Connect
Sponsors
Currently Reading
-
Terms
The Book Lady's Blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Reviews and articles posted here are property of The Book Lady's Blog and are not to be posted elsewhere without permission. Please contact me if you wish to post any of my work, or any excerpt thereof, in any other location or format.
Miscellaneous
Meet Bookrageous!
Technical Stuff
Design Credits
Sep
12
Book (P)review: The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
2008 at 8am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
Things have been a little busy here in Book Lady Land, and I haven’t had a chance to finish The Gone-Away World, which is good but quite lengthy. So, I’m borrowing this idea for a book preview from My Friend Amy, who, I think, borrowed it from someone else. I’m sure I’ll finish it at some point, since I’m already halfway in and am really enjoying it, but for now, I’ll preview it for you and break Book Lady rules by moving on to another book, at least for the time being.
Nick Harkaway’s debut novel The Gone-Away World almost defies description. Part futuristic speculative fantasy fiction, part humorous riff on modern warfare and government secrecy, part dystopian exploration, and all topsy-turvy in the tradition of Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, this wonderful book is utterly unique.
From the beginning, we know that the main character (whose name has not been revealed in the first half of the book and may not be at all) resides within the Livable Zone, which is marked out by the Pipe, because a good chunk of the world has been “disappeared” by the Go Away weapon. Our narrator works for the government (or some secret government agency) cleaning up major disasters and hazards caused by the ongoing war, and the book opens with a scene that shows him and his coworkers (many of whom are lifelong friends) in a bar that is surrounded by tanks, as they are called out to a job.
It sounds weird, and it’s difficult to describe, but let me tell you, it’s captivating if you can just allow yourself to be swept away by the writing. If you try to make it all make sense, you’ll make yourself crazy.
The narrative then flashes back to the narrator’s childhood and shows us scenes from his friendship with best friend Gonzo, who always seems slightly cooler and one step ahead, and then from his training in martial arts under Wu Shenyang, who is, apparently, a known enemy of the government (or at least the government says that) and is later killed by ninjas (we think).
Then, we see the narrator in college, where he is a member of a politically active, potentially revolutionary social club. When he and several members of the group are kidnapped by secret officials and brought in for questioning, he is accused of treason (for acts he didn’t commit, which they know he didn’t commit), and a whole new series of “things are not quite right” events unfolds.
The Gone-Away World is unlike anything else I’ve read. The “flavor” of it reminds me quite a bit of Catch-22, but it is also quite different, in ways that are difficult to summarize or articulate. And I think Harkaway is going for that. I don’t think he wants us to be able to make sense of everything; he wants to pull us into a world that is both foreign and familiar and to take us on a journey with the characters. He wants to make us laugh and ask questions, and he wants to give us a very enjoyable reading experience. He succeeds mightily, at least as far as I’ve read.
This book is a step outside my usual reading habits, but I’ve really liked it so far. It’s not one I would recommend for everybody, but if you like the topsy-turvy feeling that makes you want to shake your head until things appear differently and start making some sense, The Gone-Away World might be a good fit for you. Harkaway’s writing is strong and interesting, and his language is whimsical and effective.
And if you need extra convincing: the cover is fuzzy! What’s not to love about that?
Thank you to Random House for generously sending me a beautiful hardback copy, complete with said fuzzy cover.
Related posts:
[...] My reader’s block returned when I tried out Acedia & me by Kathleen Norris and quickly discovered that a book about acedia just wasn’t for me…so I gave it away and moved on to The Gone-Away World, which I was enjoying but unable to finish, at least so far, so I previewed it here. [...]
My copy isn’t hardcover or fuzzy.
I’m almost finished with this one. It got a lot more exciting and interesting to me after the halfway point, and even though I am skimming a paragraph here or there (Harkaway does go on in places, doesn’t he?), I’m really glad I stuck it out.