The Teleportation Accident [Hardcover]

The Teleportation Accident is a book I didn't know anything about when I started reading it but I am very glad I found it. It is a really fantastic entertaining read but be warned it's not simple, easy, or linear and does take some concentration to get through. The story is complex and engaging but the author flips through time and stories in the blink of an eye which can leave you feeling a little confused and dazed - I had to go back and re-read sections several times to ensure I knew what was going on.

The story itself focuses on Egon Loeser and events that occur between the two World Wars as he desperately pursues the love of his life Adele Hitler all over the world, though there are other strands and tangents which feature throughout which all add layers and interest to the story. The book is beautifully written and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an interesting and challenging read. Really wonderful stuff.

As a rule I am a no nonsense reader; I like a simple book that I can understand and just enjoy the story. `The Teleportation Accident' is not one of these books and at times is a struggle to read as paragraphs flip from one story to another (as if teleported), but By Jove the book was worth reading! The story of `Teleportation' is hard to pin down. Essentially it is about the lackadaisical Egon Loeser who is a set designer in Weimer Germany and then moves to Paris and LA. This is a turbulent time in world history, but Loeser is so nonplussed that the rise of Hitler and Communist Witch-hunts drift past him.

Loeser is not very likeable, a man obsessed by his base urges and one women. He is selfish and at times stupid, but he is also great fun. Ned Beauman juggles a complex story of disenfranchised artists with some great vignettes e.g. Loeser becomes embroiled in a con to attach monkey glands to women's neck. The book is also populated with some great eccentric characters; a man who cannot distinguish pictures from the real world, or a scientist who studies ghosts. `Teleportation' has no narrative as such just a central kind of a road movie for Loeser, but is interspersed with backstories of other characters.

At times I have to admit with being completely lost, especially in chapters where Beauman will flip mid paragraph from the present to the past. This is disconcerting and will put many readers off. However, a flawed book should not be stopped from being 5 stars as sometimes these quirks are what make a book so memorable. `The Teleportation Accident' is full of moments that made me stop and think, discussing it constantly with my partner. If a book can engage me in such a manner it must be good. I would recommend it whole heartedly to someone looking for a challenging book to read.

Sammy Recommendation

With descriptions like these, author Ned Beauman creates one of the wackiest books I have read in ages - maybe ever! - a wide-ranging novel about just about anything that comes into the author's head, told in glorious and inglorious imagery throughout. Though it is set almost entirely between 1931 and 1939 and does trace the idea of teleportation as a motif throughout the novel, it is not science fiction. Instead it is the story of Egon Loeser, a young set designer at the Allien Theatre in Berlin who is determined to do something spectacular with his life. A proponent of the New Expressionist theatre as a reaction to realism, Loeser is, quite frankly, the "loser" that his name suggests, almost totally lacking success in the area of paramount importance to him - sex. At the theatre, he is working on a production about Adriano Lavicini, a man who developed and used a Teleportation Device during a stage production in Paris in 1679. Lavicini's device was spectacular when it was used, ultimately causing the entire theatre to crumble, and leaving many dead in the collapse and ensuing fire. On the one occasion in which Loeser's Teleportation Device is used, it causes no such drama.

The idea that one might escape time and place through a Teleportation Device seems irrelevant to the literary and theatre crowd with which Loeser associates. The Depression is a major factor in the life of Weimar Germany in 1931, though "This so-called Depression makes no difference to us...Six million jobless doesn't seem like so many when none of us ever had any wish for a real job in the first place." Likewise, little notice is made when Loeser meets "Adele Hitler," except to note that she is "no relation" to another Hitler. Two years later, however, "even the most heedless and egotistical Berliner couldn't help but notice that something nasty was going on."

As the novel jumps from Berlin to Paris and then Los Angeles, Loeser becomes involved in a series of crazy episodes which often have their own individual charms. The action ricochets through time and space, incorporating vivid stories about Lavicini, about Loeser's search for his favorite pornographic book (now lost), and about Adele and her infidelities. Characters are killed and disemboweled, and ghosts appear and reappear, with one character breeding them for use in a machine which they will power. Virtually everyone gets blackmailed about an assortment of crimes, and one character stays busy selling the skeletons of Troodonians, early men who evolved from dinosaurs. Throughout all this, the search for the key to a Teleportation Device continues.

Beauman seems to have taken literary expressionism to newer, more modern levels here, writing whatever crosses his mind, using repeating characters to provide some kind of connection through time as episodes unfold, often with dramatic results, but sometimes leaving the reader (at least this reader) way behind. Fortunately, his descriptive talents and his wild humor will be enough to keep many readers going, even when they are not sure in what direction they are headed or why. Four endings from four different time periods give the reader a choice. Choose one or all, whatever you like, the author seems to say. This novel is unique, one requiring a good deal of patience, and even fortitude, at least for some of us who are significantly older than the twenty-seven-year-old author.