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Allen Kurzweil

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The Grand Complication: A Novel Hardcover – August 1, 2001

by Allen Kurzweil (Author)

4.0 52 ratings

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With a boss threatening to exile him to driving a bookmobile in Amish Country and a headstrong wife whose erotic pop-up books fail to revive the couples lost intimacy, Alexander retreats to a world of private annotation. Enter Henry James Jesson III, a collector with an improbably literary name, who shares a number of Alexanders unconventional interests. Soon, Jesson hires Alexander for some after-hours research. As his search advances, the librarian realizes there are many more secrets in Jessons life than the ones found in his dazzling Manhattan salon.

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, August 2001: Most avid readers love everything about books--not only the words, but also the paper, the edition, the age, the texture of the binding, all of which become part of the fascination for the printed word that makes a true bibliophile. So it is no wonder that the bibliophile mystery has achieved such popularity. The Grand Complication, well-written and well-researched, is the latest in a long line of such mysteries.

Alexander Short is a reference librarian who spends his days dealing with the minutiae of his work world. At night he goes home to his French wife who is also a book person. She makes pop-up books and other three-dimensional volumes, including a "girdle" that Alexander wears in the manner of medieval monks, tied around his middle and used for his "girdling" or taking notes--something Alexander does obsessively, to the detriment of his job. Two such people seem made for each other, but their obsessions make for a rocky marriage.

So Alexander is fascinated when he meets Henry James Jesson III, an elderly man with equally obsessive interests. He would like Alexander to help him after hours. In Jesson's Manhattan mansion there is a cabinet of curiosities that tell the life of an 18th-century inventor. But one of the compartments is empty. Jesson, and soon Alexander, are agog with curiosity about what was in that compartment. Finding out is half the fun of reading this book.

The other half, if you care (and somehow I think you do), is the design of the book itself. Kurzweil is the son of an engineer, and he designed the small icon, a gear, that appears on many of the book's pages. Over the course of the novel, which runs 360 pages, that gear turns 360 degrees. And then there are the endpapers.... --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly

Using his highly acclaimed debut, A Case of Curiosities, as a springboard, Kurzweil delivers a remarkable novel a flawless blend of adventure, intellect, suspense, humor and antiquity. In the last novel, the case in question an 18th-century, glass-fronted box holding a collage of 10 objects had one empty compartment. In this work, set in modern-day New York City, a wealthy and eccentric bibliophile named Henry James Jesson III hires a witty, browbeaten employee of the New York Public Library, Alexander Short, to search for the missing object. Alexander, the sexually malfunctioning husband of a French artist who designs pop-up books, accepts the commission. Utilizing his exceptional research skills, he determines that the empty compartment once contained an 18th century timepiece made for Marie Antoinette. The watch, named "The Grand Complication" for its technical superiority, was stolen from a Jerusalem museum in 1983 and has been missing ever since. As the investigation deepens and Alexander becomes privy to the cloistered world of Jesson's elegant Manhattan townhouse, Alexander realizes that the elusive timepiece is not the only object under scrutiny. The robust cast of supporting characters includes a bawdy library director whose nickname is the "Librarian of Sexual Congress"; a Marie Antoinette groupie who once tried to steal the queen's pillow from an exhibit; and a no-nonsense businessman determined to open a museum devoted to all things obsolete. All come together with great finesse in this enchanting quest one that is sure to appeal to fans of Arturo Perez-Reverte and anyone who appreciates an intellectual romp. (Aug.)Forecast: Interest in anything Kurzweil produces should remain high, even this long after the success of A Case of Curiosities, which will receive a simultaneous paperback release. A national ad campaign and five-city author tour will help to fan the flames.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In a kind of sequel to Kurzweil's first novel, A Case of Curiosities (1991), Alexander Short, NYPL reference librarian, comes to the aid of a bibliophile named Henry James Jesson, who is searching for information about an eighteenth-century cabinet (the "case of curiosities") whose contents tell the tale of a man's life. Short's job is to determine what objects once occupied one of the cabinet's cubbyholes. No small task, but just right for this world-class reference librarian, who cultivates the most arcane of interests as a way of hiding from a plethora of life's more mundane complications--sex, love, commitment. This time, however, the search takes Short into rather than away from his own heart of darkness. Is Jesson really interested in the rare watch missing from the cabinet, or is it Short himself who is the object of the collector's passion? As Short is forced to confront the most challenging of reference questions (Who am I?), Kurzweil revels in the minutiae of librarianship while at the same time offering a thought-provoking, deeply philosophical meditation on the problem of identity. This is a delightfully intricate jewel box of a novel, and it works on multiple levels. Librarians will find the book a riotously funny in-joke (name the last novel in which the phrase "presort the reshelves" appeared), while connoisseurs of the most sophisticated literary-historical thrillers will lose themselves completely in Kurzweil's multifaceted world. The charismatic Short immediately joins the protagonists of Martha Cooley's The Archivist and Ross King's Ex-Libris on the short list of fiction's best bibliophile heroes. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"A charming energy floods the novel, and Kurzweil neatly pulls off the author's trick of entertaining even as he educates." -- Bookpage

