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De opkomst en ondergang van grootmachten

Tom Rachman,

Tjadine Stheeman (translator),

Onno Voorhoeve (translator)

3.65 · Rating details · 7,228 ratings · 1,128 reviews

Niemand weet precies hoe Tooly Zylberberg eigenaar is geworden van het noodlijdende boekwinkeltje World’s End in de heuvels van Wales. De Russische immigrant Humphrey leert haar schaken, maar is dat zijn enige rol? Hoe zit het met Sarah, die uit het niets opduikt in Tooly’s leven, en net zo snel weer verdwijnt? En wie is Venn, de obscure maar charismatische man die iederee ...more

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Published 2014 by Agathon

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Feb 26, 2014 Rebecca rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: giveaways-winner, best-of-2014, bibliophiles-delight, laugh-out-loud, metafiction, hay-on-wye

(4.5) A novel that requires – and rewards – patience. The story of plucky bibliophile Tooly Zylberberg and her cast of wildly unsuitable parental figures, spanning more than two decades and ranging from Brooklyn to Bangkok (with stop-offs at a musty bookshop in rural Wales), takes its time revealing major secrets. We don’t learn who her real parents are until over two-thirds of the way through, for instance.

The fact that her parentage is just by the by, though, forms a central point of the book: ...more

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Jun 13, 2014 Jareed rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Those looking for truth within themselves

Shelves: fictional-novels, arc

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
―Gabriel García Márquez

And indeed life has been this constant making and remaking of who we are, it is, the uncompromising search of meaning and truth. We all go out in the world, frantically searching for something, something we may feel only in vague stirrings, and somet ...more

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May 12, 2014 Angela M rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley-reviews

How can you not love someone named Tooly Zylberberg, who loves to read and won't finish a book because she doesn't want the people she meets in books to end with "a blank space at the bottom of the final page”? We first meet Tooly when she is in her early 30’s and is the owner of a failing bookshop in in Caerfenog ,Wales
The novel takes place in three different decades and we get to know Tooly at 9, in her early 20’s as well as in the present day. We follow Tooly around the world to Sydney, Bang

How can you not love someone named Tooly Zylberberg, who loves to read and won't finish a book because she doesn't want the people she meets in books to end with "a blank space at the bottom of the final page”? We first meet Tooly when she is in her early 30’s and is the owner of a failing bookshop in in Caerfenog ,Wales
The novel takes place in three different decades and we get to know Tooly at 9, in her early 20’s as well as in the present day. We follow Tooly around the world to Sydney, Bangkok, New York, Wales and none of it is in in chronological order. Sound confusing? Surprisingly, it wasn’t, as long as I paid attention to the year on the chapter and then I just got into where Tooly was, at what age and who she was with. You want to know just how she got there as much as she does, and her journey to find out about her past becomes yours.

I love Tooly at 9. She's smart and bold and independent because she's learned to be that way after a vagabond life with her father, Paul. They run from city to city and school to school and it seems as if she really needs more looking after than Paul manages
Enter Sarah, Tooly's irresponsible mother who can barely look after herself. Who are these people that Tooly stays with Humphrey, the loveable old Russian (?) who gives her cola for breakfast, reads to her from philosophical and political tomes. He collected books. “This was less a library than an orphanage. His stated plan was to read everything.”
There’s the mysterious scammer, Venn who Tooly idolizes and wants to please. In the meantime, Sarah comes and goes in and out of Tooly’s life. At 21, she meets Duncan who in her mind is the mark that will help her get Venn to do a “project” with her. Duncan actually turns out to be the friend that Tooly never really had.

The sad story of Tooly's childhood unfolds in these chapters but it is not until the end that Tooly discovers and remembers who it was that really cared about her. Maybe it was a little too neatly tied up in the end, but this didn’t take away from how moved I was by Tooly’s story.

Definitely recommended!
Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book.
...more

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May 19, 2014 Diane S ☔ rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book has some of the best characters in it, one could look far and wide and never find such an interesting character as Humphrey. He quite won me over, wish I knew a person just like him. I would spend hours with him, drinking instant coffee, which I do not like but he did, discussing thoughts and philosophers with him. Playing chess and ping pong. This story though is about Tooley, we meet her when she is nine, and then in alternating chapters, when she is nineteen and then when she is gro ...more

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Jun 06, 2014 ·Karen· rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2014, f2f-book-group-reads

Look! STARS! Five of them, no less.

This may well be my book of the year. I wondered, after The Imperfectionists, I wondered how Mr. Rachman would follow that, where he would go from there. He went EVERYWHERE. A quarter century of this planet's history, an intriguing puzzle to be solved, narrated through characters that steal your heart, told with wit and laugh-out-loud funny dialogue, built in a dizzying architectural marvel that follows the dictate of the fonction fabulatrice referenced therein ...more

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Apr 12, 2014 Abby rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

You know that thing that happens when you love a writer's first effort -- a debut novel or maybe short stories -- and you look forward with great anticipation to what he or she will do next only to be disappointed? Yeah, that.

"The Imperfectionists" was a delight -- wry, witty, tightly and cleverly constructed. "The Rise & Fall of Great Powers," Tom Rachman's second novel, is more ambitious, a lot longer and a lot flabbier. Tooly Zylberberg is called to New York from her quaint, failing bookshop ...more

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Jun 16, 2014 Shelby *trains flying monkeys* rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley, read-2014, dnf

I hate giving up on a book. HATE it. My eyes keep glazing over reading this one though. I should love it. I mean Tooley owns a bookstore! Which I haven't heard her mention much of yet in the book.
I think this might be one of those love or hate books and of course here I am hating. I can't figure out what the hell is going on in it.
DNF at 30%

But look! I'm using Brad Pitt...so it's not all bad.

