Surplus Matter

“From the sizzle of liver to the splatter of cats falling from rooftops, each detail is meticulous and intriguing. An apartment building has not been so interesting since 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier in Georges [tag]Perec[/tag]’s Life, a User’s Manual. For a first novel, Remainder shows a lot of promise and Tom McCarthy’s future work should deserve a harder look when making a States-side debut.”

“This is a book to be read and then reread, rich as it is with its insights, daring as it is with its contradictions.”

“First you’re fluid, in the moment, then suddenly your actions require additional care and precision. You’d long, I suppose, for the days when your actions felt as though they were yours. That’s the set-up for Remainder, a novel by Tom McCarthy that I recently finished, and which I highly advise checking out.”

“Tom McCarthy’s unnamed narrator in Remainder has recovered from an accident and is now millions of English pounds richer. He’s also without a memory and in the midst of a boring existential quandary: He just doesn’t feel right. (I was hoping, at this point, for his suicide.)”

“Brilliant” and “Highbrow”

“It will be extremely interesting to see whether, like some who write in this genre, McCarthy becomes trapped in his own web of loops and patterns. That would be an absolute shame, because somewhere between the detachment and violence, McCarthy has struck a vibrant, oddly topical pulse.”

REMAINDER
By Tom McCarthy
308 pages. Vintage Books. $13.95
The unnamed narrator of Tom McCarthy’s first novel has been in an accident, the details of which he can’t remember. Even if he could, at the book’s start he is paid £8.5 million in a Settlement with a Clause (the capitals are Mr. McCarthy’s) that bars him from talking […]

Play It Again
By Liesl Schillinger
Remainder By Tom McCarthy. 308 pp. Vintage Books. Paper, $13.95.
What can you say to a writer who invents a character so perverse and controlling that he accuses the sun of poor job performance and employs squadrons of house hunters with no intention of seeing their picks, simply because their efforts will […]

Maurice Blanchot’s philosophical work posits the idea of unnameable trauma, of the impossibility of knowing the experience of death, and the sense that the traumatic event, along with its recording or retelling, has always already happened. The traumatic event can be both familiar and alienating—it seems familiar, “like a movie,” but immediately throws you into […]

The nameless narrator in this eerie debut is a Londoner severely injured in an accident. Months later, he received an £8.5 million settlement on the condition that he never speak about the payout or the incident again – not a problem, since he doesn’t remember it. Our hero then begins to wholly recreate and […]