Alma Books
Available: 08/30/06
5.50 x 8.70 · 290 pages
978-1-84688-015-5
CDN $24.95 · cl

Remainder

Tom McCarthy

The hero of Remainder is traumatised by an accident that involves something falling from the sky and that leaves him wealthy. He spends his time and money obsessively reconstructing and re-enacting memories and situations from his past: a large building with piano music in the distance, the familiar smells and sounds of liver frying and spluttering, and lethargic cats tumbling off roofs ... But when this fails to quench his thirst for authenticity, he starts reconstructing more and more violent events, including hold-ups and shoot-outs.

“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 ... [Remainder’s] minatory brilliance calls for classic status.” —Independent

“Its coolness, with McCarthy’s deadpan prose nicely matching his narrator’s closed-off state of mind, is itself pleasurable ... Remainder should be read (and, of course, reread) for its intelligence and humour.” —Times Literary Supplement

“A hypnotic police procedural where the quarry is authenticity and the hope transcendence. It will remain with you long after you have felt compelled to re-read it.” —Time Out

Tom McCarthy (London) is known for the reports, manifestos and media interventions he has made as general secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious avant-garde network. He is the author of the nonfiction book Tintin and the Secret of Literature. Remainder is his first novel.