Remainder
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Review
'The storyline mesmerises in its imaginative brilliance.' -- The Sunday Telegraph
'Its minatory brilliance calls for classic status' -- The Independent
'This isn t how we expect a novel to be, but it s why it s a very good novel indeed.' -- London Review of Books
'McCarthy delivers his wacky tale, an enquiry into authenticity and experience, with persuasive logic and a nice line in absurdist humour.' -- Literary Review
'...Enthralling, dotted with dark humour and undoubted originality' --The Irish Times
'a refreshingly idiosyncratic, enjoyably intelligent read.' --The Guardian
'Remainder is an intelligent and absurd satire on consumer culture.' --The Times
'Its minatory brilliance calls for classic status' -- The Independent
'This isn t how we expect a novel to be, but it s why it s a very good novel indeed.' -- London Review of Books
'McCarthy delivers his wacky tale, an enquiry into authenticity and experience, with persuasive logic and a nice line in absurdist humour.' -- Literary Review
'...Enthralling, dotted with dark humour and undoubted originality' --The Irish Times
'a refreshingly idiosyncratic, enjoyably intelligent read.' --The Guardian
'Remainder is an intelligent and absurd satire on consumer culture.' --The Times
London Review of Books
'a very good novel indeed'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Tom McCarthy's Remainder occupies the same territory as Rupert Thompson's fascinating The Insult and is also reminiscent of the work of Paul Auster. A bizarre premise - in this case, a man left with no memory but an awful lot of money after an accident, who systematically seeks to re-enact actually experienced and/or imagined mundane scenarios - gradually comes to seem artlessly plausible, due to the absence of affect in both the writing and the central character. His abstruse quest for the real in the patently artificial operates as a nice critique of what Jean Baudrillard calls the hyper-real, yet also offers a fascinating parallel with the spiritual meditative practice of "being in the moment" through mindfulness. The book most reminded me of Sebastian Beaumont's Thirteen, the story of a taxi driver who reaches into his own psyche not by obsessively repeating minute actions but by quite literally driving himself into exhaustion. Beaumont's "other world" is less polemical, but more darkly fascinating and plot driven, than McCarthy's. Thirteen is a Remainder with go-faster stripes. The two books have a different feel, and attempt different things, but both come highly recommended.
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Have you ever had a feeling of de ja vu where you wished you could grab that moment, cling on to it and relish its every detail, but no matter how hard you try, it's gone?
The narrator of Tom McCarthy's brilliant `Remainder' feels false and unnatural after recovering from an accident that has left him having to relearn his motor functions and a compensation package of eight-and-a-half million pounds. One evening he is struck by a clear memory of a time he can't specify, which evokes a feeling calm and fluid reality in him. He decides to utilise his newfound wealth in an attempt to recreate that precise moment, complete with the perfect building (which he has designed to his specifications by a set designer) and the neighbours he was conscious of in this flash of recall (played by actors which the narrator calls `re-enactors'). He repeatedly re-enacts his moments in an attempt to regain the feeling he was aware of in that moment of de ja vu. Our hero becomes obsessed with re-enacting: first incidents in which he featured, then incidents he witnessed (where he takes on roles as a `re-enactor'), finally, he creates an event of his own design and, after many rehearsals, puts it into practice in the `real' world, with violent and disastrous consequences and, in a rather neat way, a resolution for the narrator.
McCarthy's protagonist is insane; but sympathetic, cold; yet human. The novel's climax has an almost anti-climactic calm that left me bewildered and satisfied. It was so easy to fall into the mindset of the hero, that I have found myself grasping at moments of de ja vu with a fresh vigour. It strikes me as a book about our perceptions of self, reality... and perhaps narrative. There is such a depth to this novel that it deserves re-reading and I look forward to returning to this moment of enjoyable engrossment again... and probably again...
This novel has a really edgy intelligence to it and it has the smell of cult classic wafting from its binding - read it now, before everyone else does!