"Every bit as entertaining as it is sophisticated and elusive." -- Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2001

"Funny, entertaining . . . mystery whose witty wordplay and fascinating detail will tickle any reader's brain." -- People Magazine

"It's a wonderful mystery with its own 18th-century jeu d'esprit." -- Providence Sunday Journal

"Kurzweil's new book is a timepiece in more ways than one." -- Boston Herald

"Recommended for all literature collections." -- Library Journal

"This is a delightfully arcane jewel box of a novel in which every compartment holds something." -- American Libraries, July 2001

"a wonderfully inventive novel." -- USA TODAY

"great fun and quite appealing." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

About the Author

Allen Kurzweil has won various awards, including fellowships from the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is currently a Fellow at Brown University's John Nicholas Brown Center. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife and son.

Print length

360 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Hyperion
Publication date

August 1, 2001
Grade level

8 and up
Reading age

13 years and up
Dimensions

6.75 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

0786866039
ISBN-13

978-0786866038
See all details

Allen Kurzweil
66
Paperback
60 offers from $0.96

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hyperion; First Edition (August 1, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 360 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0786866039
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0786866038
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 8 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,682,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #30,223 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #117,672 in American Literature (Books)
- #172,221 in Mysteries (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.0 52 ratings

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Allen Kurzweil

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From www.allenkurzweil.com...

"Allen Kurzweil is an editor and inventor, but mostly he writes fiction. His novels for adults include A CASE OF CURIOSITIES and THE GRAND COMPLICATION. He has also written two popular chapter books for children: LEON AND THE SPITTING IMAGE and LEON AND THE CHAMPION CHIP. In 2003, Allen teamed up with his 9-year-son Max to explore the scientific potential of the potato chip. That collaboration resulted in publication of POTATO CHIP SCIENCE, an award-winning eco-friendly kit that comes packaged inside a potato chip bag. Honored for his writing in Europe and the United States, Allen Kurzweil currently lives in Rhode Island, where he is a fellow at the John Carter Brown Library and a board member of the Providence Athenaeum."

For more information, visit allenkurzweil.com and potatochipscience.com.

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M. T. Campos

Make Way for the Slips of Love

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2005

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If you love inventory, secret penmanship, erotic pop-ups, Marie Antoinette memorabilia and shrimps . . . then this is the book for you.

Alllen Kurzweil has written an intriguing page-turner of a tome. Our hero, Alexander Short, reminds me of Indiana Jones if he was the kind of guy who hunted for relics by using library slips and zip tubes (these tubes move books from the library stacks to the front desk). He is lured into a search for The Grand Complication-by a roguishly eccentric collector, Henry James Jesson III.

Short, being a reference librarian with a compulsive disorder to make lists of everything in a journal knotted to his clothes, is the perfect pawn to Jesson's puppetmaster. He resolutely pursues the Grand Complication, from its disappearance in a cabinet of curiosities to a theft in Jerusalem . . . jeopardizing his job and his marriage.

