Customer Reviews

The Gone-Away World

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I'm a reader given to pronouncements like: I hate science fiction. And for the most part it's really not my cup of tea. Well, The Gone Away World is undeniably science fiction, and it is the most interesting novel I've read in quite some time. The back copy on the galley I read compared it to Kurt Vonnegut meets Joseph Heller meets Mad Max. I immediately assumed that was hyperbole of the worst kind, but damn if that doesn't sum it up perfectly!

How can I describe the plot? As the novel opens, we're in a post-apocalyptic version of the world we know. We meet our first-person narrator and his team of trouble-shooting compatriots. Something possibly disastrous has happened, and they're off to save the day--as long as they'll be adequately compensated for the job. That's what they do. They're the Haulage & Hazmat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company of Exmoor County, a tight-knit group of life-long friends and war buddies.

The first chapter was about 30 pages, and I have to admit it was very strange and confusing, but undeniably funny. After that first chapter set in the novel's present, the clock is rolled back several decades, and the next 275 pages tells the life story of the unnamed narrator. And suddenly the book became far more accessible, because there were references to things like Elvis Presley and Tupperware. It was a world I could recognize. And gradually all the weird stuff from the first chapter was explained. What was the "Go Away War," why it was called that, and how the radically altered (not for the better, I can assure you) world came to be. It's a strange, deeply disturbing story leavened with a lot of humor and some wonderfully whimsical and likeable characters.

Around the 300 page mark, we are back where we were at the top of the novel, and our heroes are off to save the world. But nothing goes according to plan. And just when you think you've got a grasp on the rules of this strange world and this odd novel, Harkaway pulls the rug from under your feet and suddenly all the rules change and everything you think you know has changed!

This is a dense and challenging 500-page novel. Some parts of it are wonderfully light and comic. Other parts were so dark and disturbing I wasn't sure I wanted to continue reading. But I did continue, often forcing friends to listen to me read pages of text aloud. The language is fabulous and the many tangents and asides are priceless--such as a meandering discussion of the role of sheep in times of war. Other times it's a single sentence such as: "You have to worry about someone even mimes find creepy." that you want to stitch onto a pillow and place on your couch.

I wouldn't recommend this novel to everyone I know, but for readers with an open mind and a tolerance for absurdity, satire, and speculative fiction it's a must read. It may be one of the best debut novels I've ever read. It is the most interesting novel--period--that I've read in years.

With all the promotion accompanying the publication of this book the story probably needs little introduction? However just in case: it is set in Britain in the not very distant future. We join the story and after the Go-Away War when civilisation relies upon and lives within reach of the globe encircling Jorgmund Pipe; and who knows what inhabits the regions beyond its reach? Problem: the pipe is on fire and professional trouble-shooter and all-round hero Gonzo Lubitsch and his crew are hired to extinguish the fire - but there is more to the fire, and the pipe than it seems. As we follow the charismatic Gonzo and his best friend (our apparently happily married narrator) in their exploits the story takes us back to their childhood and the time before the Go-Away War; we learn of the origins of their friendship, follow them to university and through military service and their subsequent involvement in the Go-Away War. Then we pick up the story again post-War; and this is when we learn of the effects of the fall-out, as well as more about the mysterious Jorgmund Company; we gradually understand the disastrous mess of a world which the Jorrmund Pipe appears to dominate and sustain.

But what really makes this book something special is the quality of the writing. It is writing of such eloquence it simply demands to be read. Nick Harkaway (son of spy thriller writer John le Carré aka David Cornwell) juxtaposes the ordinary and the absurd with such naturalness that we almost don't question it; we might just pass it by if it were not so hilariously funny at times; such is the writer's skill. Every page is a pleasure and one wants to dwell on and enjoy each word, but one is torn between lingering at leisure and becoming absorbed in the detailed byways the story regularly takes and the urgent desire to learn what happens next. One thing we can be sure is that what happens next rarely predictable.

