Status
Available
Publication
New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Description
Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. Science Fiction. HTML: A hilarious, action-packed look at the apocalypse that combines a touching tale of friendship, a thrilling war story, and an all out kung-fu infused mission to save the world. Gonzo Lubitch and his best friend have been inseparable since birth. They grew up together, they studied kung-fu together, they rebelled in college together, and they fought in the Go Away War together. Now, with the world in shambles and dark, nightmarish clouds billowing over the wastelands, they have been tapped for an incredibly perilous mission. But they quickly realize that this assignment is more complex than it seems, and before it is over they will have encountered everything from mimes, ninjas, and pirates to one ultra-sinister mastermind, whose only goal is world domination. .… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member FlossieT
"High-octane" - ironically for a book about a world tenuously sustained by a mysterious Pipe - is a word that seems to have been waiting for this book to come along and claim it. Our unnamed narrator is part of a gang of mercenaries who hire themselves out to protect the Jorgmund Pipe from the many
This book is completely and utterly insane. It has one of the best first pages I've read in a long time. It could have done with a slightly firmer editorial hand at times. It is a bit uneven in places. It's very, very funny. It's about martial arts, mercenaries, war, friendship and the end of the world. Harkaway just can't let a sentence lie - everything is embroidered, dressed up, tortured, prodded, interrupted and shaken down before a paragraph can claim its final full stop (much as I'm finding myself doing trying to describe it - it's infectious!). Surprisingly, I found this a lot less annoying by the end of the book than I thought I was going to somewhere around page 25.
Somewhere after the humungous flashback, it also features possibly the most audacious plot twist of any novel that I have ever read. To be strictly honest, it doesn't 100% come off - there were still a few "but... but.." questions in my mind - but really, the sheer chutzpah in even trying goes a long way. The other really excellent thing in here is the central 'monster' concept: I'm overfond of complaining that books with scary things in often let themselves down by describing the scary thing, giving it a shape that is altogether more familiar than the black vagueness forming in your imagination. This book does not fall into that trap. It also features a rather charmingly old-fashioned, 'fade to black' approach when dealing with sex scenes, which I found rather charming. No Bad Sex prizes for this man.
I enjoyed this enormously, and in fact more than I was expecting to, but it won't be everyone's cup of tea. I'd recommend it to fans of dystopian fiction, but especially those that are very fond of words for the sake of words and can forgive the numerous longeurs and unpackings that go on: Harkaway clearly read Orwell's rule of using as few words as possible and laughed until his sides split.
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threats that assail it, in order to stave off a re-run of the end of the world. As the book opens, they're being called out to "one last job" - OK, they don't think it's one last job, but it's essentially that familiar plot device. Only having set this up, we're then treated to a 200-odd page flashback explaining how the narrator and his friends got to this point - taking in his first encounter with his best friend in a sandpit, an enormous Polish matriarch, ninjas, an unconventional headmistress nicknamed The Evangelist, cannibalism, university, student protest, government brutality and armed service before we get to the everything-blows-up bit.This book is completely and utterly insane. It has one of the best first pages I've read in a long time. It could have done with a slightly firmer editorial hand at times. It is a bit uneven in places. It's very, very funny. It's about martial arts, mercenaries, war, friendship and the end of the world. Harkaway just can't let a sentence lie - everything is embroidered, dressed up, tortured, prodded, interrupted and shaken down before a paragraph can claim its final full stop (much as I'm finding myself doing trying to describe it - it's infectious!). Surprisingly, I found this a lot less annoying by the end of the book than I thought I was going to somewhere around page 25.
Somewhere after the humungous flashback, it also features possibly the most audacious plot twist of any novel that I have ever read. To be strictly honest, it doesn't 100% come off - there were still a few "but... but.." questions in my mind - but really, the sheer chutzpah in even trying goes a long way. The other really excellent thing in here is the central 'monster' concept: I'm overfond of complaining that books with scary things in often let themselves down by describing the scary thing, giving it a shape that is altogether more familiar than the black vagueness forming in your imagination. This book does not fall into that trap. It also features a rather charmingly old-fashioned, 'fade to black' approach when dealing with sex scenes, which I found rather charming. No Bad Sex prizes for this man.
I enjoyed this enormously, and in fact more than I was expecting to, but it won't be everyone's cup of tea. I'd recommend it to fans of dystopian fiction, but especially those that are very fond of words for the sake of words and can forgive the numerous longeurs and unpackings that go on: Harkaway clearly read Orwell's rule of using as few words as possible and laughed until his sides split.
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LibraryThing member clfisha
Amazing multi-layered dystopian fantasy. With Ninjas.
