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C

Tom McCarthy

3.16 · Rating details · 3,339 ratings · 505 reviews

The acclaimed author of Remainder, which Zadie Smith hailed as “one of the great English novels of the past ten years,”gives us his most spectacularly inventive novel yet.

Opening in England at the turn of the twentieth century, C is the story of a boy named Serge Carrefax, whose father spends his time experimenting with wireless communication while running a school for dea ...more

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Hardcover, 310 pages

Published September 7th 2010 by Knopf (first published August 5th 2010)

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Aug 20, 2010 MJ Nicholls rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, sassysassenachs

Dear Mr. McC,

I had occasion to read your latest novel, C, over the weekend. I know this will be difficult to hear, given the warm reception to Remainder, but this novel is bloated twaddle.

Don’t get me wrong – I think you have talent. Bags of talent. Why, however, you chose to waste that talent writing a bad novel from the 19th century is beyond me. I mean, you are a modern artist, Tom – why must you borrow from the past to “steer the contemporary novel in exciting directions?” Is this the exciti ...more

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Dec 08, 2010 Adam Floridia rated it it was ok

The book jacket quotations claim this to be “a work of outstanding originality and ambition…An avant-garde epic, the first I can think of since Ulysses” and “The remix the novel has been crying out for.”

Among the many questions this book has left me with, perhaps the most pressing is this: What the hell were those reviewers thinking? This is a fairly straightforward narrative about the life, albeit a life that takes some unusual twists, of a rather dull protagonist. Serge is dull in the sense The book jacket quotations claim this to be “a work of outstanding originality and ambition…An avant-garde epic, the first I can think of since Ulysses” and “The remix the novel has been crying out for.”

Among the many questions this book has left me with, perhaps the most pressing is this: What the hell were those reviewers thinking? This is a fairly straightforward narrative about the life, albeit a life that takes some unusual twists, of a rather dull protagonist. Serge is dull in the sense that modern man is dull: he is, to paraphrase Thoreau, never “quite awake.” There is no “originality” anywhere near akin to Ulysses, nor is McCarthy’s prose a “remix” of any class. Apparently McCarthy did a wealth of research into WWI , deaf education, radio, Egyptian myth, and chemical compounds. However, I don’t see how this makes for a groundbreaking, or even compelling, read. All it does is provide his dull character with a more historically accurate milieu. There is nothing “avant-garde” about it!

Because of the above-noted praise, I expected this to be more like reading Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. (Note: there is an author whose wealth of research actually tied into the plot/theme/essence of his book.) Perhaps it is due to that presupposition that I could find some similarities between Serge Carrefax and Tyrone Slothrop. Both bumble through a World War; both have meaningless sexual liaisons; both indulge in narcotics; both end up on a ship in some way connected to Egyptian mythology; both characters’ minds completely and terminally dissipate; and Slothrop embodies his namesake-anagram “sloth or entropy” while Serge constantly battles with a “restlessness, [which] he comes to realize, is in truth an attempt to achieve its opposite: stasis” (194). Is any of this intentional? I suppose there’s no real way to tell, but I highly doubt it. Is any of this meaningful? Also very doubtful, yet it does bring light to the fact that if you are looking for something, you are bound to find some traces of it.

That brings me to my next point: the confusing yet captivating, curt yet compelling title. So many of the recurrent motifs of the novel start with or contain the letter “C”: communication, chemicals, crypts, codes, copper, contraptions, eleCtricity, inseCts, meChaniCs, and, of course “Carbon: the basic element of life” (292). However, title the book ANY other single letter (except maybe “x”), and I’m sure my mind would be focused on identifying words/motifs that begin with that letter. Again, then, we have an example of the reader having complete control of how to gather meaning from the book. Is this the “avant-garde” nature of the novel? The book itself deals repeatedly with how perception shapes reality and the caul through which we see the world; however, I still think this is a complete stretch! While so much of literary criticism IS based on “bolstered support” (b.s.), there has to be a more concrete, tangible well of evidence within the novel. It is the writer’s job to fill this well and, through his work, develop the salient pools of interpretation. Blah! I’m thinking too much about how this damn book doesn’t provide enough direction for any coherent, meaningful thought. Under-developed theme=lazy writing.

