Product Description

Traumatised by an accident which involved something falling from the sky and leaves him eight and a half million pounds richer but hopelessly estranged from the world around him, Remainder s hero spends his time and money obsessively reconstructing and re-enacting vaguely remembered scenes and situations from his past: a large building with piano music in the distance, the familiar smells and sounds of liver frying and spluttering, lethargic cats lounging on roofs until they tumble off them... But when this fails to quench his thirst for authenticity, he starts reconstructing more and more violent events, including hold-ups and shoot-outs. A darkly comic meditation on memory, identity and history, Remainder is a parable for modern times.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51384 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Review
A splendidly odd novel... a refreshingly idiosyncratic, enjoyably intelligent read. --The Guardian

Remainder is an intelligent and absurd satire on consumer culture. --The Times

McCarthy's prose is precise and unpretentious. His anti-hero is a sympathetic Everyman, and it is difficult to resist the dominion of his obsession... its minatory brilliance calls for classic status. --The Independent

London Review of Books
'a very good novel indeed'

Time Out
'It will remain with you long after you have felt compelled to re-read it'

Customer Reviews

Intriguing - but not enough
I wanted (and want) to like this book more than I do. While I thought the premise quite original, and devoured the first 1/3 of the book in one sitting, I found myself becoming bored and - in the last 1/3 - not caring WHAT happened to Mr. McCarthy's protagonist. Quite frankly, I'm just not sure why. But the answer to that question is what prevents this from being (for me) a true classic. Like many of the other reviewers, I've given it 3 stars for the idea - but the execution of that idea just didn't work. Sorry.

Doesn't Quite Work
Remainder is a hugely inventive novel, but unfortunately it doesn't quite work.

The basic premise: the narrator has received large amounts of compensation for an unspecified mishap that has affected his memory. He is a man of modest tastes, so he decides to spend his money in staging re-enactments of scenes from his memory and then various other scenes that seem to have some resonance.

The narrator first seems rather modest and diffident, but as the action progresses, he seems to be simply detached from people. As his mania increases, it becomes clear that although he is not consciously cruel, he simply disregards anyone else's feelings. The difficulty with this, as a narrative device, is that it offers the narrator a rather two dimensional personality and even less scope to develop any of the other characters. They are just actors - actors in the plot and actors in the re-enactments. Although each showpiece re-enactment is supposed to look more spectacular than the last, they ultimately become quite boring because they are so pointless and generate such absence of reaction. The repetition that is necessary to stimulate the narrator does not have the same effect on the reader.

The actual re-enactments lack credibility, too. The first is a recreation of an apartment in a block, opposite another apartment with a specific roof and specific cats. Below, between the buildings, is a specific yard. Lots of money might be able to pay for some approximation, some pastiche of this. But no amount of money will allow the scene to be recreated by others from descriptions that the narrator gives - at least not to the point of such exactness.

The final scenes, I'm afraid, descend even further into the realms of the impossible. Not least because Naz, the project manager, would never, in a million years, go along with the proposal. However rich and mad his client might be.

This is one of those madness novels - perhaps like Poppy Shakespeare - where the inventive idea just doesn't translate onto the page. Mental illness is not really very interesting. It creates barriers between the individual and the rest of the world and those barriers - that lack of engagement - makes for dull first person narrative.

***oo (with the stars for the idea, not the execution)

Odd but a pager turner
From the first page to the last I could not get this book out of my head. It did make me start to look at the world in a different way. There is no real plot but somehow this was a real page turner as I could not wait to find out how it finished. However, when I did get to the end I was rather disappointed. The ending was inconclusive and left me empty. If you enjoy surreal books then read this.