A brilliant Frankestinian mesh of ideas and tropes. I mean we get a dystopian future to die for, ninjas, love triangles, the harsh reality of modern war, mimes, political satire, pirates, terrorists and freedom fighters, a variety of circus acts
Of course all these ideas would be nothing without the characters and plot to hold them together and Nick Harkaway writes brilliantly. He imbues everything with a wry humour and then smacks you with the heartfelt highs and lows and of humanity. This balance is everything; he can write tense, dramatic action sequences, quiet romantic moments, zany madcap escapades and horrible acts of war. The man is an alchemical genius.
The characters are superb. Written in 1st person we have a fantastic protagonist: a funny, intelligent, self depreciating side-kick to his overly heroic best friend. Add a cast of a lifetime (don’t worry it’s not too much), all wonderfully portrayed, and you have a real gem.
The story is a breath of fresh air, imaginative, fast moving and constantly challenging expectations. I mean what starts out as a zany band of heroes going to save the world, switches straight into memoir territory as we quietly (and grippingly) catch up to the present day and into the future.
Of course this mucking about with your expectations could, I guess, be a problem because you will realise this book is about something else. There other minor problems. This being a 1st person means you really have to enjoy the company of the protagonist and all those brilliantly written ideas are packed so tight it's overwhelming and the initial start can seem slow. What this story needed was an evil, heartless editor to rip out some of good stuff but make a tighter plot. Although then again the build up is worth it so who I am to say?
It's one of those books that when you finish and finally stop stuffing the words into brain in a madcap frenzy, pause and think and then smile at what Harkaway has managed to achieve. It's his bloody debut too.
Highly recommended to everyone!
A brilliant Frankestinian mesh of ideas and tropes. I mean we get a dystopian future to die for, ninjas, love triangles, the harsh reality of modern war, mimes, political satire, pirates, terrorists and freedom fighters, a variety of circus acts
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and murderous bees. Do I need I say anymore? I mean dystopian ninjas? Come on!Of course all these ideas would be nothing without the characters and plot to hold them together and Nick Harkaway writes brilliantly. He imbues everything with a wry humour and then smacks you with the heartfelt highs and lows and of humanity. This balance is everything; he can write tense, dramatic action sequences, quiet romantic moments, zany madcap escapades and horrible acts of war. The man is an alchemical genius.
The characters are superb. Written in 1st person we have a fantastic protagonist: a funny, intelligent, self depreciating side-kick to his overly heroic best friend. Add a cast of a lifetime (don’t worry it’s not too much), all wonderfully portrayed, and you have a real gem.
The story is a breath of fresh air, imaginative, fast moving and constantly challenging expectations. I mean what starts out as a zany band of heroes going to save the world, switches straight into memoir territory as we quietly (and grippingly) catch up to the present day and into the future.
Of course this mucking about with your expectations could, I guess, be a problem because you will realise this book is about something else. There other minor problems. This being a 1st person means you really have to enjoy the company of the protagonist and all those brilliantly written ideas are packed so tight it's overwhelming and the initial start can seem slow. What this story needed was an evil, heartless editor to rip out some of good stuff but make a tighter plot. Although then again the build up is worth it so who I am to say?
It's one of those books that when you finish and finally stop stuffing the words into brain in a madcap frenzy, pause and think and then smile at what Harkaway has managed to achieve. It's his bloody debut too.
Highly recommended to everyone!
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LibraryThing member GingerbreadMan
This is the kind of book that might sound slightly more bonkers than it actually is when described. Because yes, these six hundred pages ARE filled with ninjas, pirate monks, college freedom fighters turned into porn stars, mutant bees, mysterious mimes with a political agenda, quarreling spice
But Nick Harkaway’s stroy telling talent is such that the all-over-the-place type of imagination here never falls into the trap of plain silliness. Rather, this is a pageturner dealing with themes like dignity, humanity and the price for freedom and safety. Funny at times, though,absolutely. But also moving, gripping, and ever so slightly creepy.
Gonzo Lubitsch and his friend, our narrator, are part of a trouble shooter team, specialising in dealing with leaks on the Jorgmund Pipe, the backbone that’s crucial to keep the monsters at bey and the slim ”normal” zone liveable. But the leak they are set to deal with now is bigger than anything they’ve dealt with before – a raging fire at one of the main stations. As if that wasn’t enough several of the towns in the area have had their population just anish without a trace. And right before borading the brand new trucks given to them as part of the assignment, our narrator gets a phone call – warning him not to take the job. But how could he stop larger than life Gonzo, the best friend he’s lived in the shadow of his entire life?
Despite not having the time to devour it like it deserves, I had a great time with this unusual and though-provoking brick. At one point towards the end I felt worried it would never manage to bring it all home in a satisfactory fashion. But then it does, steeply but without feeling stressed at all. My only minor complaint is that I would have wanted to know a bit more about some things, that just feels a little brushed over. In a book of six hundred pages, that’s actually something in itself!