Much of my CritiCism has so far been hurled at the message and style of the book. On a strictly plot basis, the first 75 pages were abysmally boring. This revulsion is even more poignant when you realize that this was not even endured because it was necessary groundwork that would be important later. Nope. The next four sections each jump to a completely new chapter of Serge’s life and can stand, for the most part, independent of one another. At least, though, the rest of the book was an interesting enough story, especially when you read it just for what it is: a creative story about the life of 20th century character, NOT a literary feat that stylistically approaches Ulysses or thematically contains the depth and number of levels of Gravity’s Rainbow.

It’s a deCent book.
...more

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Nov 25, 2020 Hugh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed, booker-shortlist, read-2020, modern-lit

This was another of the books I borrowed from my parents's shelves. My only previous experience of reading McCarthy was Satin Island, which was so over-hyped that I found it very disappointing. This book goes some way towards explaining why he seems so popular with critics.

To some extent the structure is conventional, a chronological and somewhat picaresque journey through the life of Serge Carrefax, which explores some of the key technical advances of the early twentieth century. Without spoili ...more

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Oct 01, 2010 Greg rated it liked it

In my review for Jennifer Egan's newest novel I got carried away with digressions and forgot to mention the most remarkable aspect of the novel: the depth and richness she achieved even though the book was only two hundred and something pages, fifty pages were taken up by the powerpoint chapter, and each chapter had the difficult task of having to introduce a whole new cast of characters.

C has a similar-ish task that Egan's book does. Show a persons life through a series of chapters that captur ...more

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Aug 01, 2010 Marc Kozak rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-from-the-2000s, favorites

We live in an age of information overload. There's as much data around us, visible or invisible, as oxygen practically. I often like to think about what the internet will be like in 5, 10, 20 years. At some point, there's going to be a time when there is just SO much information on it - active and non-active, abandoned Livejournals, decades-old records of transactions, discarded emails, forgotten websites, log after countless log - it will all, theoretically, still be around, and still be availa We live in an age of information overload. There's as much data around us, visible or invisible, as oxygen practically. I often like to think about what the internet will be like in 5, 10, 20 years. At some point, there's going to be a time when there is just SO much information on it - active and non-active, abandoned Livejournals, decades-old records of transactions, discarded emails, forgotten websites, log after countless log - it will all, theoretically, still be around, and still be available to look at. What will we do? Keep it there? Reboot the Matrix?

Tom McCarthy's C takes it a step further. Think about radio waves, satellite transmissions, energy expelled from humans even! Where does it all go? Can we find it again if we need to? There's a lovely little passage where the main character's father goes off on an excited tangent about the possibility of finding and recreating energy and information from people in the past. Is this a way to travel through time? Can we still see a lost loved one? Can we go to the site of the cross and still find Jesus?

Not a lot really happens in C. The pace is super slow, the character's are static, and I can definitely see how many would find this boring - but I was riveted. For the first 200 pages, this was 5 star stuff. McCarthy's prose lazily goes along, covering little but finding ways to stick in your mind. 60 or so pages in, McCarthy describes a boy, on the eve of radio, searching the airwaves, sifting through the static, getting pieces of Morse code, signals from boats, not really looking for anything, but looking for SOMETHING. Something important, something meaningful.

“The air is rich tonight: still and cold, high pressure, the best time of year. . . . Above 650, the clicks dissipate into a thin, pervasive noise, like dust. Discharges break across this: distant lightning, aurora borealis, meteorites. Their crashes and eruptions sound like handfuls of buckshot thrown into a tin bucket, or a bucketful of grain-rich gravy dashed against a wash-boiler. Wireless ghosts come and go, moving in arpeggios that loop, repeat, mutate, then disappear.”

It's beautiful. Throughout there's a melancholic, isolated tone, like you're sitting on a roof on a clear night, looking up at the sky, feeling small but satisfied.

**UPDATED 3/2013 to 5 stars and favorites shelf. It's been more than a year and I still think about this all of the time. ...more

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Sep 23, 2018 Ria rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 4stars

shit is weird. i like it. ~~some parts are hella boring tho~~. don't know if i would recommend it. ...more

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Feb 20, 2015 Violet wells rated it really liked it

Shelves: 21st-century, contemporary-british-fiction

The C of the title ostensibly refers to the novel’s central character Serge Carrefax but late in this novel we discover it also refers to carbon, the basic element of life. The fax in Serge’s surname provides a clue to the novel’s central theme. Communication in all its proliferating forms during the early part of the 20th century. In C we find ourselves in a world of coded transmissions. The establishing and plotting of networks pervades the novel. The continual extending outwards of technology The C of the title ostensibly refers to the novel’s central character Serge Carrefax but late in this novel we discover it also refers to carbon, the basic element of life. The fax in Serge’s surname provides a clue to the novel’s central theme. Communication in all its proliferating forms during the early part of the 20th century. In C we find ourselves in a world of coded transmissions. The establishing and plotting of networks pervades the novel. The continual extending outwards of technology.