I received an ARC copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ...more

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May 27, 2014 Patrice Hoffman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: provided-by-netgalley

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman, can be summed up entirely by stating it's a great read. For most, that simple statement isn't enough so... here's my review:

Tooly Zylberberg has found it much easier to live in a world of solidarity with the characters she meets along the way in the many books she's read. It's only befitting that she owns a bookstore where she can cultivate this love of the written word. She has little interaction with any outsiders besides Fogg, her employee, but The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman, can be summed up entirely by stating it's a great read. For most, that simple statement isn't enough so... here's my review:

Tooly Zylberberg has found it much easier to live in a world of solidarity with the characters she meets along the way in the many books she's read. It's only befitting that she owns a bookstore where she can cultivate this love of the written word. She has little interaction with any outsiders besides Fogg, her employee, but doesn't seemed too worried about it. That is until a man from her past informs her that he's been looking for her. Something's happened to her father.

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers shifts between three distinct periods in Tooly's life that offer readers a glimpse into her past, even more distant past, and her present. Almost immediately it is obvious that Tooly isn't being raised as most children are. She travels the world with a man named Paul. Never staying in one place longer than a year. It is age ten, during their stay in Thailand, where Tooly's life goes in a completely different direction and she makes a decision that leads her to question everything that's ever happened before and since.

I enjoyed reading every page of this book. Rachman is one helluva writer... for lack of better words. I'm no master lyricist. His writing is poetic, eloquent, and alluring. There wasn't one moment I wasn't completely interested in this novel, nor did I feel the need to race ahead in an effort to get past the boring parts. Don't even get me started on the depth of each character introduced in this novel. Rachman is one helluva writer.

At the very heart, most basic part, of this novel is a mystery. Who is this woman Tooly? Where did she come from? Why was she with this man Paul only to end up with another strange hosts of guardians? There's Sarah who is one disappearing act after another. The enigmatic Venn that Tooly is completely entranced with. Last, the funny talking russian old man Humphrey who seems to have a new story about his past each time he's asked. Paul, and this band of misfits all had a hand in raising the now introverted Tooly.

It has been a long time since I've read a book that made me want to laugh and cry all on one page. I don't mean to imply that this novel is sad, but my heart really goes out to some of these characters. They were all bonded to each other because of Tooly. Content to playing the background, to blend in as much as possible, she never realized the importance of her role in the lives of the ones she found the least exciting and that made me sad. I admit I'm sensitive like that.

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers is the journey of a woman who's trying to decipher the cryptic nature of her past and in turn finds herself. As she pieces her life together, sorting through the lies and the truth, between the past and the present, Tooly find that maybe the ones who loved her most, were the ones always there.

Copy provided by Random House Publishing via Netgalley

...more

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May 29, 2014 Julie Christine rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2014, contemporary-fiction

Three and a half stars.

"... the other side of original is gimmicky. As much as I enjoyed this clever, sharp debut, I hope the next trick Rachman pulls out of his pen is completely different. The magic works only the first time."

Is it odd to quote oneself in a book review? Odd or not, I just did. This was the closing comment to my review of Tom Rachman's novel, The Imperfectionists. Did the magic work a second time?

Once again, Rachman upends conventional structure with a novel that flings itsel Three and a half stars.

"... the other side of original is gimmicky. As much as I enjoyed this clever, sharp debut, I hope the next trick Rachman pulls out of his pen is completely different. The magic works only the first time."

Is it odd to quote oneself in a book review? Odd or not, I just did. This was the closing comment to my review of Tom Rachman's novel, The Imperfectionists. Did the magic work a second time?

Once again, Rachman upends conventional structure with a novel that flings itself around time and geography with a cast of rich, outrageous and endearing characters. The constant is Matilda "Tooly" Zylberberg, a young woman whose peripatetic life we follow in zigzag fashion from 2011 in the Welsh village of Caergenog, 1988 in Bangkok, and 2000 in New York. This is a novel about the search of self, the meaning of home, and what makes a family. It is also a reflection of the historical events that shaped the writer, and this reader, who are of an age. Beginning at the waning of the Cold War, through the bombing of the Twin Towers and the subsequent wars, to the hyper-connectivity of the Internet Age, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers gives plenty of elbow room for philosophical commentary.

It is also the story of loneliness. Despite its vast time frame and globetrotting setting, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers is claustrophobic in affect. Tooly belongs nowhere and to no one, for even those who claim her do so only to further their own agendas, a skill Tooly learns and employs when her time comes to survive on her own. Her world is small because she is so very alone. She is a prisoner who travels freely, but who is dependent upon the largesse of her captors. To whom she belongs, how she was captured, and why, and how she sets herself free are the mysteries that propel the narrative forward through time and place.

Only reading--that beautiful physicality of books, the feel and smell and look of a real book--provides Tooly with a sense of comfort and belonging. This is the second novel I've read this year which uses literature as an emblem of refuge and healing--Niall Williams's tender History of Rain being the first--and once again, Charles Dickens is the author's hero-writer.

Rachman sometimes runs afoul of his own whimsy and cleverness. The Rise & Fall of Great Powers oozes with quirkiness that makes me twitchy and creates an emotional distance that renders the characters on the other side of plausible. It's not the suspension of disbelief that I mind-not in the slightest. But at times the tricky structure, writer-y writing, and the sheer volume of words diminishes the novel's strength. Sometimes it feels like Rachman is hiding behind his own big words and big ideas. I admit to eyes glazing over at the characters' many moments of pontificating, because they felt too much like the author's own.

There is much to admire and adore in The Rise & Fall of Great Powers, Tooly being a character I will not soon forget. But I end this review with the same sentiment as I started: "... the other side of original is gimmicky. As much as I enjoyed this clever, sharp debut, I hope the next trick Rachman pulls out of his pen is completely different. The magic works only the first time."

