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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101334.Remainder?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Remainder" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171477621m/101334.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101334.Remainder?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Remainder</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/30757.Tom_McCarthy">Tom McCarthy</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/9817159?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars What a strange book! I had read a couple of reviews and thought I knew where this was going. Wrong. The ending is even stranger than I predicted, and less tidy. 
 
 The protagonist has been in an unspecified accident. Unspecified both because his memory of the event is sketchy and because of the Settlement. He has been compensated for his severe injuries to the tune of 8.5 million pounds. What will he do with this fortune? The suggestions his friends make (charity, or coke and whores) don't move him. 
 
 But then during a party he finds his purpose. He is hiding out in the bathroom when he becomes transfixed by a crack on the wall. The particular shape of the crack stirs a memory--or maybe it's just a vision. It's a similar crack in a similar but not identical bathroom, in a building with marble floors of a particular pattern, and an elderly woman on the floor below who is frying liver (the smell rises up) and a man two floors down who is practicing piano, and out the window is a view of the roof of a nearby building, a red roof populated by black cats. 
 
 The protagonist has been troubled by a certain duplicity in all his actions. He has had to learn to move again, and now all of his actions are prefigured by consciousness--I must move my hand like this in order to do this, and now I am doing it. He wants to act fluidly, to merge consciousness with action, to find authenticity. And he believes he remembers moving fluidly through the kitchen of his apartment (was it his?) in this building (when did he live there?). He will use his fortune to recreate this building. It will be staffed with re-enactors--people playing the roles of the liver-frying woman, the piano-playing man, etc. 
 
 He finds the right facilitator for this monumental project in Nas, a fixer of the highest order who delights in flow charts and diagrams, whose brain whirs like a computer each time he's asked to do something more outre. The building is refurbished and staffed. There are phalanxes of staff--from the front-line re-enactors to the costumers and props people, the architect who builds scale models, caterers and back-ups for back-ups, on and on. 
 
 The building is just the beginning. Other re-enactments are launched, and while the quest makes sense to the protagonist, and while Nas delights in the complexities, the purpose behind the project becomes more and more elusive for the reader. What does the protagonist hope to find in a mundane tyre repair re-enactment? Why must it be run 24 hours a day even in his absence? What attracts him to one random crime over another? What, beyond trouble, can be gained from the pre-enactment of a faux bank robbery?
 
 As soon as the re-enactments cross into crime, or perhaps even sooner, you sense that this will all go horribly wrong. I thought that perhaps the re-enactments would finally lead to a re-enactment of whatever accident originally set the chain in motion--there are many references in the book to infinity and to loops. But the protagonist finds another infinite loop--a plane circling on the runway, first moving out as though to take off, and then back, and then out again. Paused between escape and capture after the bank robbery "re-enactment" does, in fact, go horribly, murderously wrong. 
 
 So what the hell is this all about? 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/653338?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Trish's review
rating:

status: Read in April, 2007

What a strange book! I had read a couple of reviews and thought I knew where this was going. Wrong. The ending is even stranger than I predicted, and less tidy.

The protagonist has been in an unspecified accident. Unspecified both because his memory of the event is sketchy and because of the Settlement. He has been compensated for his severe injuries to the tune of 8.5 million pounds. What will he do with this fortune? The suggestions his friends make (charity, or coke and whores) don't move him.

But then during a party he finds his purpose. He is hiding out in the bathroom when he becomes transfixed by a crack on the wall. The particular shape of the crack stirs a memory--or maybe it's just a vision. It's a similar crack in a similar but not identical bathroom, in a building with marble floors of a particular pattern, and an elderly woman on the floor below who is frying liver (the smell rises up) and a man two floors down who is practicing piano, and out the window is a view ...more What a strange book! I had read a couple of reviews and thought I knew where this was going. Wrong. The ending is even stranger than I predicted, and less tidy.

The protagonist has been in an unspecified accident. Unspecified both because his memory of the event is sketchy and because of the Settlement. He has been compensated for his severe injuries to the tune of 8.5 million pounds. What will he do with this fortune? The suggestions his friends make (charity, or coke and whores) don't move him.

But then during a party he finds his purpose. He is hiding out in the bathroom when he becomes transfixed by a crack on the wall. The particular shape of the crack stirs a memory--or maybe it's just a vision. It's a similar crack in a similar but not identical bathroom, in a building with marble floors of a particular pattern, and an elderly woman on the floor below who is frying liver (the smell rises up) and a man two floors down who is practicing piano, and out the window is a view of the roof of a nearby building, a red roof populated by black cats.

The protagonist has been troubled by a certain duplicity in all his actions. He has had to learn to move again, and now all of his actions are prefigured by consciousness--I must move my hand like this in order to do this, and now I am doing it. He wants to act fluidly, to merge consciousness with action, to find authenticity. And he believes he remembers moving fluidly through the kitchen of his apartment (was it his?) in this building (when did he live there?). He will use his fortune to recreate this building. It will be staffed with re-enactors--people playing the roles of the liver-frying woman, the piano-playing man, etc.

He finds the right facilitator for this monumental project in Nas, a fixer of the highest order who delights in flow charts and diagrams, whose brain whirs like a computer each time he's asked to do something more outre. The building is refurbished and staffed. There are phalanxes of staff--from the front-line re-enactors to the costumers and props people, the architect who builds scale models, caterers and back-ups for back-ups, on and on.

The building is just the beginning. Other re-enactments are launched, and while the quest makes sense to the protagonist, and while Nas delights in the complexities, the purpose behind the project becomes more and more elusive for the reader. What does the protagonist hope to find in a mundane tyre repair re-enactment? Why must it be run 24 hours a day even in his absence? What attracts him to one random crime over another? What, beyond trouble, can be gained from the pre-enactment of a faux bank robbery?

As soon as the re-enactments cross into crime, or perhaps even sooner, you sense that this will all go horribly wrong. I thought that perhaps the re-enactments would finally lead to a re-enactment of whatever accident originally set the chain in motion--there are many references in the book to infinity and to loops. But the protagonist finds another infinite loop--a plane circling on the runway, first moving out as though to take off, and then back, and then out again. Paused between escape and capture after the bank robbery "re-enactment" does, in fact, go horribly, murderously wrong.

So what the hell is this all about? ...less

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