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merchants and a doomsday weapon that just makes the enemy Go Away. And yes, this is a version of post-apocalypse where the only thing that keeps the scraps of humanity from being torn asunder by their own nightmares is the presence of a substance sprayed into the air from a huge pipeline, around which they all live. But Nick Harkaway’s stroy telling talent is such that the all-over-the-place type of imagination here never falls into the trap of plain silliness. Rather, this is a pageturner dealing with themes like dignity, humanity and the price for freedom and safety. Funny at times, though,absolutely. But also moving, gripping, and ever so slightly creepy.
Gonzo Lubitsch and his friend, our narrator, are part of a trouble shooter team, specialising in dealing with leaks on the Jorgmund Pipe, the backbone that’s crucial to keep the monsters at bey and the slim ”normal” zone liveable. But the leak they are set to deal with now is bigger than anything they’ve dealt with before – a raging fire at one of the main stations. As if that wasn’t enough several of the towns in the area have had their population just anish without a trace. And right before borading the brand new trucks given to them as part of the assignment, our narrator gets a phone call – warning him not to take the job. But how could he stop larger than life Gonzo, the best friend he’s lived in the shadow of his entire life?
Despite not having the time to devour it like it deserves, I had a great time with this unusual and though-provoking brick. At one point towards the end I felt worried it would never manage to bring it all home in a satisfactory fashion. But then it does, steeply but without feeling stressed at all. My only minor complaint is that I would have wanted to know a bit more about some things, that just feels a little brushed over. In a book of six hundred pages, that’s actually something in itself!
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LibraryThing member camillahoel
There are some books, a very few books, that completely take you over. After a book like that you have no desire to read anything else; you want to reread it for the rest of your life. Given time, friends and family will make you see that this is not the best option (say, that maybe you should
I had never heard of The Gone-Away World until a friend lent it to me. I wasn't expecting it to be very good, but after having read snatches of Master Wu's attempt at explaining why America beat China to the space program, he managed to convince me that at least the language was good. I consented to putting it on my list.
I confess I was worried at first. The opening chapter, while well written, did not particularly appeal to my preferences for what a book should be about. They talked about trucks and guns. There were moments of glory in between, but I was very worried about what this would turn into. And then I read on. It quickly became apparent that the author had a good grasp of not only ninjas and pirates and martial arts, but also characters and plot. And language.
Now, mind you don't misunderstand. When I speak of ninjas and pirates, suggest old men with qi and a generally well-written book, I am not talking about something written by a pretentious geek with a good grasp of internet subcultures and a penchant for ornamental language. Good language in this instance is not the flowery verbal tapestry that I will admit sometimes enraptures certain students of literature (and I am by no means excluding myself). That kind of language would have been entirely out of place. When I say good language, I mean that the words generally are just where they ought to be. Think Adams and Pratchett and Wodehouse, but without thinking Adams and Pratchett and Wodehouse at all. Nick Harkaway has that control over language, but he uses it very differently. It appears as purposefully careless, littered with moments of brilliant insight.
What is it about? I don't really want to tell you. I suspect that is because I started out knowing nothing and fell so head over heels; the entire reading process can probably be imagined as one very slow topple, ending with a very sizable crash (face hitting floor) in the end (did you follow that metaphor?). It tells the story of Gonzo's friend and Gonzo, set in a post-apocalyptic world (with rather long periods of pre-apocalypse and the apocalypse itself). It provides a commentary on modern warfare, multinational companies, international politics and people as cogs in a larger machinery, or not. All this is fed a steady stream of ninjas, pirates, mimes, revolutionaries, contra-revolutionaries, bastards, bigger bastards, bees, a new and rather unexpected use of Tupperware, and details that pretend to mean nothing, but that lie all the while before hitting you over the head.
I did not get hooked until the second chapter. It starts in medias res, and Harkaway's characters (oh, the characters!) grow and develop throughout -- it therefore stands to reason that they cannot be at their best in the very first chapter. I found it disorienting, as it placed me very unprepared in an unknown world with groups whose motivations and backgrounds were a big mystery. It made me think it was just another book about tough men in a post-apocalyptic tough world. But I have never been very good at reading first chapters. And it is a chapter which makes sense later on. I have also talked to some who found it captured their imagination. In other words: if you find the book sucks you in at once, read on; if it doesn't, read on.
One word on the characters before I go on. I said they develop. They also stand out. Harkaway has a knack that you find in Dumas and Conan Doyle. He gives you people in his supporting cast. Anyone who does not love Master Wu and his soft style gong fu has no heart. Anyone who has ever trained any martial art (certainly soft style --I'll wager my first-born) will feel an extreme need to pick it up again.
The novel has a steady, insistent protest against homogenising; it celebrates the unassimilated, what sticks out, is different, impedes the smooth running of the machinery, what creates something new by breaking down the old. Walter Benjamin would call him an allegorist. I am not sure that is not as good a name (and praise) as any. I could go on. But this is not the place for analysis. It is a well-written book with excellent characters and marvellous moments. It scared me on several levels, but I also laughed out loud rather a lot. And I kept reading snatches to the people around me who had no idea what I was on about.