...more

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Jun 08, 2014 Sue rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2014, net-galley, fiction

All of life is a search for the truth of ourselves. Each of us undertakes this quest in his/her own way. Tooly has quite a unique odyssey which becomes more engrossing as the pages pass. The story is told in multiple parts --- 1988, 1999 and 2011 ---as Tooly moves in and out of various "lives" from the time she is 10 years old. Her childhood, her life, in fact, is not the stuff of everyday reading. We readers wonder along with her.

But enough about that. Too much said would be too spoil the story ...more

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Mar 17, 2014 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read2014, netgalley, reviewcopy, ebooks, location-usa-ny, location-thailand, location-wales

I knew if this book was anything like The Imperfectionists, which I loved, that I would read it quickly. I did read this in under 24 hours, at least a fourth between 3 and 6 am when I couldn't sleep. It is fast paced and contains a mystery that the different stories and time periods intertwine to expose by the end of the book, so that kept me reading, but the author didn't make me feel the deep compassion I had for the characters in The Imperfectionists. Some, but not all, in fact I felt more fo I knew if this book was anything like The Imperfectionists, which I loved, that I would read it quickly. I did read this in under 24 hours, at least a fourth between 3 and 6 am when I couldn't sleep. It is fast paced and contains a mystery that the different stories and time periods intertwine to expose by the end of the book, so that kept me reading, but the author didn't make me feel the deep compassion I had for the characters in The Imperfectionists. Some, but not all, in fact I felt more for less major characters like Humphrey than for Tooly herself.

Tooly's story is told in three parts - 1988, when she is a child in Thailand; 1999 when she is dating a law student in New York City, and 2011 when she is the owner of a failing used bookstore on the border of England and Wales. Tooly is a loner, partly because she did not have a normal upbringing (to say the least, but I won't say more as that is what is unveiled through the novel), but also because it makes life easier.

"Friends required a life story. Your past mattered only if others sought to know it - it was they who demanded that one possessed a history. Alone, you could do without."

And Tooly has managed most of her life this way, until something happens that makes her curious to really nail down what exactly happened when she was younger. And there the novel begins.

In another author's hands, these characters would have been more contrasted, more obviously conniving or evil when needed. I was thinking of what would have happened if Patricia Highsmith had written it, in particular. There are fewer deaths than a Highsmith novel, and you have to read more in between the lines, but I think in the end I liked this somewhat nebulous noncommittal treatment. Almost every character was a bit unsettling and that helped move everything forward to the end.

Other bits I liked, behind a spoiler since some are a bit spoilery:(view spoiler) ...more

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May 13, 2014 Ron Charles rated it liked it · review of another edition

In 2010, Tom Rachman published a witty novel about a failing newspaper based in Rome that charmed a great number of people, particularly journalists, who wished their failing newspapers were based in Rome. Proving himself a clever ringmaster of quirky, ink-stained hacks, Rachman constructed “The Imperfectionists” as a series of character studies intricately snapped together to produce unexpected moments of tragicomedy.

His new novel, “The Rise & Fall of Great Powers,” is weightier, more focused a ...more

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May 30, 2015 Mona rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-about-books

Fun, but Contrived and Cutesy-Poo

Some people are just gonna love this book. I'm afraid I'm not one of them, although I did find the story and characters engaging and entertaining at times.

Besides, it was yet another novel that's a love story to books, book stores, and readers. How could I resist?

The book was something of a mashup. It was a sort of contrived, pseudo-postmodern crazy quilt. Ok, I'm exaggerating. There was a method to this madness. It was planned (sort of). It just didn't entirely ...more

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May 23, 2014 Dana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley, 2014

That reveal...that ending...my poor heart. This is such a beautifully written novel, although I am not sure if I loved it or hated it to be honest. I spent majority of the novel completely confused as to what was happening and I hated all of the characters. This sentiment might make you think that this leans me more towards disliking this but...I don't know! If anything can be gleamed about this novel from my sorry ramblings be it that this novel is a cruel beauty.

Note: I received this book for ...more

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Apr 12, 2014 switterbug (Betsey) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

There are unforgettable female protagonists in novels, such as Anna Karenina, Jo March, and Scarlett O’Hara, distinguished figures of fiction. Regarding more recent novels (of the 21st century), no heroine has enchanted me quite so much as Teresita Urrea of THE HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER (even if she is from a different century). That is, until Rachman’s Tooly Zylberberg. All my favorite fictional females are inimitable, and destined to be copied by later writers —iconoclasts that in later years bec There are unforgettable female protagonists in novels, such as Anna Karenina, Jo March, and Scarlett O’Hara, distinguished figures of fiction. Regarding more recent novels (of the 21st century), no heroine has enchanted me quite so much as Teresita Urrea of THE HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER (even if she is from a different century). That is, until Rachman’s Tooly Zylberberg. All my favorite fictional females are inimitable, and destined to be copied by later writers —iconoclasts that in later years become icons.

Tooly possesses that natural charisma and disarming independence that distinguishes an unforgettable character—a woman that desires love, but dares to live outside its chambers. Too smart to dumb down, she’s a titanic presence in a diminutive frame, who often feels there’s no niche where she belongs. She concedes that she doesn’t know where she’s from; she’s on a journey to discover who she is-- literally.

At 32, Tooly (Matilda) lives above the money-losing bookshop business that she owns in a centuries old former pub (which she rents) in a tiny mountainside village in Wales. There are so few people who live in this isolated berg that it would be all but impossible to keep it afloat with customers. Her one employee is Fogg, his name an obvious ironic allusion to Phileas Fogg in Verne’s AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS. Rachman’s Fogg, who travels thousands of miles in books, never leaves this miniscule village, but develops an imaginary parallel life as a globe-trotting academic and Francophile. He’s a contemplative fellow who feels a kinship to Tooly.

