Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3050 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-29
• Binding: Hardcover
• 720 pages

Synopsis
Martin Dean spent his entire life analyzing absolutely everything - from the benefits of suicide to the virtues of strip clubs - and passing on his self-taught knowledge to his son, Jasper. But now that his father's dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the man who raised him in intellectual captivity, and the irony is this: theirs was a great adventure. As he recollects the extraordinary events that led to his father's demise, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries - about his infamous criminal uncle, his mysteriously absent mother, and Martin's constant battle to leave his mark on the world. From the Australian bush to the cafes of Paris; from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition, this is an unforgettable, rollicking and deeply moving family story.

Customer Reviews

Really vibrant, garrulous idea-brimming debut
I'm not sure why, but I can't quite bring myself to give this five stars, but rest assured my four are big, heavy, glistening stars. Imagine them like the matching oiled pectorals on two tan-addicted steroidal gym monkeys, striding along a British beach on our long, glorious day (singular) of summer.

A Fraction of the Whole is great, though ultimately not perfect, and that is actually a significant part of its endless charm. It's a tall, even shaggy, story of young Australian men with a surfeit of character, butting against a normal world that can't cope with their intelligence, and won't accept their outsider status. The first part of the book covers the young criminal career of the Ned Kelly-alike anti-hero, Terry, seen through the eyes of his quiet, sickly brother, Martin. It then goes on to follow a young adult Martin travelling to Paris, events we see as his son Jasper reads a diary Martin wrote at the time. This peek inside Martin's mind shows us what an original viewpoint Steve Toltz has created: a mind that drifts free of convention and muses on the world in a dark, unpleasant way that most people would prefer to pretend was unique to Martin, but in fact is likely just how we all think about things when the lights are off. It's hard to take in places, but is nearly always very funny, and the humour-coated pills are sometimes too easy to swallow, as you find yourself agreeing with the lunatic at the centre of the story.

It's very hard to give a rounded picture of Toltz's debut, because it is so different from most new novels, and that's to its credit. It did remind me of the comic, digressive novel that came out last year, by Millard Kaufman, Bowl of Cherries, but Toltz captures the antic tone better.

If I was forced to explain why I haven't given this five stars, I suppose it's because it doesn't all hold together at all times. The story reads as several shorter stories, and the narrative tone of Martin is too similar to that of Jaspar, but that is picking holes for the sake of it, and Toltz may well want the father and the son, so different in their lives, to ultimately sound so similar.

It is, without question, a very, very funny, engrossing, gabbling example of Australian exuberance, and I can well recommend it to you.

Come Back To The Five And Dime, Terry Dean, Terry Dean
Describing this book as being about philosophy and religion, while more or less true, may be a bit offputting to prospective readers. However, despite having serious, even sombre, undertones this brilliant book is a comic tour-de-force.

Brimming with ideas, this is a satire in the spirit of "Gulliver's Travels", many mores of modern day life, Celebrity Culture, Sports Worship, Politics, Immigration etc etc are lampooned in a variety of inventive, imaginative and downright odd set-pieces.

The long winded rather plotless style, often little more than a stream of consciousness for the protagonist, recalls "Tristram Shandy", not a bad thing at all.

This debut novel is self assured and well written; Great one liners abound e.g. "My problem is I can't sum myself up in one sentence." or "As soon as my idea was embraced, I no longer liked it." Only the fact that it is Australian prevents me from describing it as the graet American novel everyone has been waiting for for years.

I would have preferred the two narrators, Martin and Jasper Dean to have been more clearly differentiated, to have been given more distictive voices, but the decision not to is obviously deliberate by the author, as more than once Jasper is described as a reincarnation of Martin. Characterisation, generally, is not a strength of the novel, even Terry Dean, one of the more extreme personalities, fails to leap from the page.

The genuinely funny and thought-provoking satirical situations the Deans are thrown into, be they comas, murders, love affairs, crimes, politics or book publishing are a distorting mirror onto Twenty-First Century life to be enjoyed and admired for their internal logic and wit. Perhaps, ultimately, the book asks what a post-religious society can have for meaning; If there is no real answer at its end, and, like Jasper, we are left dangling, unresolved after the story finishes, I am pretty sure we can't blame the author.

Several Fractions
Like many another book, A Fraction of the Whole suffers from the belief that biggest is best. Its 700-plus pages twist and turn illogically through Martin Dean's improbable and doomed projects, each contradiction in his conduct launching a further series of extreme events. Chunks of his philosophy of life, often extremely entertaining and with a sort of crazy wisdom, can outstay their welcome.
Divided into sections narrated in different forms - from recalled conversation to obscurely personal notes to ordered autobiography -, the novel, deliberately fractured and episodic, is ultimately surprisingly sequential.
A Fraction of the Whole is at its best with passages of manic humour and sharp satire. At other times I was reminded of the homeless man on page 700 who listens to the conversation of Jasper and Anouk 'with smiling eyes that said in no uncertain terms that he had just overheard a conversation between two people who took themselves too seriously.'
Steve Toltz writes with imagination and flair and certainly has the ability to sum his own work up succinctly. How about this: 'a farce...but a deadly serious farce'?