Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An intellectual mystery which does not lose its audience., 15 Sep 2003
Alexander Short is a young librarian--precise and studious, with a need to catalogue and record, and on his way to becoming stuffy. But he was not always this way. His courtship and marriage to his French wife Nic, who designs pop-up books, was romantic--and spontaneous enough to have earned him a reprimand from the head of the library for his enthusiastic acceptance of her proposal on the library's electronic bulletin board. Now the marriage is in trouble, his career seems to have hit a snag, and he's holding himself and his life together by recording and alphabetizing his life experiences in a notebook he has attached to his waist. Into his life comes Henry James Jesson III, an elderly man in search of an object missing from a hidden compartment in an 18th century furniture case he owns. Short is enlisted to help in the search, and his life is suddenly turned upside down.The book, and the research behind it, took the author ten years, and one of the greatest compliments I can pay is to say that it doesn't show. So smoothly does Kurzweil integrate all the esoteric details of compartmented antique furniture, 18th century watchmaking, library cataloguing and conservation procedures, the intricacies of fine art theft, and even Japanese irezumi tattooing, that it all feels right and appropriate, and not at all pretentious. His themes of order vs. spontaneity, life vs. stasis, permanence vs. change mesh perfectly with the search for a missing timepiece, which is what belongs in Jesson's case--a watch called The Grand Complication, which was originally commissioned by Marie Antoinette. The book's structure mirrors the intricacies of this mysterious watch, which was stolen. As Short and Jesson conduct their search, the reader is, by turns, entertained, enlightened, and thoroughly engaged. Alexander Short is a character who comes to life, as, to a lesser extent, does Jesson, who is a sad case, not unlike his furniture piece, missing something necessary for personal completion. The library itself comes to life so fully that it almost becomes a character itself. The book is full of puns and literary allusions, which add yet another level of fun. With a terrific, bang-up conclusion which ties up all the loose ends of the plot, the characters' lives, and the themes, Kurzweil leaves his reader fully satisfied--and hoping not to have to wait ten more years for his next novel. Mary Whipple
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Grandiose Overcomplication, 9 Mar 2005
Clever it may be but ultimately I found Kurzweil's literary trickery superficial and soulless. Kurzweil's characters are two dimensional and unappealing while the plot is unnecessarily complicated and ultimately unresolved. The author is more concerned with style, literary devices and clever word play than constructing a satisfying, realistic plot peopled by characters the reader cares about. The dialogue is stilted and affected, the motives of Short and Jesson poorly explained, the situations contrived and the novel, overall, pretentious. If it is an attempt to make library catalogues, research and the Dewey Decimal System appear sexy then, sorry, but it fails despite the obligatory hi-tech computer hacking. The minor caricatures, like Stolz, are simply annoying devices to wind the creaking plot on like a rusty timepiece. A mildy interesting, slightly didactic read, unusual subject but it lost its way. For more meaty fare try the enigmatic Charles Palliser, "Qunincunx" or "Unburied", Iain Pears Instance of the Fingerpost' or James Lasdun's "Horned Man" to keep you guessing.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As good as Umberto Ecco or Arturo Pérez-Reverte, 27 Nov 2003
Alexander Short is a librarian. His job is in jeopardy and his marriage is coming apart. He meets a curious figure improbably named Henry James Jesson III, a book-lover who hires Alexander for some research in order to complete a cabinet of curiosities chronicling the life of the mysterious Henri Breguet, an eighteenth-century inventor. As his investigation progresses, Alexander understands that there a further secrets lurking in Jesson's cloistered world than those inside his elegant Manhattan town house.
An intellectual delight, this literary thriller will enchant you if you like books, antiques and watches. And Horace's sentence "Habent sua fata libelli" - All books have their fates - will stay on your mind forever!
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