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Remainder
  
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Remainder (Paperback)

by Tom McCarthy (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 274 pages
  • Publisher: Metronome Press (25 Oct 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 2916262008
  • ISBN-13: 978-2916262000
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,495,760 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

An assured work of existential horror from debut novelist McCarthy.The unnamed narrator begins by explaining that there's a lot he can't explain. He cannot, for example, share many details about his accident. That information is subject to a non-disclosure agreement, but it's also-more vitally-unavailable to him: He can't remember much about the accident or his life before it. He's become, very nearly, a blank, and the voice McCarthy conjures for this nonentity is an eerily precise, dumbly eloquent complement to his mental and emotional condition. Contemplating the crumbling plaster spilling out of a jagged hole in a wall, he thinks, "It looked kind of disgusting, like something that's coming out of something." That imprecision seems sloppy, but it works brilliantly to magnify the narrator's sense of abjection. The accident, which also wrecked his body, has forced him to relearn rote tasks like walking and eating. He begins to feel disconnected from other people, and he suspects that his life is no longer quite real. He decides to create his own little universe, and the millions of pounds he won in a post-accident settlement make his wishes reality. This project begins fairly innocuously, and although it quickly becomes weirder and more dangerous, McCarthy infuses the story with an uncanny sense of foreboding long before his protagonist decides to recreate a murder scene for his own amusement. It's tempting to call this a postmodern parable or allegory for a virtual age, but to reduce this novel to the level of the didactic is to overlook its considerable, creepy power.Perfectly disturbing. (Kirkus Reviews)


London Review of Books

'a very good novel indeed' --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews

18 Reviews
5 star:
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4 star:
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3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (18 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The most original de ja vu, 19 Jul 2006
This review is from: Remainder (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!
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars 21st century classic, 22 Aug 2006
By Grendel (Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Remainder (Hardcover)
It took me a few pages to get into this debut novel, but it's not long before the narrator's damaged, compelling perspective wormed its way into my thinking and didn't let go. I found this book genuinely different to anything I've read recently in contemporary fiction -- different in type, and superior in quality. As a reader I felt akin to the novel's secondary characters, in that I was sucked into the nameless narrator's world not entirely with my consent. I was with him as he led me through an apparently harmless fascination with "re-enacting" old memories, with him as he raised the stakes with increasingly perilous memory re-constructions, and with him at the novel's blistering close, where his obsession leads to a truly chilling climax that must rate as one of the most original conclusions to a story I've ever read. The cover of this book is bespattered with high praise from every broadsheet and literary magazine under the sun, which normally makes me run for the hills, but for once I'm in agreement with the hype.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A complete knockout!, 4 Sep 2006
This review is from: Remainder (Hardcover)
Remainder is a complete knockout! Addictively gripping! Striking changes of direction when the addiction is about to wear off and become boring. But most profound for me is the way I was drawn into the hero's way of looking at the physical world. I have been noticing so much more detail of the world around me since reading R, especially linked to memories (of my childhood eg the spotting the detail of the aris rail on a delapidated fence reminded me of helping my Father repair a similar one when I was a boy. Freaky stuff!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars 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... Read more
Published 1 month ago by E. Shaw

3.0 out of 5 stars 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 17 months ago by Canuck Baritone

3.0 out of 5 stars 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
Published 20 months ago by Mister Hobgoblin

3.0 out of 5 stars 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

5.0 out of 5 stars Atmoshere of the bizarre
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. Read more
Published on 11 Sep 2007 by S. Lovat

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent plot!
I found the book very exciting. An elaborate mind game unfolds and captures your interest
Published on 29 Aug 2007 by Olga

4.0 out of 5 stars Stays in the mind....
This is a fascinating exploration of issues of identity and memory arising out of trauma. The hero goes on a journey to find his role when all else is cut away... Read more
Published on 30 Jun 2007 by Hannah D

5.0 out of 5 stars good work
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... Read more
Published on 26 Jun 2007 by bob6549

5.0 out of 5 stars Ballardesque Brilliance
Remainder's hero has suffered brain damage. He's troubled by memories that may not have happened; but seem more familiar than his own life. Read more
Published on 25 Jun 2007 by Bertram

2.0 out of 5 stars Appealing only on a deeper level
Remainder - Tom McCarthy

The novel serves as an odd one. From the very beginning to the final pages, the events that are explored are sometimes hard for the reader to... Read more
Published on 16 Jun 2007 by J. Green

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