The third note-worthy protagonist in this book is the library itself and its bizarre characters and routines: George Speaight, the Librarian of Sexual Congress (actually the curator of a collection initially funded by a pornographer), Emil Dinthofer who keeps threatening to send Short to a bookmobile in Amish country; Finster Dapples, the Genealogy specialist who teaches us a lot about how to create a coat of arms, Irving Grote, the head of Conservation who goes head-to-head against Mr. Paradis, the autodidactic janitor in a library competition that tests their knowledge of the Dewey Decimal system . . . and there's even the Sabretooths, a football team who become the recipients of a most unusual book tour.

There's an enthralling energy to this novel that you don't expect when you consider that most of the action happens among books and paper products. Kurzweil also has a magical grasp of the macguffin and he neatly pulls off the difficult trick of entertaining as he educates us in the intricacies of full body tattoos, timepieces, heraldic self-invention, and the use of a ham sandwich as a criminal diversion.

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Alan Robson

Grand indeed, and very complicated

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2001

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The Grand Complication is a wonderfully oddball book. Alexander Short is a librarian possessed of arcane interests. He is a scholar of the eighteenth century, enamoured of the essayists. He has a notebook tethered to his coat and everywhere he goes he takes notes on the things that he sees. Since he lives in a run down tenement where many a drug deal takes place, his note taking is regarded with suspicion and sometimes gets him into trouble.
Henry James Jesson III is a bibliophile who indulges his eccentric passions quite freely for he is rich enough to get away with anything he wants to do. He has come into possession of a cabinet of curiosities which chronicles the life of an eighteenth century inventor. Unfortunately the cabinet is incomplete, one item is missing.
Since Jesson feels uncomfortable in the modern world of computer based library indexes, he hires Alexander Short to research the missing item. For all his eighteenth century affectations, Short is perfectly at home with computer catalogues and he embraces his task with enormous zeal. A series of fortuitous discoveries quickly identifies the missing item and Jesson and Short embark on a quest to find it and restore the cabinet to its original glory.
Or do they? There are wheels within wheels and Jesson is curiously uninformative about the cabinet. It begins to look as if there are grander, more complex designs behind the scenes. Jesson and Short himself are both manipulating and being manipulated.
The book is replete with arcana. There are fascinating discourses on how to manufacture pop-up books, the mechanics of hidden compartments and the measurement of time. I'm not at all sure that the mish-mash makes sense but my goodness me it holds the attention.

5 people found this helpful

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Maryellen Grady

Great Gift For My Librarian Friend

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2013

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It is a must-read for everybody who loves libraries and books. The friend I gave it to loved it so much she recommended it to her friends who also loved it.

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audrey frances

great premise never pays off (mild spoiler)

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2002

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I was really anticipating a great book -- lots of positive reviews and subject matter that closely overlapped my own interests -- but ultimately I didn't find this a satisfying read. The mystery was not intriguing enough. The writing was inelegant. Worst of all, the ending was disappointing -- so many things were hinted at in the novel, so many suggestions that this was going to be one of those satisfying books where the author somehow ties all the loose ends into an unexpected but plausible denouement -- the kind of book you want to start reading again right away to see where the real clues were hidden. Instead, the ending was anticlimactic and none of the innuendos were addressed. (Spoiler Warning) Instead, the protagonist feels betrayed by someone and perpetrates an uninspired revenge, while the novel itself ends with a tired literary device.

Being a librarian I enjoyed the arcana, but thought most of the characters were two-dimensional and unsympathetic. The author contrives intriguing plot devices and writes decent dialogue, but neither devices nor dialogue reveal much beyond plot advancement. Type is big and white space is plentiful. A fast but clunky novel that does not meet the expectations it raises in the first three-quarters of the book. I probably won't buy the author's first book, but if someone gave me a copy I'd read it.

I wanted to like this book, I just didn't. Since reviews are mixed, perhaps you should read some sample pages to decide for yourself. Unfortunately, sample pages can't save you from the sense of ultimate disappointment some readers have felt at the dispirited ending.

11 people found this helpful

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P.A.W.

Detective

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2014

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Loved this book, interesting characters, skillfully weaves historical persons with fiction. The plots was satisfying complicated, interesting. I am reading more of this author.

One person found this helpful

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Jerry Reshew

The Grand Complication

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2013

Verified Purchase

The author undoubtedly knows the arcane world of libraries and takes pleasure in showing off this knowledge throughout the book .
I found myself forcing attention back to the story at times.

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