A Fraction of the Whole

I have always liked things normal, realistic and had problems with enjoying aspects of surrealism. This applies to art, its particular part – literature, conversations… Generally anything. I like things to be down to earth and practical.  Maybe love has been an exception. I was rarely realistic in this field. I experienced many uplifting moments, though. I am writing it just to be truthful, but this is actually irrelevant to the subject which I want to write about.

I want to write about the book I just finished.  Fraction of the Whole has been written by Steve Toltz. As I am still under a very fresh impression of the last pages, the feeling of dizziness is overwhelming. To me this is a surrealistic book. All 700 pages of it and I have read it! I must confess that I was skimming the last 200 pages as by that time I have decided that it is not my type of book and that the need for pleasure of reading light fun prose has been already fully satisfied. I also lost hope that the book may teach me something of value or answer any of my existential questions. For some time I was being led to believe that this particular book might do that.

As I have read most of the book with some interest and the fact that many people found it if value shortlisting it for the Man Bookers prize the conclusion must be that this is an interesting book. In many ways “interesting” seemed to just weird and my pragmatic side had problems with digesting it. For some reason I did continue reading. One of the reasons might have been the fact that I was lent the book by my neighbour whom I like, respect her judgment and share taste in films. But there was definitely more than that. The book held some sort of fascination for me. I liked the language and its typical Australian style, expressions and language. I was not aware, before I read the book, how characteristic Australian use of English language really is. This stems from a specifically Australian approach to life. I do not feel I can substantiate this bold statement, but I am convinced that there is a lot of truth in it. It was really fun to read this humorous, ironic prose. The language held my attention for a while and than there was a promise of philosophical epiphanies. So I kept reading. The promise, however, was not fulfilled. At least, I did not get it. Then the story kept my attention, but it started to take ridiculous turns and became completely unbelievable. At least to my practical mind. I could not make much out of potential symbolism of the story either, if it was supposed to be there. The book was puzzling for me. Maybe I did not get a joke? I must say that this is not always I get the Australian sense of humour. Maybe I am not that much of an Australian as I fancy myself to be? Hmm…

Steve Toltz, even if an Australian, lived and worked in few countries and if his book has some autobiographical elements his roots may lead to Poland. Has he visited the country? Does he know anything about it? This I do not know, but he writes about Warsaw in 1956 and, in my opinion, makes rather unpleasant historical mistakes. If this part was a joke, then I definitely do not get it. It would be terribly bad taste too. This part was just a couple of pages at beginning of the book and it not put me off to the extent to stop reading. Still a serious put-off.

Would I recommend this book? No, not really. At least not the whole one. The style, the language is really great and amusing, but I did not find much beyond that. If any of my readers has read the book and has  a different opinion, I would be really interested and I am ready to face a challenge or revise my views.

This is another book about writing a book! Epidemics?? Karl Ove Knausgaard, Elena Ferrante and now Steve Toltz. The order in which I listed the authors is of my reading and liking rather than according to the chronology of writing the books.

My blog has been affected by referer spam; my statistics are great but totally wrong. It has been with me for quite some time and finally I got fed up and I am planning to migrate to Wordpress soon. This means that I will have to start anew but, new beginnings always made me feel good. I still have to learn and decide few things before it happens. This is only an early warning.