As the story unfolds we encounter a wide range of unforgettable characters in addition to our two main protagonists. I'll mention just one as it will also give an indication of the time setting: our narrator's boyhood martial arts instructor the octogenarian Mr Wu of the Voiceless Dragon School, born in the 1930s, a wise, subtle and unassuming man who is relentlessly pursued by his family's arch-enemy the Ninjas, and whose very young female assistant sleeps on his couch. In addition to an array of interesting characters we should add a parade of weird and wonderful creatures.

The Gone-Away World is an amazing tale; it is a fantasy, an odyssey, an epic; it is story of upheaval and disaster, of nightmare monsters becoming reality, of loyalty and friendship, an adventure encompassing tense drama contrasting more leisurely pursuits, a story which takes us along the way, with unhurried confidence, on many detailed diversions and anecdotes, a story which jumps from the mundane to the surreal, even miraculous. But all the while the full comic potential is fully exploited, and it is all the funnier for the masterful writing, for the wry humour is as often found in the choice of expression, the turn of phrase, as in the ongoing events.

That our very likeable and unassuming narrator remains nameless is not inconsequential, it is crucial to the plot; and his loyalty to his friend Gonzo despite some most surprising events might also prove to be the salvation for what is left of the world. It has been likened it to A Clockwork Orange, Catch 22 or Brave New World; it is reminiscent at time of A Hitchhikers Guide . . . Whatever comparison may be made, one thing is beyond question: it is without doubt an eminently enjoyable read and a cracking and original escapade.

If all you are interested in is a quick-fire story which hurriedly gets to the point wasting no time you may in truth find this a laborious read. However if you enjoy reading for the shear pleasure of reading, if you enjoy the liquid flow of words, if for you the adventure of the journey is as important as arriving, you are sure to enjoy The Gone Away World.

In the early Summer of 2009, I heard an National Public Radio segment on summer book recommendations made by librarian, Nancy Pearl. In the piece she talks about Nick Harkaway's "The Gone-Away World" by saying this:

"I refuse to reveal much about Harkaway's outstanding first novel because I want readers -- and I hope there will be many, many of them -- to discover its joys without prejudice."

After hearing her talk about this book, I bought it, sight-unseen, from Amazon.com, and after finishing it, I could not agree more with Ms. Pearl. This is a discovery you need to make on your own.

All I will say is that it contains the following elements:

> A post-apocalyptic world.
> A long pipe.
> A cow.
> Some geese.
> Ninjas.
and
> Mimes.

What we have here is one of the most unique books written by a debut author in many years. It is entertaining, surprising, touching, shocking, and just plain thrilling. You will reach a certain point in the story where you will want to re-read everything you just read because a shift occurs that changes everything, and that shift took me by surprise.

If you like your novels to have a sort of "kick-ass and take no prisoners" quality to it, this is the book for you. You will be missing out on a very good read if you don't buy this book.

If you are even thinking of reading this, STOP READING THE REVIEWS and buy the book! If you're anything like me, you'll love it. It's the kind of discovery that makes me love reading books.

I really wanted to like this book. I'd read several praiseworthy reviews, and I liked everything they said...both the far-out science fiction it promised, as well as the comparison to "Catch-22," one of my favorite novels ever.

Sadly, it just didn't achieve those heights. It was definitely imaginative, and who knows? Maybe it achieved something wonderful by the end, but I gave up halfway through. It just didn't do it for me.

For one thing, the book began to tell its story when, after a couple of dozen pages, it moved into flashback mode. Okay. No problem there. But the flashback continued, and continued, and continued....quite literally, for at least two hundred pages more, when I quit.

It wasn't just the eternal flashback. I could have dealt with that. But the story just rambled and meandered, with no real focus, and asked me to care about the central character (whose name I never caught) and his fascination with his boyhood friend and continual man-crush Gonzo Lubisch, but I just never really thought the characters were very well drawn out. On top of that, events jumped from one thing to another, often without any real cause, or rationale, other than to just to impress us with the author's zany story.