“We’re like a lost tribe, people like us…No traditions, no birthright…All of us have an acorn of sadness…You notice our tristesse, only in passing, like a door to a small room in a house where outsiders may not enter.”

Other than Fogg, and a music teacher that coaches her in ukulele lessons, Tooly’s link with other people are limited to those in the literature that she reads. She is largely an autodidact, who received a boost in education as a child, when she met an aging Russian, a poor and hermetic scholar and consultant for wealthy book collectors named Humphrey, whose English is full of charming malapropisms. Humphrey introduced her to the finest minds on the printed page.

Tooly’s life was an aggregation of never-ending voyages-- a disrupted childhood of itinerant adventures with alternate caregivers and one enigmatic, and increasingly apparitional, avuncular figure named Venn. Venn was all-points latitude and longitude, the vortex on which all her emotional life was conveyed. But, for a decade now, he seemed to have dropped off the earth. The one constant companion in her life was literature, especially Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, which she had read countless times.

Rather than lay out the entire plot and all the juicy characters, I would rather persuade you to just open this book and travel back and forth in diverse countries and various decades—1988, 1999, 2000, and 2011, including several chapters headed with beginnings, middles, and ends in backwards order. All this anarchic time is not without purpose, however. The story develops as the pieces and people influential in Tooly’s life are revealed in measured moments and junctures. Tooly mines the seminal events in her life, delving into her biological heritage and her inclination to repeatedly uproot.

Rachman’s prose is nothing less than delicious, with quotable passages and phrases and superbly captured settings. The tone and voice is warm, wry, tender, and even scalding at times. It is tied together organically, not one disingenuous moment in this story. Even as Tooly is beguiled, she is the most beguiling of all. Her artless social skills are offset by a learned ability to cross thresholds, both mental and physical.

“It was intoxicating, the unholy control of another human…--engineering another’s fate was not necessarily destructive.” ...more

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Feb 14, 2014 Debbie "DJ" rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley, fiction

I received this early copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you NetGalley!

I loved the way this book was written. It follows the main character, Tooley, in three different time periods. First from a child beginning around age six, then into her pre-teen and teen years, and lastly into her current life, early to mid twenty's. Just as I was getting completely enthralled in one time period, the author would switch to another. Each chapter gave me a little slice of her life, lea I received this early copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you NetGalley!

I loved the way this book was written. It follows the main character, Tooley, in three different time periods. First from a child beginning around age six, then into her pre-teen and teen years, and lastly into her current life, early to mid twenty's. Just as I was getting completely enthralled in one time period, the author would switch to another. Each chapter gave me a little slice of her life, leaving me with so many questions. In her early years, who are her birth parents, and why is she she being moved to different countries by a single male? Could he be her father? In her teen years why is she living with strange characters? Is one of them her mother? Why does she have such a deep connection to another older male? And in her current life how did she become a bookstore owner, and why is she traveling to another country in search of childhood answers?

I felt this book uses these very questions to explore deeper topics. The first being what makes a family. What if you could choose your own family at an early age? How would your life unfold if you stuck to the people you truly wanted to be around, rather than your birth parents, or "normal" family. The author uses one of his characters to state, "in normal families everything needs explanations and apologies. You end up shackled to people you have nothing in common with."

Another area the author explores is who are we as people. Tooley was told at age 10 to invent whatever kind of person she wanted to be. The question being, is one's personality defined at birth, leaving us at our core essentially the same person, or can we truly invent whatever kind of person we want to be. The author cleverly shows us through different characters what each side of this philosophy looks like. One states, " consistency in character is a form of tragedy."

My favorite was the authors take on books and their meaning and impact in our lives. Tooley believes people keep their books not because they will read them again, but because they contain pieces of our past. Who we were at a particular time and place. I loved how the author was able to teach us something about ourselves and the books we read through the very medium of a book. My favorite quote regarding books was "Books are like mushrooms, they grow when you are not looking. Books increase by rules of compound interest: one interest leads to another interest, and compounds into a third. Next, you have so much interest there is no closet space left in closet." One awesome read! ...more

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Apr 28, 2014 Susan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Matilda (Tooly) Zylberberg runs a small bookshop in Wales, spending much of her time attending various evening classes, while her only employee, Fogg, tidies the shelves and goes to fetch coffee. However, this quiet and bookish way of life is not representative of most of Tooly’s experience. When an old acquaintance, Duncan McGrory, contacts her from New York to say that he urgently needs to talk to her about her ‘father,’ she is forced to reconsider her past.

It is difficult to really explain th ...more

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Mar 12, 2014 Chris rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction, first-reads

This was originally published here.

Sad to say, since I received this for free from Goodreads, but this is just not a very good book. The characters are two-bit stereotypes, the sense of place and setting is unconvincing, the writing is dull, and I came to find myself zoning out on the bus, listening in to other peoples’ conversations — addiction, rental prices, who’s dating who — rather than return to this novel’s overpowering blandness.

Tooly, an American running a nigh-insolvent bookstore in ru ...more

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May 31, 2014 Britany rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

1988, 2000, and 2011. Three different times in Tooly Zylerberg's life that we the reader go through over and over again.