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focus on your work, or that there might be other good books out there only waiting to be discovered). In the meantime, you will lend it to random people in the street (after having bought an extra copy specifically for lending, as dirty strangers cannot be allowed to touch your glorious copy), buy it for your friends and glare at those who do not take your advice. These books show up very rarely, and they are hardly ever announced.I had never heard of The Gone-Away World until a friend lent it to me. I wasn't expecting it to be very good, but after having read snatches of Master Wu's attempt at explaining why America beat China to the space program, he managed to convince me that at least the language was good. I consented to putting it on my list.
I confess I was worried at first. The opening chapter, while well written, did not particularly appeal to my preferences for what a book should be about. They talked about trucks and guns. There were moments of glory in between, but I was very worried about what this would turn into. And then I read on. It quickly became apparent that the author had a good grasp of not only ninjas and pirates and martial arts, but also characters and plot. And language.
Now, mind you don't misunderstand. When I speak of ninjas and pirates, suggest old men with qi and a generally well-written book, I am not talking about something written by a pretentious geek with a good grasp of internet subcultures and a penchant for ornamental language. Good language in this instance is not the flowery verbal tapestry that I will admit sometimes enraptures certain students of literature (and I am by no means excluding myself). That kind of language would have been entirely out of place. When I say good language, I mean that the words generally are just where they ought to be. Think Adams and Pratchett and Wodehouse, but without thinking Adams and Pratchett and Wodehouse at all. Nick Harkaway has that control over language, but he uses it very differently. It appears as purposefully careless, littered with moments of brilliant insight.
What is it about? I don't really want to tell you. I suspect that is because I started out knowing nothing and fell so head over heels; the entire reading process can probably be imagined as one very slow topple, ending with a very sizable crash (face hitting floor) in the end (did you follow that metaphor?). It tells the story of Gonzo's friend and Gonzo, set in a post-apocalyptic world (with rather long periods of pre-apocalypse and the apocalypse itself). It provides a commentary on modern warfare, multinational companies, international politics and people as cogs in a larger machinery, or not. All this is fed a steady stream of ninjas, pirates, mimes, revolutionaries, contra-revolutionaries, bastards, bigger bastards, bees, a new and rather unexpected use of Tupperware, and details that pretend to mean nothing, but that lie all the while before hitting you over the head.
I did not get hooked until the second chapter. It starts in medias res, and Harkaway's characters (oh, the characters!) grow and develop throughout -- it therefore stands to reason that they cannot be at their best in the very first chapter. I found it disorienting, as it placed me very unprepared in an unknown world with groups whose motivations and backgrounds were a big mystery. It made me think it was just another book about tough men in a post-apocalyptic tough world. But I have never been very good at reading first chapters. And it is a chapter which makes sense later on. I have also talked to some who found it captured their imagination. In other words: if you find the book sucks you in at once, read on; if it doesn't, read on.
One word on the characters before I go on. I said they develop. They also stand out. Harkaway has a knack that you find in Dumas and Conan Doyle. He gives you people in his supporting cast. Anyone who does not love Master Wu and his soft style gong fu has no heart. Anyone who has ever trained any martial art (certainly soft style --I'll wager my first-born) will feel an extreme need to pick it up again.
The novel has a steady, insistent protest against homogenising; it celebrates the unassimilated, what sticks out, is different, impedes the smooth running of the machinery, what creates something new by breaking down the old. Walter Benjamin would call him an allegorist. I am not sure that is not as good a name (and praise) as any. I could go on. But this is not the place for analysis. It is a well-written book with excellent characters and marvellous moments. It scared me on several levels, but I also laughed out loud rather a lot. And I kept reading snatches to the people around me who had no idea what I was on about.
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LibraryThing member LisaLynne
I loved this book so much that I posted a pre-review review, urging you all to go out and buy the book. It has been a long time since a book made me want to shout out loud and dance around my hotel room, but this book did.
It is the story of the survivors of the Go-Away War, a war fought with bombs
Our nameless narrator and his best friend, Gonzo Lubitsch, are on the front lines of this war and its aftermath. They are principals in the Haulage & HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company, men and women who aren't afraid to step into the breach. When they end up working for Jorgmund, the corporate behemoth that controls much of the post-war world, there is bound to be trouble.
The book is part kung-fu epic, part sci-fi romance, part philosophic screed on what it means to be human, plus post-apocalyptic adventure and frenetic, laugh-out-loud hilarity. The twists and turns in the plot leave you questioning everything that has come before. I don't know how else to categorize it - a well-read friend described it as 'Pynchon with dashes of P.G. Wodehouse and Alexandre Dumas.' The fact that it's a first novel just floors me. I will be devouring the next book Nick Harkaway publishes as soon as it hits the shelves - sooner, if I can manage it.