The central character Serge barely changes at all during the course of the novel. He’s much the same at twelve as he is in his thirties. Little more than a conduit for knowledge, for the scientific discoveries of the first quarter of the twentieth century, “the source signal” as McCarthy puts it. Serge gathers rather than alchemises information, like a data base. Not that this means his life journey isn’t compelling. On the contrary parts of this novel are genuinely exciting, especially when he’s flying above German trenches as an observer/navigator during World War 1 or when he visits the excavations of Egyptian tombs.

As a boy Serge is fascinated with charting radio waves – “the static is like the sound of thinking.” His father teaches deaf mutes to speak and his sister, with whom he shares a near incestuous relationship, is studying natural history and is especially fascinated by insects. Each in their own way establishing a connection, a network with a mute or invisible world. We then see Serge in a sanatorium seeking a cure for “black bile” when the novel calls to mind Mann’s the Magic Mountain (McCarthy writes as though post-modernism never happened, reminded me at times of Cowper Powys with his hermetically sealed imagination, eccentricity and free range vitality). Then Serge, at the behest of his cryptographer godfather, learns to become a pilot at the advent of World war one. Unlike the usual template of world war one fiction Serge relishes the experience and never wants the war to end. He remains essentially adolescent. He has a fling with a French prostitute. In fact Serge has a casual affair in every section of the novel. This is a more mysterious motif in the novel. There’s a sense Serge has no interest in heredity, in procreation, in love, in reaching out beyond himself. He craves the sexual act in and for itself, disinterested in all its ramifications, a paradox for someone who is obsessed with plotting and connecting networks of communication. We learn from his drawing teacher that Serge is uncomfortable with perspective and depth. He likes flying because it flattens everything out, conceals depth, makes of the world a map.
After the war Serge attends college. By now he is addicted to cocaine. He meets Audrey, an actress who takes him to a séance. Again we find ourselves in the plotting of an invisible kingdom. Serge is determined to find the trick. Finally Serge is sent to Egypt to help set up a worldwide communications network. Here he is shown around the excavations of tombs and the honeycomb nature of the adjoining chambers with all their cryptic significance. Much of the novel’s symbolism is clarified here. All communication is coded.

McCarthy is super intelligent. This doesn’t always work in his favour as a novelist. He perhaps over indulges in his obvious fascination for analysis at times which renders certain sections of the novel hard work, if not plain boring. On the whole though this was a high flying novel with many exciting depth charges. Brilliantly researched and imagined. In many ways C resembles a road novel. A character who never lingers, both physically but more pointedly emotionally, long enough anywhere to forge binding ties with the world around him but who, paradoxically, learns more about how the world communicates. Also, in many ways, it’s a novel about the internet long before the internet existed.
...more

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Mar 23, 2014 Eric rated it liked it

Ambitious
But
Conspicuously so
Doesn't
Every
Fastidious
Golden-
Haired
Individual
Just
Know
Love
May
Never
Overcome
Perilous
Queries,
Radio
Silences,
Theoretical
Undulations,
Variable
Wariness,
X-d out
Yawns
Zymurged?

B

...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, england, historical-fiction, world-war-1, germany, egypt

I do seek out such novels as this that try to make sense of our place in the universe. But as usual I find such books a challenge to read and hard to walk away with an easy message (Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" comes to mind as another example). The book "C" covers the evolution of young Brit Serge from the Edwardian period in rural England, through a stint as an aviator artillery spotter in World War 1, to multicutural Egypt around 1920 in the throes of independence. The overall theme appears ...more

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Mar 12, 2011 Greg Zimmerman rated it liked it

Remember the mid-'90s tune "Everything Zen" by Bush? Remember how everyone loved the song 'cause it rocked, but no one had any idea what it was really about because the lyrics are a goofy mess of seemingly unrelated phrases and ideas? That's kind of how I felt about Tom McCarthy's uber-literary, Man Booker-shortlisted novel C.