At first the structuring of the chapters in that way was confusing and hard to follow, then I recognized the pattern, and it became easier to figure out. Tooly grew up with the weirdest life I've ever heard about. For this creativity alone, it's worth a read. You read this book, constantly trying to figure out what's real and what is made up. My favorite parts of this were of ...more

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May 25, 2014 Chrissie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: wales, life-stages, audible, fiction, mystery, thailand, usa, 2014-read

Here is a book that flips between three different times 1988 (Tooly is nine), 1999-2000(Tooly is twenty and then twenty-one) and finally 2011. Here finally is a book that profits from time-switches, a modern fad typical of so many contemporary books. This construction turns the story into a mystery. It couldn't and shouldn't be written any differently. This book is perfect for you, if you want to solve a puzzle. You will solve that puzzle along with Tooly, the main character. Tooly is in her thi ...more

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Jul 14, 2016 Roger Brunyate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Life Stories

Captured instantly by the delicious opening chapter of this book, with its warm characters and intelligent humor, I wanted nothing more than to plunge into the rest. It says something that my interest never flagged, even though circumstances forced me to spread it out over six days. Indeed, I may even have benefited by having time to let the intriguing protagonist get into my bloodstream, and ponder the gradually unfolding mystery of her life story.

When we first meet her, Tooly Zylbe Life Stories

Captured instantly by the delicious opening chapter of this book, with its warm characters and intelligent humor, I wanted nothing more than to plunge into the rest. It says something that my interest never flagged, even though circumstances forced me to spread it out over six days. Indeed, I may even have benefited by having time to let the intriguing protagonist get into my bloodstream, and ponder the gradually unfolding mystery of her life story.

When we first meet her, Tooly Zylberberg is the owner of a run-down second-hand bookstore in the Black Mountains of Wales, hoping to profit from spillover trade from nearby Hay-on-Wye. It is clear that this is never going to be a money-making proposition, but her book-inspired conversations with her impulsive young assistant Fogg seem compensation enough. At this point, we know little of Tooly, save that she is in her early thirties and bought the bookstore on a whim. The year is 2011.

The rest of the novel will flip between short chapters set in three periods: 1988, when Tooly is a child in Bangkok, 1999–2000, which sees her as a young adult in New York, and 2011, which has a number of other settings as well as Wales. We will meet her in the company of at least three men, any one of whom might be her father, although none quite seems to fill the bill, and in occasional contact with one charismatic but unstable woman who may or may not be her mother. What is her family background? Has she perhaps been abducted? Who is paying the admittedly small amounts necessary for her to live her lifestyle as a questing free spirit? We discover the truth only gradually, each chapter in one decade providing a nugget of information to illuminate our reading of the next. This is no mere authorial contrivance—Tooly herself does not know all the answers; the essential action of the book is her search for her own heritage.

Rereading my summary above, I see that the novel might come over as unduly fanciful, with Tooly as a Holly Golightly figure, or female Holden Caulfield, who never sets foot on solid ground. And I have to admit that, in maintaining the mystery of his supporting characters, especially the three men, Rachman must avoid giving them the solidity that would serve as an anchor for Tooly's high-flying kite. He will bring them all into focus by the end of the book, but the strategy is indeed a risk. But it matters less than you would think, because Tooly herself is her own anchor, rooted by her warmth, her intelligence, her autodidact's curiosity, and her willingness to do anything to preserve a friendship. The publisher calls Tooly "one of the most engaging heroines in contemporary literature." From the enchanting beginning to the delectably understated ending, I totally agree.

======

I mentioned Salinger and Capote as possible godfathers for Tooly Zylberberg, and I am sure there are many others. But I was also haunted by hints of big novels from the last year or so: Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, for the way one section alters our perspective on the one before; Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, for the young protagonist, benevolent older mentor, and several episodes on the fringes of legality; Bob Shacochis' The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, for its view of a character reinventing herself each decade; and Marissa Pessl's Night Film, for the intricacy of its New York adventures. But Rachman is more real than Atkinson, more sympathetic than Tartt, less political than Shacochis, and far more believable than Pessl. He is only himself, in a novel that is far more integrated than his previous book, The Imperfectionists, and whose warm heart promises even more to look forward to in the future. ...more

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May 08, 2014 Dianne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2014

So many authors now use the gimmick of jumping back and forth in time in their narrative. I don’t have a strong opinion either way, as long as the technique doesn’t diminish from the flow of the story. Most of the time, it seems to be a wash – I think that the story could have been equally effective told in a linear fashion. Once in a while, though, an author uses the alternating timelines so masterfully that I can’t imagine the story unfolding in any other way – this is one of those books.

At it ...more

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Jun 25, 2014 Andrew rated it it was ok · review of another edition

“Fogg, it’s pointless. The only person in there who’s relevant is someone I’m not dealing with. If I trusted her to say anything useful, I’d have tried ages ago.”

“Go on—give us a name.”

“Even if you got her, she’s never saying anything by phone. And I’m not taking a pilgrimage to wherever she is now. She’d make me, for sure. Keep in mind that whatever I spend on travel comes straight out of World’s End—you know that, right? Its funds are mine. If I go broke, that’s it for the shop. This isn’t wor “Fogg, it’s pointless. The only person in there who’s relevant is someone I’m not dealing with. If I trusted her to say anything useful, I’d have tried ages ago.”

“Go on—give us a name.”

“Even if you got her, she’s never saying anything by phone. And I’m not taking a pilgrimage to wherever she is now. She’d make me, for sure. Keep in mind that whatever I spend on travel comes straight out of World’s End—you know that, right? Its funds are mine. If I go broke, that’s it for the shop. This isn’t worth it.”

But that was untrue. The mere prospect of meeting someone from that time had already brought her rushing out here. And this visit with Humphrey—even speaking aloud the name Venn again—had stirred up such disquiet, all the puzzles as upsetting as ever. And Sarah had been there for all of it.

“Let’s find the lady,” Fogg proposed. “Then you can decide what’s to be done.”

“You must be enjoying it alone,” Tooly said. “Doing everything you can to keep me away.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Only, it’s a bit of a mystery story now.”

