Customer Reviews: Read 43 more reviews...
 The whole business September 30, 2008
Joe Mall (Italy)
Nick Harkaway, in his first novel, The Gone-Away World, provides us with a handle on the world that actually works, that actually opens a sort of window we otherwise wouldn't have. It does this in a number of ways. In part, by describing a world that we recognize as essentially the world we know, a world in which Tupperware and Star Wars and, er, cake-making remain points of reference; in part by drawing on other richly imagined worlds, or arcane worlds - I'm thinking martial arts, here - as imaginative ballast. He mentions his debt to the great story tellers of the past, from Wodehouse to Dumas in the acknowledgements (and this tells us everything about the range of his style), but much of the strength of the tale comes from its equally firm footing in the dozens of less formal narratives that compose us: education, cooking, friendship, love, not to speak of the popular imagined pre-/post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max and Dr Strangelove. In part because the exuberance and invention and sheer delight of the language is unfailing, with a goon-show-like energy that only occasionally veers into flippancy. In part because Harkaway knows how bruschetta should be pronounced. (Yes, it matters.)
But all this would count for nothing if the novel weren't also preoccupied with what Harkaway describes as `the whole business of how to be a person'. The novel is haunted by alienation, from the early reworking of it in its pure Marxist state (cf. Fingermuffin, capitalist) to the central trope of the novel, which I won't reveal. It's concerned with who we are, as individuals and in our relations with others. The core of the novel is a moving recognition of community and how it might survive, against all odds. This seriousness is never far beneath the fun to be had, although there are moments I feel the latter may be overdone. The riff on fashion towards the end of the novel, for example, struck me as heavy-handed, though enjoyable (and then, with an odd swoop, utterly creepy). And there are passages in the second half of the novel, after it's caught up with itself (you'll know what I mean when you read it), when the thrust of the story is slowed down by a tendency not to miss a trick in terms of language, when a surface glamour distracts both the teller and the tale. But mostly it's spot on. A grand job.
 Consider the world, unraveled September 18, 2008
E. A Solinas (MD USA)
Imagine a future world where a chemical solution is the only thing that keeps us from the ghastly mutated barbarism of the Gone Away World.
Now imagine the wacky, quirky upbringing that led to such a future, and an absurdist autobiography filled with ninjas, cowardly revolutionaries, apocalyptic monsters and the Go Away Bomb. Nick Harkaway's "The Gone Away World" plants him firmly in the center of clever, forward-thinking fiction, as a sort of postapocalyptic Robertson Davies.
One night in the Nameless Bar, there's a blackout. Nothing new -- except the TV shows that the Pipe -- a vast network of hoses and lines that keeps the Livable Zone that way -- has caught fire.
Along with his pal Gonzo Lubitsch and a bunch of random bar weirdos, the narrator sets out to save the day. But this takes him back to his earlier life -- a strange childhood mentored by the quirky ancient martial-artist Master Wu, mutating into Angry-Young-Manhood complete with dissatisfaction and lots of sex. He's arrested as a revolutionary ringleader, and joins up with the cake-esque named Zaher Bey.
And then came the War that transformed the world into a place of monsters, darkness and utter weird. And in the present day, his road trip takes a sudden and bizarre turn when Gonzo shoots him. And as the narrator struggles to find what is going on at the heart of the mysterious Jorgamund Company, he learns of who has masterminded all the most horrific events of this twisted world...
Nick Harkaway is one of those rare authors who can capture the surreal in a single observation -- a woman's hair, a phone call, a big mean dog. So in a book with "shark things with legs," people melded with horses, and ninja assassins, one can expect that things are going to get pretty strange. And "The Gone Away World" explores how that strange world came to be.
Admittedly it starts off in a rather scatterbrained, manner in the first chapter, but levels out when it goes back to the narrator's shared history with Gonzo. But despite all the weirdness, Harkaway's writing has a curious, contemplative dignity that reminds me of Robertson Davies on crack ("may giant badgers pursue him for ever through the Bewildering Hell of Fire Ants, Soap Opera and Urethral Infections), but also has splatters of shocking vividity ("high towers and pale houses. The wind carries a murmur from its streets").
Seriously. Where else can you find a man proclaiming that he is "such a totally terrifying concentration of nerdhood" that he's "cracked the code for human social behavior using mathematics"? And it doesn't seem totally absurd?
And the Gone-Away world is the strangest place of all -- it's got ninjas, mutants, revolutionaries and mystery corporations that Just Have To Be Bad, all interlinked. But Harkaway doesn't neglect the poignancy inherent in a world that has been wrenched out of shape -- we get to see the sad, ruined creatures that have lost not only their human bodies but their minds as well.
The relationship between hero-stud Gonzo and the narrator is what really drives the novel onward, and there's absolutely nothing typical about their weird, slightly awkward friendship. Harkaway peppers the book with other oddities -- extremely mysterious women, odd bar-people, and the delightfully quirky little old martial-arts master who molded the narrator. Ah, Master Wu, we will not forget you soon.
"The Gone Away World" sounds like the title of a suburban-ennui tale, but it's actually the tame description of a wildly surreal postapocalyptic thriller, with plenty of unusual twists and deliciously odd characters.
Can't wait for the next one! September 1, 2008
chocolat_eclare (Bristol, UK)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is the best book I've read for a while. It made me laugh out loud, and cry, all in one novel. I don't often read sci-fi, but this has tempted me to try similar books. There is a very clever twist halfway through, which I didn't see coming, but made complete, horrifying sense. Definitely to be recommended.
One to read, and a talent to watch. August 27, 2008
Mr. M. A. Reed (Somewhere, GB)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In an effortlessly readable style, Nick Harkaway creates an ambitious epic that crosses decades and styles and genres. The narrative plays fast and loose with linearity, the entertaining possibilities of fiction that can expand and contract in the blink of an eye, and the sheer wonder-of-it-all that comes with a grand idea. The style is fast and straightforward but never simple, a surfeit of ideas keeps the prose bubbling away, and Harkaway is clearly a considerable talent that will unfold to greater things over the promising future ahead. One to read, and a talent to watch.
compelling but slow to start August 27, 2008
Mrs. K. A. Wheatley (Leicester, UK)
Harkaway's style is ornate and elaborate. It takes a while to get into his mindset, and at the beginning I found his overuse of words rather frustrating. It wasn't helped by the fact that the story is set in alternative world, which albeit rather like ours, has a baffling number of differences, which to begin with the reader has to feel his way around to make sense of. I nearly gave up several times in the first hundred pages, but was very glad I didn't.
Harkaway has an excellent sense of humour and a real feel for character. Once the story gets going it fairly hums along and there is plenty of pathos, excitement and the element of 'anything could happen' that keeps you turning the pages. I ended up devouring the pages, wishing it would end and at the same time not wanting it to finish.
It's quite hard to explain the story without doing the whole book, which is innovative, a massive disservice. Basically it revolves around the events that unfold when a gang of trouble shooters are invited to put out a raging fire on something called the Jorgmund Pipe, which is keeping the world 'normal' in what would otherwise be a post apocalyptic wasteland overrun with nightmares and the stuff of fantasies. It is however, much more than that, and I urge you to read it.
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