There's a pretty straightforward story here that I enjoyed strictly on a "beat and rhythm" level. And then there's what it really means. McCarthy creates a laundry list of Remember the mid-'90s tune "Everything Zen" by Bush? Remember how everyone loved the song 'cause it rocked, but no one had any idea what it was really about because the lyrics are a goofy mess of seemingly unrelated phrases and ideas? That's kind of how I felt about Tom McCarthy's uber-literary, Man Booker-shortlisted novel C.

There's a pretty straightforward story here that I enjoyed strictly on a "beat and rhythm" level. And then there's what it really means. McCarthy creates a laundry list of themes, images and ideas that recur throughout the novel. The meaning of these in terms of how they fit together and complement each other and the story holistically is frequently tough to decipher.

The story is Serge Carrefax's, who is born to English wealth right before the turn of the 20th century. Serge's father runs a school to teach deaf children to talk and experiments with various wireless communication technologies, and so Serge becomes infatuated with the burgeoning field of radio from an early age. He fights in World War I as a navigator, parties in post-war London and then moves on to Egypt to scout locations for new communications ventures.

Serge is a bit of an odd ball. He finds out early in his life during an art class that he "just can't do perspective: everything he paints is flat." And Serge's lack of perspective — in the broader sense of the phrase — is a cornerstone of the story. Serge is an impartial observer to his own life. In fact, oftentimes, the reader is left to form his/her own conclusions about things Serge tells us about, but doesn't understand or doesn't care enough about to explain more fully. Is that his sister he sees having sex in an early scene in the novel? Or is it something else he's describing? It's hard to tell.

The novel also has its own unconventional logic and rules, which McCarthy uses to pack in his list of tropes and tricks. For instance, he'll mention something seemingly inconsequential at the time, only to have the idea re-emerge later in a more symbolic context. Serge and some of his fellow soldiers discuss free will vs. determinism, and then soon after, they're building a tunnel to nowhere and no one is in charge of its construction. The effect is disorienting — it's hard to figure out which instance is the one McCarthy intends you to decode and add to the meaning of the story. And then there is the recurrence of several images and themes: Insects, wireless communication, descriptions of shapes and geometry, and drugs all flit in and out of the novel. What do they all mean?

C is not difficult, as some reviewers have purported. But extracting meaning might be. You constantly feel like you're missing something or left out of a joke or not understanding a reference. And that can make reading frustrating at times. There's so much going on here, it's obviously a novel meant to be read several times — like a Charlie Kaufman or David Lynch film is meant to be viewed several times to pick up a little more each time. The story's interesting, but I'm not sure it's enough of a draw to get me to read again. So, three out of five stars for C. ...more

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Aug 10, 2010 Mark rated it really liked it

Dazzling, like an intricate puzzle with a variety of themes held together with delicate threads. The sets were superb. Each vignette was special and illuminating in its own way. Juxtipositions of science and art, attraction and repulsion, life and death were compelling. The writing was dense throughout, requiring utmost concentration to fully appreciate. For readers so inclined, well worth the effort.

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Sep 25, 2020 Emily rated it really liked it

I couldn’t stay engaged in Remainder, so I tried this one instead. Where Remainder seemed predictable, I could only tell where this was going right at the end. Each turn picked up shreds of foreboding set up at the beginning, but still left many questions of fragments running through my head. I found this book to be intriguing, to satisfyingly leave me unsatisfied— kind of like Men in Space.

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Apr 25, 2011 Gena rated it really liked it

McCarthy, as he demonstrated in Remainder (2005), is interested in the human capacity for perception and cognition stripped of affect, and in the tradition of European modernism he pursues the strange beauty of life's forms understood as forms. This is a way of saying that not every reader will have the patience for this book. I enjoy this kind of writing more than most casual novel-readers, and even I found it tedious at times. The "life story" of protagonist Serge Carrefax is a different kind ...more

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Dec 26, 2010 James Pinakis rated it it was amazing

I absolutely loved this book, though like a few others here I'm not completely sure why. I think it was something to do with the extremely weird feeling I had when reading it, which had a lot to do with the relative blankness of the main character, Serge. I think McCarthy displays a true mastery here, making Serge a kind of conduit (or even an antenna) for information rather than a fully developed human being. He seems to only exist to try and make sense of, and report on, his spectrum of experi ...more

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Nov 26, 2011 David rated it it was ok

I loved the first 50 pages or so, then the writing started to get surprisingly lazy: the sister says something shocking to her brother, and he feels like the earth is falling away from him, stuff like that. And it deteriorates for a time, in the resort section that culminates in a shockingly figurative sex, then makes a come back with seances and the heroin flapper, and then kind-of tappers off again. Serge is boring and an asshole, so that one actively roots against him. Other characters act in ...more

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Nov 23, 2020 Josh rated it liked it

Comparisons to Remainder can be cast away. If Remainder is Louis XIV then this is Hennessy. Chart a course for reviewing C from that starting point. It’s cromulent. It’s capable. McCarthy channels all his amazing powers of research and chicanery to write a novel that bobs about in the water for two hundred pages and then sinks.

