Life: A User's Manual (Harvill Panther) (Paperback)

To anybody familiar with his oeuvre, the only predictable characteristic of Life A User's Manual will be its stupefying complexities. A structural framework so cunning and so complicated that it surpasses all Perec's preceeding achievements is gradually revealed to the reader, forming the foundations of what is an epic manifestation of nothingness.

The novel takes for its basis the facade of a Parisian tenement, ten squares wide and ten high. The narrative moves, apparently randomly, from square to square, taking in the slices of life contained therein. Slowly, as more squares of more appartments are revealed, individual stories of tenants, separated only by thin walls, unfold.

This movement from square to square is in fact based on a strict mathematical challenge known as the polygraphie du cavalier, whereby all squares must be visited only once moving as the knight moves on a chessboard. The puzzle had long been solved for a traditional 8 x 8 chess board; Perec took on the challenge of re-solving it on a 10 x 10 grid. He succeeded and even managed to incorporate a hidden and quasi psycho-analytical twist, by missing square no.66, in the bottom left hand corner. The resulting shape thereby replicated the hebrew gimmel referred to in W ou le Souvenir d'Enfance, and skillfully avoided 66, a number to which the author had a particular aversion following the death of his jewish mother in wartime nazi concentration camps.

Where a large part of the book's appeal lies is in the way Perec tells his interwinding tales. His obsession with the infra-ordinary, the ostensibly insignificant details which form the more consequential elements of our lives, is clear. Long inventory like lists abound, and scrupulous digressions take the reader on adventures all around the world, to turn what are a priori dull and lifeless reports into the most engaging anecdotes.

To merely dip into the surface of this book is to enter a skillfuly constructed world that mirrors our own yet subtley points out the unquestioned absurdities which comprise our everyday existence. Amongst those who have read the work there is an unconditional admiration. It is an achievement that defies belief. It deserves to be read.

This peculiar mode of movement gives rise to a peculiar writing style
where the writer can not mention an object without at the same time
mentioning its details. It is a very contagious writing style, and so
while reading this book, something I mainly did on the train to and
from work - usually between 7AM and 9AM in the morning and between
4PM and 7PM in the evening on weekdays, except for tuesdays when I
would either leave early or arrive late due to work-outs - I found
myself digressing in details (moving in the dimension of detail) as I
wrote email to friends or participated in other exchanges. It might
remind you of Arabian Nights, except that it is the objects and not
the people who tell the stories within the stories.

A warning for you who wish to read this book: Just as with "Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", you will find yourself wondering
through the first 100 pages or so if this book is ever going to go
anywhere. As opposed to the case of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance, you will find it doesn't. But by that time, you won't
care that it doesn't. It is a wonderfully self-contained universe
that starts and ends with nothing.