Customer Reviews

All That Counts

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Where Ellis and Palahniuk anatomize Greed in America, Oswald (and his continental contemporaries Houellebecq and Brusselmans) register the character and effect of the New Global Order in the Old World. All that counts for the narrator-protagonist Thomas Schwarz is money, but the consequences of his shallow worldview (and personality) ironically lead him to an increasingly desperate reassessment of what really matters. Though written with the fast pace and deft eye of the best of popular fiction, Oswald's novel offers no happy endings or easy solutions (just like life in the new economy in Europe or North America). Though the characters (like real folks) are often unlikeable, the pathos of their situation and their motivations and their consequences result in scenes that are authentically moving, laying bare the humanity that has been ignored by our new social order in general and glossed over by the very people that literally and figuratively buy into it. For the reader curious about the world outside of North America, especially for anyone interested in an intelligent, darkly and subtley funny, and humane--but no less critical--take on contemporary life in Europe, All That Counts is a book well worth the investment. Oswald's sly but penetrating insight into the contemporary state of Western society makes him an author that counts.

All That Counts is an enjoyable and easy to read yarn that is sardonic in nature. The way that the main character Thomas Schwarz sees and expresses his thoughts is refreshingly candid and realistic. The book begins with Thomas' job as a banking manager to his slow but steady decline to the seedy underground world of illegal activities. I didn't expect much from this book but was pleasantly surprised. Recommended.

After I finished reading Houllebecq, I was in desperate need of other well-written, sardonic novels about men who are alienated from their surroundings. ALL THAT COUNTS does not disappoint, and in many ways, it feels like a more complete story than Houllebecq's first two novels. I can't wait to read more of Georg's work as it gets translated.