3.5

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Sep 25, 2010 Aaron (Typographical Era) rated it it was ok

Shelves: nook, 2010, tom-mccarthy

(http://www.opinionless.com/book-revie...)

Author Tom McCarthy can write, there’s no question there, but what he chooses to write about in C, or rather the way he goes about it, can be painfully dull for a large chunk of the novel. The main character Serge isn’t very likable or relatable either. Though this isn’t always a requirement for a novel to be good, it would have helped if this character had at least some semblance of a direction or goal in mind. Instead he wanders through life as if noth (http://www.opinionless.com/book-revie...)

Author Tom McCarthy can write, there’s no question there, but what he chooses to write about in C, or rather the way he goes about it, can be painfully dull for a large chunk of the novel. The main character Serge isn’t very likable or relatable either. Though this isn’t always a requirement for a novel to be good, it would have helped if this character had at least some semblance of a direction or goal in mind. Instead he wanders through life as if nothing at all matters or is of any consequence.

The theme of communication, or lack thereof, is repeated throughout the novel so much so that it overwhelms much of what is being described of Serge’s life. There are great moments, like the first section of the book that describes his childhood, and a piece in the last section where he cleverly debunks a fraud psychic, but there are interesting plot points that are setup early on that are never fully revealed. Serge’s sister Sophie is such an interesting character and to not receive follow-up or closure in this regard was very disappointing.

Another plus for the novel was McCarthy’s dedication in researching the time period. The school for the deaf, the depictions of the war, and Egypt all felt very real, though once again, my main complaint for historical novels like this is that one character always seems to have all of the information of the world and must explain it in detail to every one else. At different points throughout the book Serge does in fact get “lessons” from the various people he meets on his travels.

I really wish Serge gave a sh*t more. Maybe that’s the way I’m supposed to feel? I don’t know, maybe that’s the point McCarthy is trying to drive home, that in the end nothing is worth caring about very much. If so, that’s a pretty bleak message to put forth and one that I’d rather not dwell upon or support. I can’t help but think that if everyone shared that view the world would be a much worse place to live in. ...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Katie rated it did not like it

OK--I am SO not intellectual enough to enjoy this book. Either that or, it's a case of the Emperor's new clothes. I can't decide which, but I'm leaning towards the latter.

I found large portions of this book dull and tedious. The only reason I pressed on was because I'd read so many reviews of this book that insisted it was a rich and rewarding kaleidoscope of meaning, and how "everything ties together." I was convinced it was all going somewhere. Well, it wasn't--at least in my mind. Then again, ...more

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Feb 14, 2010 Jeff Jackson rated it really liked it

Tough to review: Some sections were blindingly brilliant while others were crushingly dull. C is about patterns and signals but the avalanche of information adds more static to the circuit than McCarthy probably intends. The surge at the heart of the book - the death of Serge's sister - doesn't quite trip the breakers either. But plenty still comes through - charging the parts about erotic childhood games, listening to early radio transmissions, flying planes in WWI, scoring drugs in London, and ...more

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Aug 13, 2010 Nick rated it it was amazing

Shelves: new-weird, africa, man-booker

A metatextual mess -- that is so intriguing you want to start over again with it the minute you put it down. Serge is a blank character who observes the advent of the modern world (ca 1890 - 1920). And he is also the most interesting of heroes caught up in circumstances he can't even begin to fathom. WWI flying Ace? Egyptian necromanticist? Freudian snitarium patient? Strange and inviting. ...more

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Sep 13, 2019 Praveen Palakkazhi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-reviewed, booker-club

Oh, this book is such a mystery. A mystery on how something which started so promisingly and brilliantly could descend into such utter indifference on my part by the time I finished the last page. The ingredients were all there for a fascinating historical romp through the early days of wireless communications, with some interesting characters at the outset. But McCarthy chooses to saddle us for the major part of the story with the most boring of the lot of characters he introduces, Serge, and w Oh, this book is such a mystery. A mystery on how something which started so promisingly and brilliantly could descend into such utter indifference on my part by the time I finished the last page. The ingredients were all there for a fascinating historical romp through the early days of wireless communications, with some interesting characters at the outset. But McCarthy chooses to saddle us for the major part of the story with the most boring of the lot of characters he introduces, Serge, and with this the book gets mired in an amalgam of confused plot points and meandering character arcs.