This is what was at the core of why I didn't enjoy this as much as others did: I just didn't feel that there was much in the manner of why, or how, things came to be. This book proceeded much more in a Douglas Adams kind of plotline than in a Joseph Heller. "Catch 22" succeeded, I felt, because it was improbable but plausible, and most certainly was not just thrown together.

I hear that had I slogged through this longer than I did, I would have seen the many threads tied together by the end of the novel. And, having given up halfway through, I have no right to contest it to be otherwise. But this book seemed to me to be an exercise in proving that the son was NOT the father: where John Le Carre writes meticulously plotted spy novels focusing upon characterization, and were indeed almost ANTI-action, attempting to prove the James Bond model was nothing like the real spy game, son Nick Harkaway has created a flamboyant book that looks like James Bond thrown into a blender.

You want spies? How about Ninja mimes? You want things tightly controlled? I'll give you excessive and ridiculous. You want a foe? How about a device that makes items "Go Away"? And what if everyone has it? And, in a true burst of wiping out any chance of believability, how about if everyone across the globe chooses to use it, quite coincidentally, at the VERY SAME MOMENT?

I'm sorry. I wanted to like this. I promise to give it a try sometime in the future. Or to take a shot at his next novel--which there will surely be, given the wide critical appreciation of this one. And I hope I like that one. I really do.

This book was recommended to me by a friend who had read it before. Upon reading the first chapter, I realized that I had to read this. Furthermore, I would be doing myself a horrendous disservice to do otherwise.

It starts with a big fire at some sort of pumping station for hazardous material. The narrator, Gonzo and the other members of the Haulage and HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company are called in to put it out else really bad things happen. The setting is post apopcalyptic and our narrator is refreshingly average, aside from being on a hazmat team.

Then the story shifts into first person present tense and in Narrator's childhood and events progress from school to activism in college to serving in the Gone-Away War to the fire and beyond. I have not encountered many examples of this particular style of prose and all the ones before were not what I would call stellar. However, there are cases where a less common writing format becomes lovely and easy to lose oneself in. I found myself limiting reading time, just so I could take my time to enjoy it more. Watching Narrator was like watching Joe Average interact some really odd characters, but he's changed a little in each encounter. Gonzo, his more or less constant companion, becomes a little larger than life in Narrator's eyes and I found it matched my own opinion of Gonzo Lubitsch the great.

The other thing that really helped was how visceral the prose was. Descriptions in this novel build on themselves and objects and people at once become both familiar and strange. It's a little like watching a dry creek become a torrent of whitewater without hearing it rush upon you first. Feelings are described more often than images. It was awesome and wonderful to read.

I am left with a large number of scenes that I liked okay and several gems that I adored to no end. Among my favorite moments in the book were any scene with Master Wu in it because they seemed very much written with the soft forms of martial arts in mind. The same thing goes for all the fight scenes actually. I don't usually gush about such things, but these were some of the best I have read in a while.

Another thing that I found amusing were the naming conventions. when one has names like Ike Thermite, Annie the Ox (who collects puppet heads), Assumption Soames and the Go-Away bombs. The really oddball names said something about the character, but didn't show where the trait was immediately. It was interesting to see how those played out. Oh yes, there are ninjas and mimes in the same room with each other. It should have been simply comical, but it was written as incredibly awesome instead.

The plot is slow building after the first chapter, but it keeps gaining momentum as it continues. The more unique characters around the narrator and his interactions with them kept me reading. Then the personal climax is extremely well handled and well paced, a personal story within a story for the narrator. Afterwards, the line of action speeds up like a skier preparing for a jump. The narrative climax is as uncertain and as exhilarating as freefall and the conclusion lands light and solid. Since the story is told from one person's perspective, antagonists were a little harder to understand at first but they do build up as the narrator figures out more about them.

In another happy twist of fate, this was a book where I actually have little ill to say about it. The one thing I have to say is that the change in narrative tense between the first chapter and the second can be off putting.The science is also softer than the tofu in my soup.