It is the story of the survivors of the Go-Away War, a war fought with bombs
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that didn't make things explode, but instead made them go away. The reasoning goes something like this: matter needs information to tell it what to be - whether it should be a table or a pumpkin or a schnauzer. Strip away that information and matter becomes just Stuff; shapeless, formless and harmless. In theory, these bombs just dissolve that bit of information and your enemies - and their cities, their houses, their furniture, their children - become so much dust in the wind. Problem is, things never work out in theory quite the way you expect. As nature abhors a vaccuum, Stuff hates to be formless. It yearns for that bit of information. Our nameless narrator and his best friend, Gonzo Lubitsch, are on the front lines of this war and its aftermath. They are principals in the Haulage & HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company, men and women who aren't afraid to step into the breach. When they end up working for Jorgmund, the corporate behemoth that controls much of the post-war world, there is bound to be trouble.
The book is part kung-fu epic, part sci-fi romance, part philosophic screed on what it means to be human, plus post-apocalyptic adventure and frenetic, laugh-out-loud hilarity. The twists and turns in the plot leave you questioning everything that has come before. I don't know how else to categorize it - a well-read friend described it as 'Pynchon with dashes of P.G. Wodehouse and Alexandre Dumas.' The fact that it's a first novel just floors me. I will be devouring the next book Nick Harkaway publishes as soon as it hits the shelves - sooner, if I can manage it.
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LibraryThing member pgmcc
I find it hard to start this review because there are so many facets to this book. I could say it’s the story of some people and how they survive an apocalypse and describes the part they play in forming a new existence. I could say this story is about relationships; growing up; home; family;
It is all these things, and more.
There are parts of this story where I saw layer upon layer of meaning. There was the straight story being told; there was the parallel with the gulf wars; there was the parallel with the war on Terror; there was the parallel with big business taking over the world; there was the parallel with the global economic crash and recession; there was the parallel with the individual struggling with personal trauma and loss. I could go on.
Of course, Nick Harkaway would simply say, “What have you been smoking? I just wrote a story.”
I don’t know how much of what I found in the novel was put there deliberately, and how much is due to my imagination, but I do know that Nick Harkaway has created a wonderful reading experience that is thought provoking, humorous, and just a wonderful read.
Some reviewers have said it can be a tough read. I would say it’s not so much a tough read, as a fast paced tale that covers a lot of ground and doesn’t let you rest for a minute. It ducks and weaves across various threads of story and doesn’t waste a single element in its whole telling.
I will be getting and reading Nick’s next book as soon as it is available; and hey, it’s got elephants.
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coming of age; self-knowledge; loyalty; right and wrong; endurance; war; globalisation; big business; yuppies; the little guy; the big guy; friendship; love; pig-powered electricity generators; ninjas and fun.It is all these things, and more.
There are parts of this story where I saw layer upon layer of meaning. There was the straight story being told; there was the parallel with the gulf wars; there was the parallel with the war on Terror; there was the parallel with big business taking over the world; there was the parallel with the global economic crash and recession; there was the parallel with the individual struggling with personal trauma and loss. I could go on.
Of course, Nick Harkaway would simply say, “What have you been smoking? I just wrote a story.”
I don’t know how much of what I found in the novel was put there deliberately, and how much is due to my imagination, but I do know that Nick Harkaway has created a wonderful reading experience that is thought provoking, humorous, and just a wonderful read.
Some reviewers have said it can be a tough read. I would say it’s not so much a tough read, as a fast paced tale that covers a lot of ground and doesn’t let you rest for a minute. It ducks and weaves across various threads of story and doesn’t waste a single element in its whole telling.
I will be getting and reading Nick’s next book as soon as it is available; and hey, it’s got elephants.
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LibraryThing member Ken-Me-Old-Mate
What was this book?
I started out reading a blokey kind of adventure story kind of thing then suddenly I'm in the middle of science fiction, both very good I might add...but what the...??.
But as you read you can feel the landscape slowly changing as you go along but it's not quite clear where we
After a couple of chapters that bordered on zombie hunting territory then we end up on what is one of the best delves into what constitutes identity. In fact I thought it was all about identity....or was it?
It was a bit like 26 capitals in 21 days but it was so well done. It's been a while since I had to catch my breath in a book but here it is, this one did.
It seems a but unfair to even try to summarise this book because the reading experience is not singular in any way but I can say that it is superb, spacious and very wide in both scope, intention and achievement.
Don't not read this book, it is a sizeable undertaking but make room for it.
I started out reading a blokey kind of adventure story kind of thing then suddenly I'm in the middle of science fiction, both very good I might add...but what the...??.