So at the beginning of the story, somewhere around the turn of the twentieth century, Serge Carrefax is born to a slightly eccentric and wealthy father, someone who simultaneously runs experiments trying to make the next major breakthrough in wireless communication while also running a school for deaf children. His mother is a curious, distant figure for much of the story but his sister Sophie is a wild and much needed burst of energy to this otherwise stodgy environment. The estate he grows up in is huge and intricately landscaped, sowing the seeds for a trove of adventures for the children. As they grow up, Serge is fascinated by the signals he picks up on his experimental wireless station and imagines himself being lifted into the worlds intimated by the various transmissions. His sister Sophie leaves for her studies in chemistry and life sciences and seems an even more eccentric and ambiguous presence on her return. The first section of the story basically covers their life up till the point that Serge remains a boy.

The next sections of the book almost exclusively focus on Serge, as he travels to a famed German town which is supposed to provide natural remedies for various health problems and here he gets close to his masseuse. Later sections have him in World War 1 as part of the fighter plan units, while the final sections have him stationed as a communications expert to help advance the monarchy’s hold in Egypt. And yes, he has invigorating intercourse with a scientist in a tomb. But of course. Which literary hero can be shown not to have weird and wonderful sex at any opportunity he gets?

Coming back to the main problem – the book was brilliant as long as the action remained in Serge’s formative years and especially with his sister around. In fact, I don’t know why she was not the focal point of the story. Serge, on the other hand, is a pretty dull guy. As McCarthy has written him, he hardly feels anything, whether in war or in grieving bereaved loved ones. So what’s the point? Why set up a fascinating premise and leave it underexplored while focusing on such a character? And it’s sad, because the writing in the beginning sections is nothing short of exquisite. I had to pay careful attention to the words, but once I did the rewards were immense as they wrapped themselves around me and transported me into that long gone time and place. If this had been maintained for the remainder of the book, this may have been one of my favorite books. As it is, it probably deserves only two stars, but those initial portions were so captivating and his skill so obvious that I have to give this one three stars.
...more

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Aug 17, 2010 Stephen rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: no one

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

In other circumstances this might have earned 3 stars, because it does have a few good parts, but as it happens the rating bears the mark of my disappointment. I read a few reviews that made it sound like something special (especially the one in Harper's), and then was reasonably impressed when I saw the author read—he really seemed committed to keeping several literary value balls in the air at once, creating a formally interesting historical novel, self-consciously trying to create serious lit

Instead I found a rather conventional narrative, featuring the same by-now trite obsession with codes and ciphers and maps as novels set 50 or a 100 years later, with a bit more focus on geometry and abstract pattern in the descriptions. I enjoyed the opening scenes, but soon the exposition becomes shockingly clumsy (to the extent that one suspects a polemical point about the traditional "well-made novel" is being made, but what's the point?), with a large number of characters brought in merely to explain processes (of silk-making, aerial reconnaissance, archaeology) or other technical matters, some of them mildly interesting but most poorly integrated into the texture of the tale (this is especially the case in the final section, when one might imagine it was no longer necessary). The depiction of the protagonist Serge's and his sister Sophie's childhood is joyless and often brutal, and Sophie is so unpleasant that I was not unhappy to see her die fairly early on. (Conversely, I found the long accounts of the family school's mythological pageants surprisingly compelling.) There are several tiresome leitmotifs that impoverish rather than enrich the work: the countless instances of veiling, the obsession with flatness, the many words that start with the letter C, the buzzing in Serge's groin (he's no Slothrop), and his preference for rear-entry sex. The novel's celebration of death is perhaps predictable for a work by an admirer of Marinetti and the General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society, but this version is so lazy and unreflective as to seem merely cynical, and most concretely translates into the protagonist's abnormal insensitivity toward danger, robbing all the "action" elements of suspense (of course he won't die). Similarly, big life and plot problems are explained away in a line: after a multi-year heroin addiction, his "pharmaceutical cravings" are "bizarrely absent every since his awakening"; he and the latest minimally characterized female explicator that you just know will eventually come in for some (transgressive, really?) rear-entry sex are several Egyptian burial chambers down without a light, and then "somehow, they manage to find their way to the surface." Serge's final delirium and death are particularly uninspired writing and seem merely dutiful (of course he has to die). The novel's greatest sin, however, especially on the part of an author obviously (and avowedly) inspired by Beckett and Pynchon and Dickens, is that it just isn't funny. The novel has a sense of humor, but it is an increasingly lame one, consisting mostly of the young adult Serge's wisecracks to his uncomprehending colleagues.

