Wonderful World: A Novel (P.S.) [Kindle Edition]

Javier Calvo (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Calvo's first novel to appear in English is a frenetic and magnificent mashup of family drama, mob revenge story and surreal mystery featuring a gigantic enforcer obsessed with comic books, a 12-year-old girl fixated on Stephen King, a namby-pamby antiques dealer on a mad quest and a crime lord with a penchant for women's coats. Thirty years ago, Barcelona antiques dealer Lorenzo Girault was imprisoned for shady dealings. Now, his son, Lucas, insinuates himself into the seedy underworld to discover who was responsible for his father's ruin. While conspiring with Mr. Bocanegra, the crooked proprietor of a strip club, and Iris Gonzalvo, a failed actress, Lucas simultaneously combats his mother's efforts to usurp his share in the family business and watches after his disturbed young neighbor and only friend, Valentina Parini. Lucas's adventure is overlaid with a portentous filial dream and portions of a fictitious Stephen King novel that may hold clues to his father's fate, creating a rich and complex structure. The expansive cast can sometimes be difficult to sort out, but its quirks allow Calvo to set up a fast-moving narrative overflowing with hilarious situations. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Extravagant, absurd, sometimes over the top, and with an undercurrent of the ominous, Spanish novelist Calvo’s English-language debut defies easy description. It could be called a thriller, since it involves art forgery and theft, but it could as easily be called an ontological exercise that toys—in an often metafictional way—with the nature of reality and the integrity of narrative. The protagonist, Lucas, is a 33-year-old antiques dealer in Barcelona who finds himself embroiled simultaneously with two gangs of thieves who may have been allies of his late father, even as his horrifically awful mother is suing him for control of the family business. Meanwhile, his best friend is his 12-year-old neighbor, a fatherless girl named Valentina, who regards herself as the greatest living Stephen King expert (“excerpts” from King’s newest novel are sprinkled throughout the book). Other cultural references ranging from psychedelic rock and heavy metal to horror movies and superhero comics abound, while the novel’s action is overlaid by a patina of Quentin Tarentino–like violence. Surreal, sexy, wildly funny, self-indulgent, and wretchedly excessive, Wonderful World is clearly not for all readers, but it will have its passionate advocates and has all the earmarks of a cult favorite in the making. --Michael Cart

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 472 KB
• Print Length: 496 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; 1 edition (October 6, 2009)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001UQO482
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #536,619 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's A Mad Mad World, November 19, 2009

By 

Earthling "Laura" (Fl, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Wonderful World: A Novel (Hardcover)

Wonderful World is an intriguing story full of fabulously eccentric characters set in Barcelona, Spain. Among them is the disturbed 12 year old, Valentina, a European expert on Stephen King. As she counts down the days to the latest King release, Valentina is writing her own horror tale about the bloody destruction of her classmates and teachers. Her best friend is a 33 year old art dealer who, while fending off his power hungry family, becomes entwined in some shady activities with criminals who may be discussing the propriety of eating ice cream in winter as they are serviced orally by a pair of prostitutes. The writing is fresh and hip and at times absurd. I like the way Calvo plays with the words using repetition of phrases and circular sentences like "The heel of the shoe leaves a nick in the wall's plaster in the shape of a heel of a shoe." I enjoyed reading it for the writing style as much as for the madcap story. This is for readers looking for something lively and different. I don't reread many books but I look forward to reading this one again.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The world is wonderful because the world is horrible. And therein lies a great wisdom...A world like us. For us.", May 24, 2009

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Wonderful World: A Novel (Hardcover)

(3.5 stars) Filled with the fragmentation, incoherence, and ambiguity that typify most "postmodern" writing, Wonderful World is a challenge for the reader, since the very characteristics which make it "post-modern" are also characteristics which are off-putting for readers who expect a novel to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. And when that novel is almost five hundred pages long, the challenges are even more daunting, since it is difficult to know how much of the incoherence and fragmentation is deliberate and how much may be the result of less than rigorous editing.

In his first novel published in English, Spanish author Javier Calvo creates a dynamic novel which explodes in several different directions at once by the sheer energy of his writing. Setting the story primarily in contemporary Barcelona, he introduces several plot lines which progress seemingly independently, and without explanation, for the first third of the novel, and while they and the huge cast of characters do eventually overlap, the overlaps are almost irrelevant by the conclusion of the novel.

The novel opens thirty years in the past in a bizarre, mood-setting scene in which Lorenzo Giraut, the most important antiques dealer in Spain, hides in a protective "hut" he has made from furniture and a mattress in the living room of an apartment in Camber Sands. Pope John Paul I has just died, the skies are filled with storm clouds and lightning, police sirens are screaming, the "American Liaison" is climbing out the window of Lorenzo's room, and the word "captors" comes inexplicably to Giraut's mind.

Immediately, the scene shifts to twelve-year-old Valentina Parini, a lover of Stephen King novels, who is awaiting his next book, Wonderful World, due out in less than three weeks. Valentina has written her own book about the decapitation of the girls' basketball coach and a bomb in her school locker room. In successive scenes, a young man and his porno queen fiancée, vacationing in Ibiza, are told they must pay their hotel bill immediately. Fanny Giraut, widow of Lorenzo Giraut, is plotting a takeover of the family business from her son Lucas, the legal heir. Lucas, in turn, is planning a major art heist with the aid of four demented criminals. Chapters of the (fictional) Stephen King book are unfolding with a climactic battle taking place as humans try to escape "Them." In "real" life, a war between two gangs associated with Lucas's father Lorenzo plays out in dream sequences, as Lucas tries to unravel who betrayed his father, while his own thugs battle a group of Russians for the same ill-gotten rewards.

Switching back and forth among plot lines and through different times, Calvo creates a wild, nightmarish world, filled with uninhibited, bawdy humor; violent sex; psychological breakdown; low-life women from all social classes; and even the history of Pink Floyd and its parallels to "life." The characters are unknowable, despite being fully described, and their predicaments do not arouse empathy. Unfortunately, long passages of description bog down the novel and dilute its effect--an unimportant episode of "Friends," being watched by one character, runs to three full pages, for example, and the irrelevant description of a car race for children runs for about the same length. Calvo is, however, a talented young writer. His exuberance and energy operate full tilt for the entire novel, and with some judicious editing of his lengthy descriptions, he should find a broad audience in the English-speaking world. n Mary Whipple

4.0 out of 5 stars Missing some strings but otherwise excellent, March 3, 2011

By 

S. Brown (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Wonderful World (P.S.) (Kindle Edition)

Some of the well laid strings that stretch across Europe, don't tie together at the end, but the writting is excellent and the story is a fast pace gangster pulp ficton.

Loved it!