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A review by micksland
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
3.0
Like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, it presents a bleak and hopeless picture of existential horror. Unlike The Road, it doesn't leave any room for hope. Not even a smidgen.
Also, it was almost intolerably weird. Characters were introduced and then abandoned. Plot points were stressed and then left to rot until later in the book, where they were mentioned once and then forgotten again. None of the characters except the narrator actually matter. This sounds like a terrible story, right? In some ways, it is. But in other ways, you feel like the author is trying to tell you something through the medium of this weirdness.
Toward the end of the novel, I thought I almost understood, but the book ended and I was still grasping for straws, trying to figure out what the author was trying to tell us. Maybe that's the point. Maybe he wasn't trying to say anything at all. Maybe this book's infuriating existentialism has finally gotten to me. This book wasn't actually enjoyable to read, but it's going to bother me for a while. Ah, well, at least I'll remember it...
Also, it was almost intolerably weird. Characters were introduced and then abandoned. Plot points were stressed and then left to rot until later in the book, where they were mentioned once and then forgotten again. None of the characters except the narrator actually matter. This sounds like a terrible story, right? In some ways, it is. But in other ways, you feel like the author is trying to tell you something through the medium of this weirdness.
Toward the end of the novel, I thought I almost understood, but the book ended and I was still grasping for straws, trying to figure out what the author was trying to tell us. Maybe that's the point. Maybe he wasn't trying to say anything at all. Maybe this book's infuriating existentialism has finally gotten to me. This book wasn't actually enjoyable to read, but it's going to bother me for a while. Ah, well, at least I'll remember it...