***

You know that feeling you get when you find a book that really sings to you? Great, then you probably also know what it’s like to eagerly dive into an author’s follow-up, only to find it seems to have either lost or jettisoned all that joy and wonderment that made their first book so—I hate this word but it fits—unputdownable. Such is my experience with Tom Rachman’s The Rise & Fall of Great Powers, his second book following 2010’s gloriously offbeat The Imperfectionists.

The Rise & Fall of Great Powers is the story of Matilda “Tooly” Zylberberg, owner and operator of the World’s End—a failing bookstore located in Caergenog, a small village of only a few hundred souls just across the Welsh border. She lives a relatively quiet existence alongside her co-worker Fogg, until an ex-boyfriend from more than ten years earlier contacts her about her ailing father, back in New York, which gives her reason to up and cross the pond in order to attempt to fill in some of the holes in her past.

Except it’s not that simple. From 2011, where the novel opens, Rachman jumps us back to 1999/2000 and 1988, opening additional windows on Tooly’s life in Manhattan near the turn of the millennium at age twenty, and diving all the way back to her childhood as she moves with her father Paul from Australia to Bangkok, Thailand. The novel continues in this fashion, tripping chapter by chapter between these three time periods as the narratives in each unfold linearly. Along the way, we’re given slow glimpses into Tooly’s past as her life in each time period unfolds like an iris gradually widening. In Manhattan, we meet Duncan (the aforementioned ex) and his roommates Xavi and Emerson; in Bangkok, we first get to know Paul, Tooly’s is-he-or-isn’t-he father, and then the flighty and unreliable Sarah, Venn the mastermind, and the lovely, loving Humphrey, a Russian ex-pat with a penchant for chess and the literature of great thinkers.

According to the book’s description, the strange odds and ends of Tooly’s youth “mystify and worry her still.” One of the larger problems with this novel is that at no point does this statement ring true. Yes, Tooly attempts to uncover pieces of her past she’d either forgotten or not entirely understood, but in no way does she seem especially bothered by any of it. She feels rather empty for most of the novel, a seemingly emotionless slate spurned to uncover the truth of her past more because the novel requires her to do so and not because she genuinely wants to investigate.

This apparent apathy and lack of momentum feeds into the second problem I had with the novel: that by the 130-page mark the mystery felt entirely in the narrative’s deliberate patchwork structure, and not at all in the characters or the actual details of Tooly’s life. One gets the impression that were the novel to be written in a linear fashion it would lose much if not almost all of its manufactured mystery. It’s only really when Fogg announces on page 144 that the narrative is indeed a mystery that one gets the impression they’re working hard to figure anything out.

But the worst offender, the thing that ultimately killed this title for me and made it a hell of a slog to get through, is that only Humphrey is at all likable, and most of the other characters feel like surface-level approximations of characters from a Wes Anderson film, oozing quirk for quirk’s sake; several times while reading I had the uneasy feeling that I was watching an author attempting to mimic the aesthetic of another without ever fully understanding what it is or why it works.

There’s a great deal of pontificating and long explanations at work in The Rise & Fall of Great Powers. Rachman’s narrative, at once sprawling (over time and place) yet confined and rather small in emotional scope, is populated by frauds and false intellectuals that feel manufactured specifically for a book, in order to craft a strange and magical beast, but only so far as the reader doesn’t slice it open and look beneath the skin to its clockwork interior. On a similar note, the novel’s most interesting stories—Humphrey and Sarah’s backstories—are dictated to us, but not shown, not experienced in any meaningful way other than as content with which to fill in the gaps.

When all is said and done, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers is about a chance for Tooly to not only explore her strange and all over the place childhood in the company of grifters, thieves, and bullshitters, but to discover for herself her own definition of family, and how the men in her life—Paul, Venn, Duncan, and Humphrey—have all in some way embodied the idea of the father figure, though not one of them has been or could be what she really needed.

Whereas The Imperfectionists was a collection of short stories that formed the mosaic of a novel through the strength of its characters, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers is more akin to a series of scenes strung together by plot more than by character—a disjointed and too quiet narrative about one woman’s incredibly eventful yet somehow utterly mundane upbringing. ...more

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May 26, 2014 Larry H rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley

I'd rate this 2.5 stars.

Full disclosure: I received an advance readers copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Matilda "Tooly" Zylberberg is an American living in Wales, the owner of a struggling bookshop. She lives a relatively solitary life, as her only companion (since the shop has so few customers) is Fogg, the rumpled employee she inherited when she bought the store. In 2011, Tooly is a bit of an anachronism, as she lacks the desire or the means to connect with t I'd rate this 2.5 stars.

Full disclosure: I received an advance readers copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Matilda "Tooly" Zylberberg is an American living in Wales, the owner of a struggling bookshop. She lives a relatively solitary life, as her only companion (since the shop has so few customers) is Fogg, the rumpled employee she inherited when she bought the store. In 2011, Tooly is a bit of an anachronism, as she lacks the desire or the means to connect with the outside world virtually, except through the shop's beat-up computer.

But when curiosity gets the best of Tooly, and she cyberstalks former friends on the internet using an alias, she is contacted by an ex-boyfriend, pleading with her to get in touch with him about an important figure from Tooly's past. This reconnection reminds Tooly of her childhood and young adulthood, a mysterious period of time even she doesn't quite understand to this day.

Taken from the life she knew as a young girl, she was raised around the world by a motley crew of people—Humphrey, the grumpy-but-cuddly Russian with a passion for chess, reading, and ping-pong; tempestuous, flighty Sarah; and Venn, the enigmatic leader of the group, who inspired their capers. Tooly learned early on to live a life of mystery and obfuscate the truth from those who sought to know her better, even if that hampered her ability to form long-lasting relationships.

