind in the way of such plotty, fluent confections. (...) (I)n the end Remainder leaves you feeling tricked into cozy sympathy with a character who proves uncaring and vacuous." - Anna Shapiro, The New York Observer
  
  
• "So slow-moving and seemingly aimless is Remainder in its opening chapters that readers may be discouraged from continuing, a risk for a writer bent upon being faithful to the stupefying boredom of his Everyman's life. (...) Remainder kicks into a higher-voltage, Quentin Tarrantinoesque mode once the amnesiac loses interest in restaging his own memories (.....) Remainder is a novel that may appeal primarily to readers with interests in philosophy and the world of contemporary art, but McCarthy has written an inspired airborne ending" - Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books
  
  
• "Remainder is not filled with pretty quotes; it works by accumulation and repetition, closing in on its subject in ever-decreasing revolutions, like a trauma victim circling the blank horror of the traumatic event. It plays a long, meticulous game, opening with a deadpan paragraph of comic simplicity" - Zadie Smith, The New York Review of Books
  
  
• "McCarthy's superb stylistic control and uncanny imagination transport this novel beyond the borders of science fiction. His bleak humor, hauntingly affectless narrator and methodical expansion on his theme make Remainder more than an entertaining brain-teaser: it's a work of novelistic philosophy, as disturbing as it is funny. McCarthy shows that philosophy, like history, can repeat itself as farce." - Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "(H)ypnotically creepy (.....) McCarthy's portrait of the pursuit of total control is arresting, and he is alert to the bland amorality that underlies it." - The New Yorker
  
  
• "The storyline mesmerises in its imaginative brilliance (.....) In the protagonist's quest for what he calls 'authenticity' -- living in the moment without rationalising it -- the novel explores complex philosophical ideas about 'being' in a simple and direct way. And through McCarthy's attention to detail, the fantastical plot always retains a feeling of plausibility." - Catherine Humble, Sunday Telegraph
  
  
• "Remainder is unusual but fluidly written and funny, and while the theme of urban purposelessness is familiar, Tom McCarthy writes well about mental imbalance and the nature of reality." - Simon Baker, The Telegraph
  
  
• "With its clever set-pieces about texting, loyalty cards and pub etiquette, Remainder is an intelligent and absurd satire on consumer culture. Yet this is more than just a comedy of modern manners." - Philip Oltermann, The Times
  
  
• "Its coolness, with McCarthy's deadpan prose nicely matching his narrator's closed-off state of mind, is itself pleasurable.(...) Remainder should be read (and, of course, reread) for its intelligence and humour." - Michael Caines, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Remainder is a loopy, obsessive tale. It begins with the narrator getting a large (£8.5 million) compensation settlement for an accident he had: something fell from the sky and apparently struck him, causing serious injury. Part of the settlement prohibits him from revealing what exactly happened -- not that he really recalls it.
       Whatever happened, it has lingering effects. The rehabilitation process has, in fact, made him more emphatically the man he used to be -- though he realises that maybe he wasn't all that much to begin with. Specifically, he comes to the understanding that:

I'd always been inauthentic. Even before the accident, if I'd been walking down the street just like DeNiro, smoking a cigarette like him, and even if it had lit first try, I'd still be thinking: Here I am, walking down the street, smoking a cigarette, like someone in a film. See ? Second-hand. The people in films aren't thinking that. They're just doing their thing, real, not thinking anything. Recovering from the accident, learning to move and walk, understanding before I could act -- all this made me just become even more of what I'd always been anyway, added another layer of distance between me and things I did. Greg was right, absolutely right. I wasn't unusual: I was more usual than most.

I generally put the building into on mode for between six and eight hours each day -- mostly in stretches of two hours.

to be real -- to become fluent, natural, to cut out the detour that sweeps us around what's fundamental to events, preventing us from touching their core: the detour that makes us all second-hand and second-rate.

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Links:

• Vintage publicity page
• Alma Books publicity page
• Diaphanes
• Interview at ReadySteadyBook
• Interview at Torontoist

• Asking the Wrong Questions
• Bookslut
• Eclectic Closet
• Entertainment Weekly
• The Existence Machine
• GoodReports.net
• The Guardian
• The Independent
• The Millions
• Mindful Pleasures
• The New Yorker
• The Quarterly Conversation
• The Reading Experience
• ReadySteadyBook
• short term memory loss
• Sunday Telegraph
• The Telegraph (scroll down for review)
• 3:AM
• tomcat in the red room
• We can read it for you wholesale

• Official site

• Tom McCarthy at Jonathan Pegg Literary Agency
• Q & A in The Believer

• C
• Men in Space

• See Index of Contemporary British fiction

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About the Author:

       English author Tom McCarthy was born in 1969.

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© 2007-2015 the complete review

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