Remainder

by Tom McCarthy

Book Overview

A man is severely injured in a mysterious accident, receives an outrageous sum in legal compensation, and has no idea what to do with it. Then, one night, an ordinary sight sets off a series of bizarre visions he can't quite place. How he goes about bringing his visions to life-and what happens afterward-makes for one of the most riveting, complex, and unusual novels in recent memory. Remainder is about the secret world each of us harbors within,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307278352
• ISBN13: 9780307278357
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Existential Paradox

Remainder is a novel to be read for the existential discomfort that it leaves you with. Those who read this for a plot will not be satisfied. It attempts to recreate (or "re-enact") the soul and its connection to the material world, and cleverly poses the question who is observing who and what is the real self. If you do not wish to contaminate your experience of the novel, then do not read on. Just read the following paragraph, which is my conclusion: I highly recommend this book to those interested in exploring existentialism, the philosophy of body and soul, and also post-traumatic stress syndrome. Besides that, I found this to be an entertaining novel that I could not put down, full of a quirky British sense of humor.You may find yourself reading the book a number of times to digest the full meaning. What is reality? The author may have cleverly "tricked" the reader into thinking that the novel takes place in the "real" material world.... My take on this novel(and this can be interpreted in many ways) is that the whole sequence is a dream, possibly of someone dying on a ventilator in an ICU, having experienced a horrific trauma. It may even have occurred at the instant preceding death...there is much emphasis on slowing down and stretching time.The re-enactments cleverly contain dream-like images and metaphors of the events surrounding the trauma. As he struggles to live (possibly within a coma and a paralysed body)he recreates the moment of "death", stuck in a state that borders on life and death at the moment of the trauma. As he struggles to hang on to life, he reinvents the traumatic moment...he is stuck at that point. At the end, he appears to hover between life (and its pain) and death (with its release) as the plane metaphorically banks to and from the airport. At that point he has released the trauma, relinquished his fear, and recovered his soul... and lost the painful need to understand. I consider this book to be an excellent piece of literature which enables the reader to experience multiple levels of the soul. Life and our sense of what is real are paradoxes. Tom McCarthy has managed to express this in a fascinating novel. The interpretation is clearly left with the reader...some may find that unsatisfying...but that's the whole point...there is no ultimate answer, simply re-enactments of existence. I highly recommend this book to those interested in exploring existentialism, the philosophy of body and soul, and also post-traumatic stress syndrome. Besides that, I found this to be an entertaining novel that I could not put down, full of a quirky British sense of humor.

The Key is in the Title

Remainder by Tom McCarthy Tom McCarthy is a kid with a box of crayons and his own set of rules. Remainder, a first novel, could best be described as the story of what could happen at the crossroads of weird and possible. What happens when you give a guy a mysterious brain injury and more money than he'll ever need? Throw in a little bit of disoriented pride and you've got the makings of this strangely compelling novel. We first meet our hero as he relearns how to walk, eat, and talk, one laborious maneuver at a time, but this is no heroic recovery novel. Soon he is able to appear to be the same as he once was. He has lost his memory, but it is slowly coming back to him, and as a huge lawsuit settlement turns him into a multi-millionaire, he goes on a quest to create, or recreate, a moment that will make him feel something real, something non-maneuvered. So much money not only allows him to go about this quest in whatever way he sees fit, but it also allows him to refuse to explain himself as the money flows. The unnamed narrator, unnamed perhaps because, as the title suggests, he is less of a real person than the remainder of a real person after the accident. How much humanity remains in this remainder? How far is he willing to go to feel something real? How many rules of society will his money let him break, and how long will that money last? The crescendo of this mad fugue will keep adventurous readers enthralled.

Wonderfuly Meticulous

McCarthy's story of an obsessive and meticulous trauma survivor is very well put together. I really enjoyed the descriptions and the peek into the mind of someone's painstaking plans and perfection in orchestrating of events in 'Remainder'. The repetitiveness detailing the "re-enactments" are like inside jokes shared with the reader in this fast paced book.

Fantastic and Disturbing

This book has no real plot, but that's the beauty of it. It swirls and goes over the same events again and again, deeper and deeper, a little more intensely each time. It has echoes of Palahniuk, Pynchon, Ballard, Ellis...the writers of extreme fiction have a new addition to their ranks. The book is disturbing on a profound level simply because one can understand the narrator's obsession...empathize with him, understand why he goes where he goes and does what he does though on the surface they seem to be completely insane. Even the surprises make sense. I haven't been this haunted by a book in a long time.

Faulty Memory

This is a strange novel. Exploring the human memory in a way vaguely similiar to the film, "Memento", the narrator loses his own memory while being compensatated with millions for the accident. Without a memory, their is no center for the increasingly delusional narrator who stages events from his life and from ordinary life with no pattern or meaning. There is no plot, just a series of random events, including the ending. This book is not for everyone but the writing is clear and interesting for the reader who sticks to it.