The Book Tower

I enjoyed Tom McCarthy’s Remainer so much that I’m going to re-enact my enjoyment. Let me explain what I mean. I plan to hire an actor to fly to Madeira and sit on a hotel room balcony drinking the local beer, recreating the scene of me – on a few days holiday break – reading the book. The actor will read the book for most of the day, alternating between balcony and bedroom depending on the weather (note to self: need to find a way to recreate last week’s showers), leaving the room periodically (outside the scope of this re-enactment, but let’s assume he’s out doing odd bits of sightseeing and eating). He will appear to be enjoying the book tremendously, his face alternating between studious concern and mirth. He’ll be dressed in shorts and a flowery holiday shirt. When he’s finished the book he’ll turn back to the front and start again. Oh yes, and I’ll hire another actor to play my wife, lying on the bed and reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, and another to play the maid, ever eager to change the towels.

Have I gone mad? Perhaps. But anyone who’s read Remainder will hopefully understand perfectly, especially if they enjoyed this absorbing insight into the complications arising from an addition to repetition. Remainder has an unnamed narrator, suddenly eight and a half million pounds better off following compensation for a freak (but unspecified) accident. Recovering physically and (ostensibly) mentally, he throws his money into the stock market before deciding on a more offbeat project. Half remembered, half dreamlike, he imagines an intricately designed and populated building; piano music heard from a distant room, the smell of cooked liver wafting from a downstairs kitchen, cats walking across an adjacent roof. His great wealth allows him to recreate the dream exactly – proving that money will get you anything you desire. He buys a block of flats and converts it to his exact vision, hiring actors to play the roles of its inhabitants, including a designated “liver lady” and pianist. One re-enactment leads to another; from a rudimentary visit to a garage to drive-by shootings and eventually the idea of recreating a bank heist, the scenes renacted and recreated for our narrator, and replayed endlessly on a loop to satisfy him.

What makes Remainder such an excellent novel is McCarthy’s attention to detail and logic. Real life ephemeral scenes – such as the changing of a tyre – are opened up to show their fine detail and reliance on random and unique properties. Tripping over a kink in the carpet, dropping a bag of litter, all chaotic but carefully recreated. Reading this I became immersed in his narrator’s crazy world, half of me understanding him perfectly and half of me dreading what was to come as addiction is usually seen to spiral out of control. And McCarthy keeps you on edge right until the last page, where we reach a partially unresolved although somehow satisfying end. I’ll say no more because you really do need to read Remainder to appreciate just how good it is; well-written, absorbing, original, scary, mad.