RaveBookforumThe novel, McCarthy's first, is a tightly knit, suspenseful, and cold book about disconnection (induced by posttraumatic stress and, to some degree, consumer culture), with echoes of Huysmans and Heidegger. Nihilistically modern and classically structured, Remainder, set in contemporary London, presents a vision of extravagance in which one man, in an effort to ward off a life lived 'second-hand,' pursues authenticity with the monomaniacal focus of Francis Ford Coppola circa Apocalypse Now … McCarthy tells his tale calmly, as if taking long, yogic breaths. His everyman's struggle to regain his grace butts up against his fascination with systems and connections, which he sees magnified everywhere around him yet never within himself … McCarthy avoids the sophomoric. He seems genuinely to want to understand how a traumatized mind might put its broken pieces back together again.