"Friends required a life story. Your past mattered only if others sought to know it—it was they who demanded that one possessed a history. Alone, you could do without."

Hearing from her ex-boyfriend propels Tooly on a journey around the world, desperate to understand the secrets about her childhood that had eluded her for so long. Is anything in her life the way she thought it was? Is her identity predicated on the truth about her life, or is it based on those who raised her? Tooly is both desperate for and afraid of the answers she will find.

I enjoyed Tom Rachman's first novel, The Imperfectionists, but at times I felt as if the characters kept me at arm's length and I never felt fully engaged in their stories. I felt the same way with The Rise & Fall of Great Powers. Told in chapters that shift back and forth through time, from the late 1980s, Tooly's childhood and her first encounters with her abductors; to the late 1990s and early 2000s as she tries forming relationships but keeps running into the truth; to 2011, as she tries to understand who she really is, I felt the book was a little disjointed.

Tooly is an interesting character herself, but I wasn't particularly enamored of many of the characters who surrounded her. I felt as if, much like Tooly did herself with those in her life, Rachman tried to hide the truth about her from the reader, when in reality, the truth was pretty obvious, and I really had trouble getting into the narrative. ...more

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May 21, 2014 Katherine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: family-secrets, gr-first-reads

This is a hard book to review. Why is it so much harder to discuss a book that strikes you down so unexpectedly? Within the first two pages I knew I was going to like, maybe even love, this one. It just had that effect almost instantly. And it turned out to be love.

Tooly Zylberberg is an inspired protagonist. Already worldly by her early thirties, she's nearly settled in Wales with a small used bookshop that she runs with her one associate, Fogg. But as we learn more about her vague history, an This is a hard book to review. Why is it so much harder to discuss a book that strikes you down so unexpectedly? Within the first two pages I knew I was going to like, maybe even love, this one. It just had that effect almost instantly. And it turned out to be love.

Tooly Zylberberg is an inspired protagonist. Already worldly by her early thirties, she's nearly settled in Wales with a small used bookshop that she runs with her one associate, Fogg. But as we learn more about her vague history, and it's confusing turns, a complex story is told. Tooly has no home, only an idea about herself, but even this has to change. With her changing companions and locations, a lush and heartbreaking history is told. Yet through the most frustratingly cruel moments, I never once felt bad for Tooly, that was never felt to be the point of each beguiling reveal. Tooly continues to find her way, and each step is enchanting.

The chapters jump between three different timeframes in Tooly's life, each time revealing a new facet of her story. Her perspective changes with her age, and how she perceives the adults around her. In some later circumstances, she's not given the direct answers she wants, which was frustrating as a reader, but perfect all the same. Sometimes things don't work out, sometimes they do.

The story is also a portrait of how our culture has changed with technology and other advancements in the last few decades. Tooly isn't just a quiet loner. She begrudgingly gets her first real cellphone in 2011, still owns actual mix tapes (that she hardly listens to), and barely knows how to use a computer. This transcends her loner lifestyle into something far more isolated. The people around her are changed, or lead totally different lives, and can hardly move backwards, which is how her disinterest is perceived. In this sense Tooly is an inspiring character for me. While I found some of her choices frustrating, I loved them. I still want to know her, I want her to be happy-- and to forget the unjust occurrences in her life so far. This is a special story. And I want to read more! (especially about Fogg, couldn't get enough of him!)

Highly recommended.

I received my copy for free through the Goodreads First Reads Giveaways in exchange for an honest review. ...more

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Feb 27, 2014 Rebecca rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I was excited to receive an advance copy of this novel and really wanted to love it but it unfortunately it did not live up to my expectations. It took me more than half of the novel to figure out a part of the plot and a few of the characters and by then I didn't even much care. I wanted to be able to follow characters enough to care what happened and never got to that stage. There was so much happening in the late twentieth century more history would have at least given me a blueprint to follo ...more

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Dec 14, 2014 Rachel rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I wanted to like this book because it's about a woman who owns a bookshop in Wales, and the person who recommended it was very enthusiastic and made it sound really interesting. However, it goes downhill from there. One of my creative writing professors once told the class, "If no one cares about your characters, your story has failed." That pretty much sums
up this waste of a tree. After the first couple chapters I was waiting for a reason to care, after 100 pages, 200 pages, end of the book - ...more

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Apr 23, 2018 Lynn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: life-stories

I did not read the back cover when I picked up this book. After 2 hours, I was enthralled. Miraculous story-telling to be topped off with a great narrator!! This novel was interesting, relatable, happy, suspicious, se la vie, suspenseful, sad, politically infused, historically infused, funny, misted with forgiveness, international, cute, and sincere! I will read more of this author.