The narrator of Tom McCarthy's brilliant `Remainder' feels false and unnatural after recovering from an accident that has left him having to relearn his motor functions and a compensation package of eight-and-a-half million pounds. One evening he is struck by a clear memory of a time he can't specify, which evokes a feeling calm and fluid reality in him. He decides to utilise his newfound wealth in an attempt to recreate that precise moment, complete with the perfect building (which he has designed to his specifications by a set designer) and the neighbours he was conscious of in this flash of recall (played by actors which the narrator calls `re-enactors'). He repeatedly re-enacts his moments in an attempt to regain the feeling he was aware of in that moment of de ja vu. Our hero becomes obsessed with re-enacting: first incidents in which he featured, then incidents he witnessed (where he takes on roles as a `re-enactor'), finally, he creates an event of his own design and, after many rehearsals, puts it into practice in the `real' world, with violent and disastrous consequences and, in a rather neat way, a resolution for the narrator.
McCarthy's protagonist is insane; but sympathetic, cold; yet human. The novel's climax has an almost anti-climactic calm that left me bewildered and satisfied. It was so easy to fall into the mindset of the hero, that I have found myself grasping at moments of de ja vu with a fresh vigour. It strikes me as a book about our perceptions of self, reality... and perhaps narrative. There is such a depth to this novel that it deserves re-reading and I look forward to returning to this moment of enjoyable engrossment again... and probably again...
This novel has a really edgy intelligence to it and it has the smell of cult classic wafting from its binding - read it now, before everyone else does!
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the kind of book that having read it keeps coming back to mind. I'm not quite sure why but it has the quality of somehow altering your perspective on the world for a short while. For that alone its definitely worth a read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
See things differently
I have never read a book like this one. You cannot get it out of your head and it really does make you start to look at the world differently. Read more
Published 4 days ago by Dearnesman
Remainder
"Well f*** off: it's the same book as it was two years ago." Was Tom ("the most galling interviewee in the world") McCarthy's response to the myriad publishers clamouring to... Read more
Published 13 months ago by TomCat
Depends how you read it
Judging by most of the reviews that have already been written for 'Remainder', it seems to be a simple case of you get it or you don't get it, you like it or you don't like it. Read more
Published 13 months ago by tombcandle13
Promises more than it delivers
This first-person account starts intriguingly enough, and draws you in well enough that the first third or half of the book is a page turner. Read more
Published 17 months ago by E. D. Costello
Too much of a re-creation
The author uses a lot of oxygen in interviews to hype his anti-traditional, pro-avant garde, bourgeois-bashing stance, but in many ways, Remainder (written by a novelist with a... Read more
Published 18 months ago by annwiddecombe
Stupid storyline relies on the stupidity of the characters
Bland, inconsequential, superfluous attempt at something deep. The whole storyline depends on the characters being as stupid, self-absorbed, pretentious, and as mindless as I can... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Tom S. Lee
Black cats resting on red roof tiles
This novel was greeted by so much hype from the critics that I was dismayed on reading it to find it was full of substance, colour, light and energy but with a profound vacancy at... Read more
Published on 6 Oct 2009 by Eileen Shaw
Intriguing - but not enough
I wanted (and want) to like this book more than I do. While I thought the premise quite original, and devoured the first 1/3 of the book in one sitting, I found myself becoming... Read more
Published on 18 Jun 2008 by Canuck Baritone
Doesn't Quite Work
Remainder is a hugely inventive novel, but unfortunately it doesn't quite work.
The basic premise: the narrator has received large amounts of compensation for an... Read more
The basic premise: the narrator has received large amounts of compensation for an... Read more
Published on 4 Mar 2008 by MisterHobgoblin
Odd but a pager turner
From the first page to the last I could not get this book out of my head. It did make me start to look at the world in a different way. Read more
Published on 13 Sep 2007 by B. Dickinson
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