But as you read you can feel the landscape slowly changing as you go along but it's not quite clear where we
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are going. Was he making it up as he went along? It definitely did not feel like a planned out piece of work but somehow that added to the tension.After a couple of chapters that bordered on zombie hunting territory then we end up on what is one of the best delves into what constitutes identity. In fact I thought it was all about identity....or was it?
It was a bit like 26 capitals in 21 days but it was so well done. It's been a while since I had to catch my breath in a book but here it is, this one did.
It seems a but unfair to even try to summarise this book because the reading experience is not singular in any way but I can say that it is superb, spacious and very wide in both scope, intention and achievement.
Don't not read this book, it is a sizeable undertaking but make room for it.
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LibraryThing member madcurrin
If you mixed together Mad Max, The Matrix and Saving Private Ryan then stirred in the literary juice of Great Expectations, Catch 22, a pinch of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels and perhaps even a bit of Monty Python and then asked Quentin Tarantino to write it you might expect to end up with
The caveat on this recommendation is that you need a lot of stamina to make it all the way through The Gone Away World. It is worth the effort. Nick Harkaway is a very funny writer - which is part of the problem. He seems to KNOW that he's funny. He has way too much fun with his elaborate prose which can mean that every character is outrageously, self-indulgently eloquent. Long digressions drop out of nowhere, taking you further away from the plot (it seems at the time) and the whole thing can be very frustrating, verging on incomprehensible ... but hang in there, it turns out that every word counts.
Once you give in to the book's verbose style and enjoy it on its own terms you'll find a marvellous, wacky, cinematically action packed and intricately plotted novel about, well, many things, not least the end of the world.
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something like this. Except that the author is not Tarantino, it's Nick Harkaway and he very much does his own thing his own way. And what he does is very good.The caveat on this recommendation is that you need a lot of stamina to make it all the way through The Gone Away World. It is worth the effort. Nick Harkaway is a very funny writer - which is part of the problem. He seems to KNOW that he's funny. He has way too much fun with his elaborate prose which can mean that every character is outrageously, self-indulgently eloquent. Long digressions drop out of nowhere, taking you further away from the plot (it seems at the time) and the whole thing can be very frustrating, verging on incomprehensible ... but hang in there, it turns out that every word counts.
Once you give in to the book's verbose style and enjoy it on its own terms you'll find a marvellous, wacky, cinematically action packed and intricately plotted novel about, well, many things, not least the end of the world.
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LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
This book led me down paths of assumption and then told me I was wrong, oh so wrong about my assumptions. The narrator tells us a story of his childhood with Gonzo Lubitsch, a childhood that had a number of twists and turns that ends with him in the Army doing covert work, an end that has the world
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change due to a weapon whose side effects weren't explored before launching it into the world, where there's a pipe that delivers normality. This normality is both treasured and wondered about. The strangeness brings about changes in many people, changes that force questions about the nature of humanity. This story is at times funny, at times gross, and at times thought provoking. I enjoyed it immensely, it had passages that I really had to read out loud to someone else (seriously the tent peg episode cracked me up). It's a story that is both clever and funny and I enjoyed the read. Damn you Harkaway for the tired mornings I had in order to keep reading and finding out what was going on. Show Less
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
Although I came to this novel on the basis of my appreciation of a later work by the same author, it made an eerily good match for the most recent feature film I enjoyed. If you liked the martial arts action, twisted humor, melodramatic pathos, and reality-warping mindfuckery of Everything,
The Gone-Away World contains about half a dozen major anagnorises or revelatory plot pivots, each with perfectly adequate narrative preparation and often outright foreshadowing. After getting caught with my pants down by a couple of these, I got really vigilant, paying special attention to what the story hadn't told me at that point, and my effort was rewarded with being able to anticipate the next big surprise by maybe two or three pages. Then as I kept on reading, feeling pleased with myself, I got surprised again! (Well, I sort of saw that coming.) And again! (OMG, how could I fail to have seen that coming!) It was like losing a sparring bout.
The semi-fantastic post-apocalyptic setting is definitely sui generis (although comparisons others have made to Vonnegut have some merit), and it took me a few of the book's longish chapters to get comfortable with the narrative framing. But even before that point I found the prose fast-moving and congenial.
There's possibly an allegory here, certainly a parable. I had to wonder if Harkaway named "FOX"--"the gunk ... inFOrmationally eXtra-saturated" (259) that stabilizes reality after the Go Away War has totally disrupted it-- as a conscious poke at US propaganda media. The book takes aim at even bigger troubles, though, if you want to read it that way. The repeated tacit references to Andromeda in the final arc were poignant.
On the whole, I liked this novel a lot and found it to be a lively ride. It fell a little short of the tremendously high esteem I have for Harkaway's Gnomon, but that's hardly grounds to dismiss it. It is perhaps, as I've seen some suggest, more accessible than the later book, while still delivering a considerable taste of what the writer has to offer.