I should never have let my desire to find another Pynchon in our midst, one that wasn't old or dead, cloud my judgment, or at least in public to others before I'd actually read the book. Zadie Smith's rave be damned, I don't know if I'll ever bother going back to Remainder now...

...more

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Jun 27, 2013 Amber rated it really liked it

C is the kind of book that takes a few days of rumination to determine how you feel about it. On the surface, it is a biography of a boy born at the turn of the 20th century. The boy travels from England, to Bavaria, to the fronts of WWI, to Egypt. Normally, this would seem like a mundane plot. But, the story is not plot-driven by any stretch. A friend of mine absolutely raved about how amazing it was, so I checked it out. While I didn't leave the novel completely floored, I was left with a sens C is the kind of book that takes a few days of rumination to determine how you feel about it. On the surface, it is a biography of a boy born at the turn of the 20th century. The boy travels from England, to Bavaria, to the fronts of WWI, to Egypt. Normally, this would seem like a mundane plot. But, the story is not plot-driven by any stretch. A friend of mine absolutely raved about how amazing it was, so I checked it out. While I didn't leave the novel completely floored, I was left with a sense of the complexity of the story. Reading other reviews, I was interested to see how differently people took the prose. It's actually a great book for a book club or English class to discuss the many layers.

One of my interpretations was that the author was trying to portray a sense of eternity. He showed this through a motif of insects throughout time and place. The novel was divided into four sections and nature, particularly insects, played a strong role in all of them. Evolution, and the main character's lack of it, are also factors as you see some of the more basic natures play out.

Another theme was that of destiny, or, more aptly, lack of free will. Serge Carrefax, the main character (who, I found remarkably unlikable), continually finds himself situations and locations. He rarely makes active choices. When he does make choices, it is more of a hedonistic choice of convenience. As a reader who likes to like the main character, this was frustrating. However, it made for a believable (to a certain extent) character, and was also an interesting literary choice.

Finally, I took away a sense of omnipresence. If I think about my three themes, I see that we have birth, in the sense of evolution. I see life in the sense of destiny or free will. In the final theme, I see death and eternity in that our "essence" continues, whether it be merely enriching the soil and serving as insect fodder, or if it be in some "other" realm. Our lives continue, much the same way a radio wave continues on for eternity. ...more

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Dec 24, 2010 lark benobi rated it really liked it

Shelves: male-identified-authors, uk

I just finished it and immediately began to read reviews to see what others thought...a lot of 'post-modern' and 'pynchonesque' sorts of adjectives in the reviews but what it really reminded me of on some level is The Magic Mountain, only with a frenetic staccato rhythm. Serge Carrefax as Hans Castorp? Or maybe it's because these are the only two books I remember reading with the word 'naptha' in them. Well, I loved it. A real meditative loveliness to the language. I also loved "Remainder" but I ...more

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Dec 30, 2011 Gerald rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I loved this book. Never before have I read a book so cerebral, a writer so adept at describing how strange things seem to us when we're ill. Serge Carrefax's life is like one long fever in some ways, and yet lived completely to the full.

Great stuff - lots of beautiful prose, virtually all of it readable and relevant, though I still don't understand the key part of the plot that was the school show.

What's it about? To me.. grief, sibling love, death, life and the meaning of it, death, and histor ...more

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Apr 20, 2015 Adam rated it it was ok

Wow, I hated this! There's maybe something intriguing about McCarthy's seedy descriptions of sex, biology and disease, but overall the book just seems like a barely-alive synthesis of 1970s literary theory – deathly! Which is probably the point, but wow, life is too short. Shades of Pynchon and Robbe Grillet, but not as charming as the former and not as icily brilliant as the latter. ...more

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Jun 23, 2013 H rated it liked it

I do believe the best way to describe this book, is with the saying, 'all fur coat and no knickers'. ...more

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Mar 04, 2019 Matt Cook rated it it was amazing

Phenomenal.

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Dec 20, 2019 Charlie Hill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is good paradoxical fun.