But that really becomes irrelevant, once you start to read about gong fu, vaporization, friendship, revenge, love, villains trying to take over the world, ninjas, mimes and an epic win. So why are you wasting your time with reading this small-time review, when you could be reading The Gone-Away World?

For a book to keep my interest I need a good introduction, something to really grab me and hook me and make me want to find out just what in the world is going on.

"The Gone-Away World" has a GREAT intro, and I was hooked. Unfortunately, after sending the narrator and the others on their way to save the world, the novel backtracks and we get to read about the narrators ENTIRE life up until the stuff at the intro and let me tell you, for the first couple hundred pages of that, it seems like its in real time and you'll be reading this book for the next twenty-some years.

And thats the problem, it takes FOREVER to get going. FOREVER!!! But I slogged through it anyway, and about a third through it does again get really really captivating. Harkaway presents many interesting views of the world and his intentionally overly-detailed descriptions often had me laughing out loud. By the end I was quite happy with my choice not to give up on this novel and thats why I'm giving it 4 stars.

But seriously, Mr. Harkaway, while I do truly enjoy your almost completely expository writing style with all its funny, off-direction tangents and seemingly universal disdain for dialogue, I must offer you this tip:

If, in your next book, you ARE going to continue to explain everything in expansive, incredibly detailed (but often hilarious and true) tirades, make sure that WHAT you're explaining is interesting and (in the readers mind) clearly relevant to whats happening in the story.

Because I know that most won't have the patience I had starting this book and those people aren't going to enjoy the absolutely dynamite last half of your 500 page novel when the first 200 pages seem like the story is going nowhere and its getting there really ssssslllllloooooowwwwwwlllllyyyyy and they don't bother to continue reading.

I may come off overly critical, but the truth is this an unbelievably impressive book when it all comes together and starts moving, I just found myself yelling "get on with it!" over and over again for the first 200 pages.

I hesitated before choosing this book because of the sci-fi tags I saw associated with it - the last sci-fi author I really enjoyed was Douglas Adams, so it's been a while. I shouldn't have hesitated. Much as the new television production of "Battlestar Galactica" has a broader appeal than strict science fiction because of the military and political drama (and great writing), The Gone-Away World is also broader than a strict sci-fi genre, including great battles, improbable weaponry, a dash of martial arts, all taking place in the near future - near enough that there is a reference to Andre the Giant. Most importantly, the writing is fantastic.

Until chapter 12 or so, I loved this book - great, crisp writing, fresh ideas, interesting characters. Then, a plot twist came that couldn't quite work for me - I won't spoil the book by revealing it, but it left me disappointed. What could have been great became only very good. Since the first three-fourths of the book was so brilliant, I kept waiting/hoping for some sort of "just kidding, I take it all back" from the narrator regarding what I perceived to be a plot inconsistency, but it never came. Flashbacks play an important role in the telling of the story, and I couldn't help feeling that if the entire story were laid out in a straight chronological timeline, some things wouldn't quite add up (others may disagree).

Because of the "plot twist issue," I am subtracting a star, although if I could subtract only 1/2 a star, I would.

It is still a very good read.

This is a cracking book and no mistake! Nick Harkaway's début novel is a stunning mish-mash of ideas that one can't help feeling shouldn't work and yet somehow does in a wonderfully refreshing way. Set not so much in an alternate reality as an alternate normality, "The Gone-Away World" feels to be something of a cross between Jasper Fforde's 'Thursday Next' or 'Nursery Crime' novels, and the science fantasy/social commentary novels of Sheri S. Tepper--although without the biting feminist overtones of the latter (but with the same anti-establishment and anti-corporate tendencies) or the constant descent into the ridiculous employed in the former (I mean, Swindon??? Oh, come on!). By and large, Nick Harkaway manages to keep his fiction well within the bounds of believability (even when we know he's stretching them for us) and on the rare occasion when he doesn't, it is all so pithily, wittily and eruditely expounded that we are always more than ready to suspend our disbelief and go along with him, just for the pure joy of the ride. His writing style and command of language are never less than exquisite and he is an absolute master of timing when it comes to spinning out his tale through its various episodes of hilarity, poignancy, tenderness and, at times, farce. Also, I have to say, it is something of a rare pleasure these days to read a book where the author clearly understands the physics of the world around him as well as the mechanics of the societies that populate it.

