The Rise & Fall of Great Powers in Around the World in 80 Books

Jul 04, 2014 Sam rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1-contemp-literary, first-reads, setting-multiregional, reviewed, read-2014

In The Rise & Fall of Great Powers, we follow around Tooly Zylberberg in three stages of her life: as a child in Bangkok surrounded by mysterious, shady adults; as a young woman in New York, still surrounded by shady adults; and in the present time as a more mature woman pulled out of her quiet life in a Welsh town, compelled to return to New York where she will confront and try to understand her past.

Tom Rachman knows how to string readers along; as we toggle between these three eras, we’re eag In The Rise & Fall of Great Powers, we follow around Tooly Zylberberg in three stages of her life: as a child in Bangkok surrounded by mysterious, shady adults; as a young woman in New York, still surrounded by shady adults; and in the present time as a more mature woman pulled out of her quiet life in a Welsh town, compelled to return to New York where she will confront and try to understand her past.

Tom Rachman knows how to string readers along; as we toggle between these three eras, we’re eager to learn just what is going on around Tooly. Is the man she’s living with as a little girl in Bangkok really her father? Why do they have to move around all the time? Is the cast of misfits that she eventually meets up with and who become her family of sorts genuine or is there a sinister side to this setup? What’s the end game? But aside from being curious about that mystery, I think I was just charmed by the interactions between the characters. I really liked floating along as they lived their lives. There are a lot of ‘set pieces’ that I loved, excellently written, full of warmth, humor, and even a bit of melancholy. This is where all of my warm and fuzzy feelings for the novel originate.

I was so entranced by these parts of the story that I think I overlooked the weaknesses in the novel. It wasn’t until the end that I was forced to make sense of the story as a whole, take measure of how well Rachman’s set pieces are sewn together to highlight his themes, including how we situate ourselves in the world, exploring a sense of rootlessness and questions of what makes a family. And this is where the novel falls short. As much as the individual parts here are engaging, ultimately the story as a whole feels kind of empty. This emptiness, I think, is related to the problems with the character of Tooly herself. Despite being with her through the entire story, she doesn’t feel very fleshed out after all; she’s an enigma throughout. And we readers are expected to believe that before she’s called back to New York, she was never curious about her past, about the motivations of the people who cryptically came into and out of her life? Upon reflection, there were too many of these types of holes in the story.

There are some books that don’t hit you until you’ve left them, and then you’re struck by how resonant some character or scene was. And then there are other books that are great while you’re reading them but don’t hold up after you’ve closed the covers and let the story sink in. This book falls into the latter category for me, although I can’t discount the pleasure that the story gave me while I was deep into it. After all, it was dazzling enough in the moment that I didn't care about the plot holes until the end. So I'd say this is more of a flawed 4-star read.

*I received this book through Goodread’s First Reads program though that had no effect on my assessment of the book.
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Dec 29, 2015 Tony rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

When a novel's protagonist is named Tooly Zulberberg, the seasoned reader should not be surprised when the story hops, skips, and jumps all over the place. That's indeed what happens here, as the narrative flits back and forth over three decades. Over the course of these, we learn Tooly's life story and follow her as she seeks to unravel her origin story. We first meet her in her mid-30s, as the owner of a failing used bookstore in the Welsh countryside who goes in search of her past. As a child When a novel's protagonist is named Tooly Zulberberg, the seasoned reader should not be surprised when the story hops, skips, and jumps all over the place. That's indeed what happens here, as the narrative flits back and forth over three decades. Over the course of these, we learn Tooly's life story and follow her as she seeks to unravel her origin story. We first meet her in her mid-30s, as the owner of a failing used bookstore in the Welsh countryside who goes in search of her past. As a child, a man who is allegedly her father moved her around the world as he worked at different US embassies. As a tween in Bangkok, she disappears from his life and is taken in by a charismatic guy and a flighty woman claiming to be her mother, with an gruff elderly Russian as babysitter. These folks take her to New York, where in her 20s, she insinuates herself into an apartment of Columbia students and starts to bond with them. Got it?

The book's theme -- which is a little too on-the-nose -- is that we create our family from the people around us, wherever we are. The other theme is identity, and how we create and project personas. Over the course of the story, few of the colorful characters Tooly connects with, will turn out to be who they originally appeared to be. The globe-hopping and cast of characters is engaging enough, but there's a large flaw at the heart of the book. That problem is Tooly, and the fact that she's not nearly as interesting as people keep saying she is over the course of the book. She's kind of an empty shell with little interesting to say, so it's not clear why people seem to like her, not why the reader should actually care about her quest for her true history. I kept thinking there was going to be some kind of revelation in the final third that would illuminate more of her, and while there are certainly revelations, none make her any more compelling.

It's a little bit of an oddball book in that I more less enjoyed it in the moment, but it left me with a bit of a "is that all there is?" feel at the end, and I can't really imagine recommending it to anyone. ...more

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Apr 15, 2014 Susan rated it really liked it

According to other reviewers, this book may have some flaws, but I found it totally absorbing, great characters, extremely readable, hard to put down, and that's pretty much all I need in a book. Loved it! ...more

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