A review by purslane
Men in Space by Tom McCarthy

4.0

McCarthy lurches from meditations on states of being seldom acknowledged to Nancy Drew-style plot devices, all the while managing a large and cosmopolitan cast of characters. I enjoyed this book quite a lot, but after I'd read it I wondered how much better it would have been if McCarthy was not in the thrall of the sophomoric need to be clever. His themes connect, but they seldom add up to much more than their constituent bits, and too often his books feel like homages to trendy philosphy rather than dramas involving human beings. (If anyone has a theory about the two jokers at the end, clue me in.)