Remainder

Not sure about this book yet...protagonist is odd and a bit dull

related to Species of Spaces, by Perec

This is a weird book, crazy. It is as fascinating as it is strange. If you want something that gets you thinking, this is the book.

this is incredibly boring. will someone please tell me how it ends so i can skip the remainder! please?! ...3weeks later... i have perfected reading this book, in essence if i was following the book, i would have had to reread the book, re-enacting reading the book, reenacting re-enacting reading the book...i chose instead to skip the details and the devil and in the end.. well, i guess that is...more

this is incredibly boring. will someone please tell me how it ends so i can skip the remainder! please?! ...3weeks later... i have perfected reading this book, in essence if i was following the book, i would have had to reread the book, re-enacting reading the book, reenacting re-enacting reading the book...i chose instead to skip the details and the devil and in the end.. well, i guess that is what the book is all about. what you may ask, is this book all about..? well my idea of happiness is different from mr.mccarthy's happiness. maybe that was the point of the book. anyway if somebody knows him, please ask.   hide

The narrator of the story suffers a horrible, brain-jarring accident before the book begins and must learn how to reconnect with the world after months of physical therapy. His way is eased somewhat by a settlement of eight and a half million pounds. After being offered the alternatives of being a hedonist or an altruist by his close friends, he chooses to become a conceptual artist and play...more

The narrator of the story suffers a horrible, brain-jarring accident before the book begins and must learn how to reconnect with the world after months of physical therapy. His way is eased somewhat by a settlement of eight and a half million pounds. After being offered the alternatives of being a hedonist or an altruist by his close friends, he chooses to become a conceptual artist and play God, using the money to create an excrutiatingly-detailed series of tableaux of memory fragments in reenactments that are sometimes hilarious and sometimes cruel. The artist's search for authenticity has antecedents in Cervantes and Proust, according to McCarthy, who also argues that writers should be more like artists in their quest for new modes of expression like Faulkner and his tale told by an idiot. What we readers are left with is a fascinating, creepy book which leaves us in as much of a brain fog as the author, demanding to have its reenactments reread amd stitched together.   hide

Odd. Unsettling. Kind of sputtered to it s conclusion, but unlike anything I have ever read before. After suffering a serious injury and receiving a massive settlement for it, man attempts to achieve authenticity of being by recreating massive simulations of past memories. In the process he becomes a God of sorts. Prose is often straightforward, frequently funny, and the book features a sometimes...more

Odd. Unsettling. Kind of sputtered to it s conclusion, but unlike anything I have ever read before. After suffering a serious injury and receiving a massive settlement for it, man attempts to achieve authenticity of being by recreating massive simulations of past memories. In the process he becomes a God of sorts. Prose is often straightforward, frequently funny, and the book features a sometimes stifling attention to detail. You'll be hard pressed to find a more unique book.   hide

Remainder is about obsession. I also believe it is about what would happen if a retard won the lottery. Shit, I guess 'retard' isn't very PC of me. It's also a very vague term. I mean, is he retarded in that he's just slow, or maybe underformed... or is it something with a fun name like Down Syndrome. Well, this guy probably has autism. He's just really into himself and has no fucking idea what...more

Remainder is about obsession. I also believe it is about what would happen if a retard won the lottery. Shit, I guess 'retard' isn't very PC of me. It's also a very vague term. I mean, is he retarded in that he's just slow, or maybe underformed... or is it something with a fun name like Down Syndrome. Well, this guy probably has autism. He's just really into himself and has no fucking idea what anyone else thinks. So yeah, autism. But not in the fun savante way like Rainman. Do they even explain why the movie is called Rainman? Doesn't Tom Cruise get him laid? Imagine that, I mean I've woken up beside a few people I regret, but never a retard. Shit... there's that word again.   hide

I read this because it placed 2nd in The Morning News' Tournament of Books and sounded interesting. (ToB is how I discovered Cloud Atlas.) Completely rewired my brain for a day and a half while I was in the middle two-thirds, then ended somewhat unsatisfyingly. I awoke as from a dream. A lot of reviews have cited negatively the blankness of the narrator, but I found him frustrating, sad, and...more

I read this because it placed 2nd in The Morning News' Tournament of Books and sounded interesting. (ToB is how I discovered Cloud Atlas.) Completely rewired my brain for a day and a half while I was in the middle two-thirds, then ended somewhat unsatisfyingly. I awoke as from a dream. A lot of reviews have cited negatively the blankness of the narrator, but I found him frustrating, sad, and funny - as well as an interesting metaphor for the insulating, reality-removing power of wealth. This is the second, um, text I've come across in the past month about brain damage. (The other is the movie The Lookout.) In each, the first third is a detailed study of what it would be like to live with that impairment. Despite their very different circumstances (The Lookout is a janitor, the Remainder guy wins a millionaire settlement), the subjective experience is very similar. Both end in mayhem of a very similar kind - to less than satisfying effect. Can this type of story be done better?   hide

A total waste of my time