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Everywhere, All at Once, you might find that Nick Harkaway's doorstop 2008 first novel actually delivers a kindred experience.The Gone-Away World contains about half a dozen major anagnorises or revelatory plot pivots, each with perfectly adequate narrative preparation and often outright foreshadowing. After getting caught with my pants down by a couple of these, I got really vigilant, paying special attention to what the story hadn't told me at that point, and my effort was rewarded with being able to anticipate the next big surprise by maybe two or three pages. Then as I kept on reading, feeling pleased with myself, I got surprised again! (Well, I sort of saw that coming.) And again! (OMG, how could I fail to have seen that coming!) It was like losing a sparring bout.
The semi-fantastic post-apocalyptic setting is definitely sui generis (although comparisons others have made to Vonnegut have some merit), and it took me a few of the book's longish chapters to get comfortable with the narrative framing. But even before that point I found the prose fast-moving and congenial.
There's possibly an allegory here, certainly a parable. I had to wonder if Harkaway named "FOX"--"the gunk ... inFOrmationally eXtra-saturated" (259) that stabilizes reality after the Go Away War has totally disrupted it-- as a conscious poke at US propaganda media. The book takes aim at even bigger troubles, though, if you want to read it that way. The repeated tacit references to Andromeda in the final arc were poignant.
On the whole, I liked this novel a lot and found it to be a lively ride. It fell a little short of the tremendously high esteem I have for Harkaway's Gnomon, but that's hardly grounds to dismiss it. It is perhaps, as I've seen some suggest, more accessible than the later book, while still delivering a considerable taste of what the writer has to offer.
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LibraryThing member nostalgebraist
How to describe this book?
Well, first, the style is amazing. Abigail Nussbaum called it "a relentless barrage of Neal-Stephenson-on-acid style verbiage," which is pretty much it. I haven't enjoyed anything Stephenson has written since Cryptonomicon, but The Gone-Away World reads like what you'd get
Despite that, and despite the fact that the book is packed with big action setpieces and colorful characters, it's often remarkably boring and tedious. Why? Because of a basic tension between the tone and the content -- a tension that is apparently deliberate and kind of interesting, but nonetheless problematic. The basic mood of the book is a kind of youthful, gung-ho exuberance, a complete involvement in whatever crazy (mis)adventure the protagonist and his chums have most recently gotten themselves into. The book strives to make every such experience feel real, even hyper-real, using its showy prose not to create distance but to remove it. Again and again Harkaway's narrator describes things in the following terms: in movies (or in fictional stories) this sort of event usually feels like this, but it's happening to me right now in real life and instead of feeling like that, it feels this other way instead. It's a book that wants to distill the experience of thrilling, bracing impact -- downing a shot, taking a punch -- to its essence and then stretch out that essence to 500 pages of purely impactful narrative.
One problem with this approach is simply that impact is fundamentally a localized rather than extended sort of experience. There's only so many times a book can tell you to get off your ass solider because the shit is hitting the fan RIGHT NOW and this is fucking REAL before it begins to seem like the boy who cried wolf -- before you start to wonder why all of this fan-hitting hasn't dealt more damage to the narrative status quo. A story in which the shit is always hitting the fan should be a chaotic, entropic one, one in which the usual rules of storytelling fall by the wayside as they, like everything else, become FUBAR. But Harkaway's story, though thematically concerned with chaos (and with the end of the world), is defiantly orderly. In many ways, it's a conventional and traditional adventure story -- Harkaway names Dumas and Conan Doyle in his acknowledgements -- and a proudly cheesy one, filled with ninjas and kung fu and creatively onomatopoeia'd explosions and hidden identities and lovable wise old senseis and crazy Shyamalan twists and romantic episodes that read like teen boy wish fulfillment and video-game-ish chimeric monsters and even-more-video-game-ish fight sequences. And that's the basic contradiction of the book. The narrative voice is the constant patter of a drill sergeant telling you how real everything is and how this isn't like a movie and how the book isn't pulling any punches, which sounds tedious but is actually wonderful because this particular drill sergeant is a hypereducated mad genius of charm and rhetoric. But before long you realize that the narrative is in fact not real but cartoonish, that a Hollywood movie is exactly what it's like (Harkaway worked as a screenwriter for many years before writing this, his first novel), that the book always pulls its punches and that in fact the relentless entertainingness of the drill sergeant voice is a fundamental part of the way it pulls them.