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May 20, 2014 Maya Panika rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A strange, mysterious story about a lost child's wanderings in the world; a girl who grows up loved, but at a distance; who doesn't like to finish a book because "it was dispiriting to witness her printed companions concluding their lives with a blank space at the bottom of the final page", but who finally learns that to love and accept love, and to see a relationship through to its natural end, is the only way to truly live.
The storyline is broken into three distinct periods of Tooley's life, l A strange, mysterious story about a lost child's wanderings in the world; a girl who grows up loved, but at a distance; who doesn't like to finish a book because "it was dispiriting to witness her printed companions concluding their lives with a blank space at the bottom of the final page", but who finally learns that to love and accept love, and to see a relationship through to its natural end, is the only way to truly live.
The storyline is broken into three distinct periods of Tooley's life, lines that cross, break and re-join, like the relationships she shares with the five main characters who share and define her life: dull, conscientious Paul, frightened by life and lonely-by-choice; polar opposite of selfish, self-obsessed, irresponsible Sarah, who seems more than a little mad; adorably dorkish local boy Fogg, who works at World's End, Tooley's Welsh bookshop, and who might be a little bit in love with his employer; charming, capable, sociopathic Venn - an avatar for the themes of this book, so like a Venn diagram, defined as 'all possible logical relations between a finite collection of sets' - For sets, read lives; separate lives that cross, intersect, merge, and all, it seems, with the user Venn at its centre. And then there's Humphrey Ostropoler, whose life is even more of a lie than that of Tooley, Venn and Sarah. Humphrey is not Tooley's real father, but might as well have been. If Tooley is the soul of the story and Venn its mind, then Humphrey is its beating heart.
The Rise and Fall of Great Powers is a very literary novel in every respect: the narrative is peppered with quotes and bookish themes. Books are virtual characters, and the characters are everything: they are the plot, and the plot is quite complex, but the writing carries it so well, is so readable, that you hardly notice the switches and turns and scattering of clues like tin tacks. The writing is magical; it weaves a spell with its enchanting cast who held me captivated for the three days it took to read this wonderful book; lost in their world - or is that worlds, because each one of them is a world unto themselves; like snails, they carry their universes with them. These characters were as real to me as my neighbours; they still populate my thoughts. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers is the best thing I've read since The Goldfinch. It's a book I can imagine reading and re-reading on a regular basis. I'm already more than a little bit in love with everyone in it.
...more

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Jul 15, 2014 Caroline rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I don't think I have coherent enough thoughts to write this up in paragraph form, so bullet points will have to do:

-Rachman is currently 2 for 2. I think I enjoyed this even more than The Imperfectionists

- There's a line thought by the main character early on in the story: "To disappear into pages was to be blissfully obliterated." That description certainly fit me to a tee while reading this book. I stayed up until almost 5 in the morning on Thursday to finish it. It had been a long time since I don't think I have coherent enough thoughts to write this up in paragraph form, so bullet points will have to do:

-Rachman is currently 2 for 2. I think I enjoyed this even more than The Imperfectionists

- There's a line thought by the main character early on in the story: "To disappear into pages was to be blissfully obliterated." That description certainly fit me to a tee while reading this book. I stayed up until almost 5 in the morning on Thursday to finish it. It had been a long time since I'd gotten that lost in a book, and I really enjoyed it.

-The writing was excellent. Very readable, but not at all derivative.

-It seems that Rachman has a love for writing novels with unique structures. Like The Imperfectionists, the book's structure made it all the more gripping. The main character, Tooly Zylberberg, spends most of the book trying to make sense of her very strange past. The action takes place in 1988, 1999/2000, and 2011, with the three time periods chopped up into different chapters and intermixed. As a result, you find out bits and pieces of Tooly's story out of order, with bits of information discovered in one period coming to bear in the others. It felt like trying to assemble a puzzle along with Tooly - a very clever way to keep the reader engaged.

-As a follow up to the previous point, I spent much of the book in a minor state of dread. A small girl being shuttled around the world by strangers did not, to my mind, have much of a chance of a happy ending (or beginning). I spent a decent chunk of the novel afraid I would be unable to handle "The Reveal."

-The use of the three time periods was also a creative way of showing how much the world changed from the late 1980s until now. This point is made in subtle (and some not-so-subtle) ways throughout the novel. The title of the novel is a nice play on this point.

-Some of the characters were just delightful. I absolutely loved Humphrey. The novel would have been worth reading to get to know him alone. The 1999 version of Duncan and 2011's Fogg were also excellent. As was (for the most part) Tooly herself. It's always nice to have an interesting, relatable main character.

-I found the commentary on technology to be a bit heavy-handed, particularly with regard to the McGrory family in 2011. Yes, technology can be misused and all-consuming, but many people are able to practice moderation and not be completely obnoxious. This really bugged me for a decent chunk of the novel because it just felt sloppy for such a talented author, but Rachman did circle back at the very end of the story and make the point that technology can be used for good. Though I appreciated this attempt at rebalancing, did not completely absolve his prior ham-fistedness.

-I thought the resolution of the mystery of Tooly's life was quite well done. It didn't feel sensational or out of left field. It felt real, like it actually could have happened. My one quibble: (minor spoiler, I suppose?) the reveal of the true nature one of the characters I felt to be a little weak. He just seemed like such a stereotypical and mustache-twirling villain as he explained himself toward the end of the story (as those types of villains are required to do). The story was strong enough that it didn't require a Bad Guy. No black-and-white characters were necessary - the gray ones already created by Rachman would have gotten the job done just fine.

-(Spoiler warning again) The romantic subplot shoehorned in in the last chapter also felt a bit unnecessary, though I appreciate that it allowed Rachman to make the point that we are in charge of ourselves. If we've gotten things wrong in the past or been imbued with a cynical, unhealthy view of the world, we can start making corrections now. That's a nice take on life that I really like. It feels very hopeful and was a nice way to end the novel. ...more

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About Tom Rachman

Tom Rachman

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Tom Rachman is the author of four works of fiction: his bestselling debut, The Imperfectionists (2010), which was translated into 25 languages; the critically acclaimed follow-up, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers (2014); a satirical audiobook-in-stories Basket of Deplorables (2017); and an upcoming novel set in the art world, The Italian Teacher (March 2018).

Born in London and raised in Vancouver, ...more

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“Books," he said, "are like mushrooms. They grow when you are not looking. Books increase by rule of compound interest: one interest leads to another interest, and this compounds into third. Next, you have so much interest there is no space in closet.” — 54 likes

“People kept their books, she thought, not because they were likely to read them again but because these objects contained the past--the texture of being oneself at a particular place, at a particular time, each volume a piece of one's intellect, whether the work itself had been loved or despised or had induced a snooze on page forty.” — 29 likes

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