On the one hand it's a novel that continues McCarthy's disavowal of the literature of character-centred sense-making. As such, it gives us intentionally 'flat' protagonists that are mere conduits for concepts and 'energies' (I'm sorry but there's really not a better word for it) with no obvious beginning or end. On the other hand, despite an uncompromising density of theory and allusion, it also stimulates in the reader a desire - recognisable to readers of the midd This is good paradoxical fun.

On the one hand it's a novel that continues McCarthy's disavowal of the literature of character-centred sense-making. As such, it gives us intentionally 'flat' protagonists that are mere conduits for concepts and 'energies' (I'm sorry but there's really not a better word for it) with no obvious beginning or end. On the other hand, despite an uncompromising density of theory and allusion, it also stimulates in the reader a desire - recognisable to readers of the middlebrow fiction the author disdains - to know what happens next because of what has gone before. In this respect we are, notwithstanding McCarthy's best efforts, traditionally invested in a narrative.

This second effect is, of course, wholly necessary. If it didn't happen, then the novel would be a failure. This is because of the configuration of the book itself, as an object: unless the reader is persuaded to turn the pages - to get from A (the beginning) to B (the end) - there is no way the writer can transmit what they want - or don't want - to say.

Here's a passage about the central character, who used to tune into the earliest wireless stations:

'Her voice has gone squeaky and breathless again. Serge, looking at her neck, sees that it is flushed. She pauses for a while and sips her drink. Serge, following the red flush from her neck down to her blouse, recalls his nights spent DX-fishing in Versoie: the sense that, in transcribing all the clicks, notating all the messages, logging the stations and their outputs, he was performing a task so vital that s ingle wrong entry would have disastrous consequences for whole hierarchies of-of what? Committees, subcommittees? Of important bodies who relied on him, who'd process and act on his dispatches, who needed them. Beyond that: that the stations at the far end of the dial, the signals on the edge of audibility-from ships, or desert outposts, or more distant ships and outposts even further still being picked up and forwarded through vast, static reaches-were coming from a place so remote and enchanted as to belong to another dimension entirely, a "there" as far divorced from "here" as angels from the mortals before whom they might briefly appear in flickering electric visions. Now, though, there's no "there": he's here where "there" was and it's not "there" anymore, just "here."'

Great stuff...
...more

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Mar 12, 2019 James Anderson rated it it was ok

Went from interesting to ok to shite.

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About Tom McCarthy

Tom McCarthy

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Tom McCarthy — “English fiction’s new laureate of disappointment” (Time Out, September 2007) — is a writer and artist. He was born in 1969 and lives in a tower-block in London. Tom grew up in Greenwich, south London, and studied English at New College, Oxford. After a couple of years in Prague in the early 1990s, he lived in Amsterdam as literary editor of the local Time Out, and later worked in B ...more

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“As far as Serge can tell, Sophie only takes breakfast, and doesn’t even seem to eat that: each time he visits her lab over the next few days he sees sandwiches piled up virtually untouched beside glasses of lemonade that, no more than sipped at, are growing viscid bubbles on their surface like Aphrophora spumaria. Above these, on the wall, the texts, charts and diagrams are growing, spreading. Serge reads, for example, a report on the branchiae of Cercopidida, which are, apparently, “extremely tenuous, appearing like clusters of filaments forming lamellate appendages,” and scrutinises the architecture of Vespa germanica nests: their subterranean shafts and alleyways, their space-filled envelopes and alveolae … Bizarrely, Sophie’s started interspersing among these texts and images the headlines she’s torn from each day’s newspapers. These clippings seem to be caught up in her strange associative web: they, too, have certain words and letters highlighted and joined to ones among the scientific notes that, Serge presumes, must correspond to them in some way or another. One of these reads “Serbia Unsatisfied by London Treaty”; another, “Riot at Paris Ballet.” Serge can see no logical connection between these events and Sophie’s studies; yet colours and lines connect them. Arching over all of these in giant letters, each one occupying a whole sheet of paper, crayon-shaded and conjoined by lines that run over the wall itself to other terms and letter-sequences among the sprawling mesh, is the word Hymenoptera. “Hymenoptera?” Serge reads. “What’s that? It sounds quite rude.” “Sting in the tail,” she answers somewhat cryptically. “The groups contain the common ancestor, but not all the descendants. Paraphyletic: it’s all connected.” She stares at her expanded chart for a long while, lost in its vectors and relays—then, registering his continued presence with a slight twitch of her head, tells him to leave once more.” — 2 likes

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