The 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.
When we write about lyrical Realism our great tool is the quote, so richly patterned. But Remainder is not filled with pretty quotes; it works by accumulation and repetition, closing in on its subject in ever-decreasing revolutions, like a trauma victim circling the blank horror of the traumatic event. It plays a long, meticulous game … Remainder’s way turns out to be an extreme form of dialectical materialism—it’s a book about a man who builds in order to feel … Remainder recognizes, with Szymborska’s poem, that we know, in the end, ‘less than little/And finally as little as nothing,’ and so tries always to acknowledge the void that is not ours, the messy remainder we can’t understand or control—the ultimate marker of which is Death itself.
Remainder is a variant of that cruel fairy tale in which the most fantastic of wishes-come-true soon turn deadly. By degrees the reader comes to see that McCarthy’s amnesiac figure is a ‘remainder’—something that has been left over, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s term de trop, something that has got ‘in the way’ (see the climactic episode of Nausea, seemingly an influence on McCarthy). The fragmented and depressingly banal world he laboriously reconstructs out of a fleeting sensation of déjà vu is a mere remainder of a formerly living, vital world … Remainder is a novel that may appeal primarily to readers with interests in philosophy and the world of contemporary art, but McCarthy has written an inspired airborne ending.
McCarthy’s superb stylistic control and uncanny imagination transport this novel beyond the borders of science fiction. His bleak humor, hauntingly affectless narrator and methodical expansion on his theme make Remainder more than an entertaining brain-teaser: it’s a work of novelistic philosophy, as disturbing as it is funny. McCarthy shows that philosophy, like history, can repeat itself as farce. And in this farce, the slamming doors swing shut in slo-mo, reopening only to slowly close yet again.
...captivating and challenging … McCarthy is vague about what constituted his character's past life: He shows us one friend and one love interest, both of whom disappear soon after the money arrives. There are no parents. No siblings. Not even a memory of a beloved pet. Instead, McCarthy delivers a man without allegiances or binds: an existential Everyman. It is this that propels the second and more enervating trauma of Remainder — the narrator's quest for identity. Having seen the end and survived, he has returned feeling like an impostor in his own skin … Remainder isn't a mystery novel -- there's no villain here apart from time and space -- so if its core ripples with ambiguity, all the better for the reader, as this is a book to be read and then reread, rich as it is with its insights, daring as it is with its contradictions.
The narrator is haunted by the smell of cordite; there are characters who might not be real; and he begins to fall into catatonic trances brought on by the re-enactments. Is this purgatory? Did he in fact die in the traumatic event? McCarthy wisely lets the question remain open, finding instead a marvellous closing image of a plane flying a figure of eight - which, of course, is also the symbol for infinity. There are some bumps on the way. The randomness of the re-enactments may be philosophically sound, but it drains more momentum than it should. And the final re-enactment of a bank robbery, while asking interesting questions about perceived reality, drifts too far into blunt Chuck Palahniuk territory to be as satisfyingly subtle as what has gone before. Still, this is a refreshingly idiosyncratic, enjoyably intelligent read by a writer with ideas and talent.
Remainder is definitely worth picking up. It’s a quick and gritty novel that begs, thanks largely to a cinematic plot, to be read in one sitting … The fundamental conflict in Remainder is the narrator’s ability to discern between reality and reenactment. In that respect, the novel’s tension is remarkably similar to Fellini’s 8½, where the lines between madness and genius, actual and artifice are imperceptibly blurred … If Remainder has any faults, they are in its last hundred pages. The deterioration of the narrator as exhibited in the deterioration of cohesive prose can be frustrating and overtly contrived … Still, Remainder provides many worthwhile points of interest for readers. The outlandish and absurd nature of its protagonist is enchanting as is the mystery that surrounds his eccentric existence. The book is at its best when McCarthy’s prose is precise and detailed.
An assured work of existential horror … Although it quickly becomes weirder and more dangerous, McCarthy infuses the story with an uncanny sense of foreboding long before his protagonist decides to recreate a murder scene for his own amusement. It’s tempting to call this a postmodern parable or allegory for a virtual age, but to reduce this novel to the level of the didactic is to overlook its considerable, creepy power.
