A Fraction Of The Whole (#20)

Ok, I am determined to catch up on my book posts by the end of October.  I am going to have plenty of opportunity with Todd going on a long Asia trip in a couple of weeks and with work continuing to be a bit slow, I am challenging myself to get up-to-date (btw, I am currently on Book #26 of the year).

I read A Fraction Of The Whole by Steve Toltz way back in July, in fact it took pretty much the entire month of July.  It was one of my biggest read of the year so far (576 pages) and definitely took the longest to read (27 days).  I sort of challenged myself to read something longer just to see if I still had the attention span and I guess I am also testing your attention span since this post is already more than 140 characters long!

If you can squint (or maybe not, could just be my bad eyes), what brought this book to my attention was that it was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize last year (2008) and, from what a recall, it was a favorite even to win the prestigious prize but lost to Aravind Adiga's White Tiger (which is also on my to-be-read list, but then again... what's not?!)  But the Booker Prize short-list has a pretty good barometer for finding good books.  I was also drawn to it because it was (squint again at the cover) supposed to be "riotously funny" and if I was going to undertake a book that long, I wanted to be entertained.

The good news is that I was thoroughly entertained, but Toltz's debut novel was certainly an undertaking.  It is a dense, sprawling epic of the Dean family from Australia. Young Jasper is our primary protagonist, but most of the action centers around his his nationally detested father Marty and his beloved anti-hero of a uncle Terry.  It's a wildly twisting story taking us from Australia to Paris to Thailand... from jail cells to a house built inside a labyrinth to Asian jungles to the high seas.  Expect the unexpected. 

That said, it did take me a while to get into the book.  I had wondered what I had got myself into, but after a 100 or so pages it started to hit its stride, though it's constant detours do get a bit exhausting.  This is a genius of a novel, though I would warn genius in the eye of the proverbial beholder.  This is one quirky book and I confident it would not be to everyone's taste.  But certainly a hot-shot debut, that I think Toltz is going to be quite challenged to follow-up!

This is also quite a philosophical book as well, here is a passage I bookmarked:

There's nothing like a nostalgia trip to make you feel alien from both your past and present.  You also see what's static in you, what you hadn't had the courage or strength to change, and all your old fears, the ones you still carry.  The disappointment of your failure is palpable. It's terrible to go around bumping into yourself like that.

I gave this book 5 stars (top rating) on GoodReads, though if I were allowed 1/2 stars I would say it was a solid 4.5 stars, but given we have just 3-ish months left in 2009 I have a sneaking suspicion this will be near the top of my favorite books of the year.

Comments

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This is one quirky book and I confident it would not be to everyone's taste. But certainly a hot-shot debut, that I think Toltz is going to be quite challenged to follow-up!