Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Absolute Blinder!, 31 Mar 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I received this book on Saturday morning for reviewing, and opened the box to find that the novel had been split into 3 separate 250-page books. I thought this a nice touch, if a little quirky, and I was wrong to assume the quirky fun ended there.
'A Fraction of the Whole' is, almost unbelievably, the debut novel from Steve Toltz. He writes with such enthusiasm, skill and draw that it was like reading the work of an old friend who had written this amazingly brilliant, totally messed up, mind bending story just for me. Toltz absolutely sucks you in to the world of Martin and Jasper Dean. As I said, I received the books Saturday morning and struggled to come up for air until finishing on Sunday evening. I was well and truly trapped in the book even when not reading. Such is the power!
The book is written from two points of view, that of Martin Dean (Australia's most successful failure, paranoid philosopher and overall machine like genius) and that of his son Jasper (the boy scared of being the mirror image of the Father but who is ultimately fulfilling the fear). The plot has many twists and turns which it would be really unfair of me to reveal here, but basically there are two themes:
Martin blames everything in his life on the fact that his brother Terry is Australia's most violent and most loved criminal. Martin has lived in Terry's substantial shadow for his entire life and fails to realise that it is entirely of his own making, and his brother is only that man because of decisions made by Martin himself.
Jasper blames everything in his life on his Father, who goes through cycles of mania and deep depression, interferes in his life then ignores him, locks himself away from the world and then does something stupid and dangerous to draw attention to himself. Jasper does not want to follow in these footsteps, but both are so superior and pompous in attitude that it seems inevitable.
Even after everything is taken away from them (family, friends, citizenship) they remain steadfastly cerebral. Thinking themselves into corners.
And you will be thinking yourself in knots. And laughing. And crying. And emerge gasping from a truly wonderful book that deserves every accolade that it will no doubt be getting.
Superb!
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Epic, Dark, Funny, 28 Mar 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
This is a truly epic novel, written as a biography of a tortured soul pieced together by a son being created in his father's image.
Martin Dean is a perpetually ill, troubled, bookish child who grows up with a half-brother who is more force of nature than man. As the brother basks in the glory of first sporting superstardom then Robin Hood-like hero outlaw status, Martin withers in the dark places and gloriously builds his damning opinions of humanity in general and himself in particular. That he forms a towering God complex is a logical result. That he seems to infect others with it, a very clever and plausable device.
But the plot isn't the point, the overriding themes are of death and the human search for meaning. The huge characters are consuming in their thought patterns, paranoia and insight. The highs are high, and the lows are low, and the pace and balance of these are beautifully wrought such that you find yourself at the end of the trilogy wanting to know more, and cursing the Shakesperean death toll.
The writing is richer than a Christmas pud and every flight of fancy on the part of a character, where you feel the author is running away with himself, is balanced with the crashing back to earth of rationalisation. the characters glide from continent to continent, drawn back together by silver threads of artful prose.
In style somewhere between East of Eden and the Mosquito Coast, with humour beyond either of those.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spellbinding Debut Novel, 3 April 2008
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Australian Steve Toltz has produced a totally assured first novel. It features dysfunctional father and son, Martin and Jasper Dean; brilliant, largely unemployable oddballs, each with a singular philosophy, worldview and a unique way of expressing himself.
The book tells of their various deeds and adventures and is in turns, hilarious, light-hearted, poignant, profound, absurd, inspiring and immensely sad. It's also shot through with a healthy dose of black comedy and contains many killer one-liners.
Both men get to tell their biographies, whether this is in the form of straightforward narration, notations in surreptitiously read private notebooks or confession from father to son. There's one very clever passage where Martin tells a version of events, then Jasper relates the same sequence from his own perspective. Naturally they don't tally.
Please don't let the extreme length (700+ pages) of this book put you off - it reads like a volume half its length. You can see why comparisons have been made with John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece 'A Confederacy of Dunces'. Like that book, 'A Fraction of the Whole' WILL polarise opinion: you'll either think it's a vital work of pure genius or a load of self-indulgent cobblers. I fall firmly in the former camp and can see this being regarded as a modern classic in years to come. It is quite literally a book that demands and deserves to be read.
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