Harkaway (whose real name is Nicholas Cornwell, by the way, son of David Cornwell aka John le Carré) is clearly a British author; this book is peppered with jokes which only a British audience is likely to spot and appreciate. Yet his writing style (and the story itself) is here aimed more at an American audience--there are plenty of big, brash, jokes for them too--and one can almost see the screenplay leap off the page. For some (British) readers this juxtaposition or confusion of identities may jar. (Americans will not, I suspect, notice.) On the other hand, Harkaway may just have pulled off something here that few others ever have: a uniquely British novel that will appeal and succeed on both sides of the pond. I for one wish him every success, and I am looking forward already to his next book, whenever that may be.

The Gone-Away World is, first and foremost, a very funny novel. A sprawling adventure spanning decades, it never misses a chance to laugh at the absurdity of life as--as the narrator so aptly puts it--hairless mammals. I always appreciate this outlook, because we are ridiculous, highly flawed creatures making our way as best we can.

The story begins in a bar in what appears to be the wilderness, but we soon find out to be postapocalyptic England--sort of. A mini-disaster has just happened, a large fire burning up the pipe that is the lifeline to the entire region, and our narrator is a member of the crew called in to put it out. What is the Jorgmund Pipe, exactly, and what is FOX, the necessary ingredient for life on earth? We go back to the beginning of the narrator's life to find out what happened before, during, and after the Go Away War that made the world what it is today.

Terrible things happen after the end of the world, but the hairless mammals rebuild. Society is in some ways completely changed, and clearly life will never be exactly as it was before. But in other, sometimes striking ways, things remain as they were. The male half of a long-cohabitating couple is urged to "marry that girl," because she's been waiting for it for years and why the hell aren't you already, and somehow it makes sense that domestic life would remain so similar. People still go to work every day and become petty bureaucrats, still sit around and have a few beers at the pub. But meanwhile, towns vanish, a change of the wind can bring more than just weather, and it's hard to trust anyone you haven't known for a lifetime.

One of the things that worked best for me was having a very playful but introspective narrator. He is thoughtful and smart and serious but freely willing to admit his more pathetic--and human--side. Surprisingly, the large number of fight scenes in the novel worked well also. My eyes usually glaze over at that sort of thing but somehow the descriptions of hand-to-hand combat (ninjas and gong fu figure prominently) were just as apt as those of bruschetta and erogenous zones. Harkaway can turn a phrase and keep things peppy and silly and interesting and touching all at the same time.

On the other hand, I know that his style wouldn't work for everyone--wouldn't work for a lot of people, in fact. If phrases like "raised a sceptical eyebrow" bother you, don't even open the book: you will only give yourself indigestion. But if that sounds like it might be to your taste and you're interested in a hysterical-realist postapocalyptic story of love and gong fu and how the hell to get on in life, I would definitely recommend this. It makes multiple mentions of Frege; need I say more?

This science-fiction novel starts in the near future, then throws you far back into the narrator's past starting with his childhood and how he was raised by a foster family and became a gong fu warrior and his education in what I expect is England. His past seems to be our past ... and the future seems to be just a little bit ahead of our present. This is the story of what happens when a minor sort of war (minor for the developed countries) escalates into a major conflagration and a new, hideous weapon is used. The new weapon backfires and the world is changed; many of the people are gone and most of the cities are gone.

Some readers will see this as a satire but I read it as a story, a full-bodied, enjoyable story. The narrator uses a warm, humorous and folksy voice as he tells about the exigencies of living his new life as a survivor of what happened. Many strange occurrences lay in wait to amuse and delight the reader. It seems as if the author has let his imagination run wild and then wrote down the most far out stuff he came up with. I am trying carefully to not tell too much of the story so you will be surprised. I do recommend this book to all. You should expect to be entertained!