Harkaway, it seems, wants to make cheesy adventure stories new again by writing them better than anyone has before, by applying more virtuosity and subtlety to them than anyone has ever thought warranted. And the virtuosity and subtlety really are there, but try as they might they can't cover up the fundamental fact that the story is a unsubtle one, high in sugar and low in nutrition, whose teen-boy Awesomeness may simply not deserve Harkaway's literary flourishes. The thinness of the content is only made more clear by its contrast with the brilliance of the presentation. Harkaway is the writerly equivalent of a chef who tries to "reinvent" macaroni and cheese by preparing and presenting it in the most gourmet way possible. In the end, it's still mac and cheese, and you end up liking the noble silliness of the endeavour more than you like the actual food, feeling more fond of the chef than you do of his creation. After finishing The Gone-Away World, I felt like I loved Nick Harkaway a lot more than I loved his book, and I eagerly look forward to the day he writes something that fully lives up to his talent.
(Despite all the carping above, I rated the book five stars, because really, how could I not? Imperfect as it may be, it deserves nothing less.)
Well, first, the style is amazing. Abigail Nussbaum called it "a relentless barrage of Neal-Stephenson-on-acid style verbiage," which is pretty much it. I haven't enjoyed anything Stephenson has written since Cryptonomicon, but The Gone-Away World reads like what you'd get
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if you took the old Stephenson (the one who wrote Snow Crash and The Diamond Age) and cybernetically enhanced him -- made him better, stronger, faster, weirder, funnier, British, etc. (Though Harkaway lacks Stephenson's trademark techno-didacticism.) It's possibly the most enthusiastic novel I've ever read -- not enthusiastic in a obnoxious or pollyanna way, but rather possessed of a true ability to charm, an intoxication with itself that is remarkably infectious.Despite that, and despite the fact that the book is packed with big action setpieces and colorful characters, it's often remarkably boring and tedious. Why? Because of a basic tension between the tone and the content -- a tension that is apparently deliberate and kind of interesting, but nonetheless problematic. The basic mood of the book is a kind of youthful, gung-ho exuberance, a complete involvement in whatever crazy (mis)adventure the protagonist and his chums have most recently gotten themselves into. The book strives to make every such experience feel real, even hyper-real, using its showy prose not to create distance but to remove it. Again and again Harkaway's narrator describes things in the following terms: in movies (or in fictional stories) this sort of event usually feels like this, but it's happening to me right now in real life and instead of feeling like that, it feels this other way instead. It's a book that wants to distill the experience of thrilling, bracing impact -- downing a shot, taking a punch -- to its essence and then stretch out that essence to 500 pages of purely impactful narrative.
One problem with this approach is simply that impact is fundamentally a localized rather than extended sort of experience. There's only so many times a book can tell you to get off your ass solider because the shit is hitting the fan RIGHT NOW and this is fucking REAL before it begins to seem like the boy who cried wolf -- before you start to wonder why all of this fan-hitting hasn't dealt more damage to the narrative status quo. A story in which the shit is always hitting the fan should be a chaotic, entropic one, one in which the usual rules of storytelling fall by the wayside as they, like everything else, become FUBAR. But Harkaway's story, though thematically concerned with chaos (and with the end of the world), is defiantly orderly. In many ways, it's a conventional and traditional adventure story -- Harkaway names Dumas and Conan Doyle in his acknowledgements -- and a proudly cheesy one, filled with ninjas and kung fu and creatively onomatopoeia'd explosions and hidden identities and lovable wise old senseis and crazy Shyamalan twists and romantic episodes that read like teen boy wish fulfillment and video-game-ish chimeric monsters and even-more-video-game-ish fight sequences. And that's the basic contradiction of the book. The narrative voice is the constant patter of a drill sergeant telling you how real everything is and how this isn't like a movie and how the book isn't pulling any punches, which sounds tedious but is actually wonderful because this particular drill sergeant is a hypereducated mad genius of charm and rhetoric. But before long you realize that the narrative is in fact not real but cartoonish, that a Hollywood movie is exactly what it's like (Harkaway worked as a screenwriter for many years before writing this, his first novel), that the book always pulls its punches and that in fact the relentless entertainingness of the drill sergeant voice is a fundamental part of the way it pulls them.
Harkaway, it seems, wants to make cheesy adventure stories new again by writing them better than anyone has before, by applying more virtuosity and subtlety to them than anyone has ever thought warranted. And the virtuosity and subtlety really are there, but try as they might they can't cover up the fundamental fact that the story is a unsubtle one, high in sugar and low in nutrition, whose teen-boy Awesomeness may simply not deserve Harkaway's literary flourishes. The thinness of the content is only made more clear by its contrast with the brilliance of the presentation. Harkaway is the writerly equivalent of a chef who tries to "reinvent" macaroni and cheese by preparing and presenting it in the most gourmet way possible. In the end, it's still mac and cheese, and you end up liking the noble silliness of the endeavour more than you like the actual food, feeling more fond of the chef than you do of his creation. After finishing The Gone-Away World, I felt like I loved Nick Harkaway a lot more than I loved his book, and I eagerly look forward to the day he writes something that fully lives up to his talent.
(Despite all the carping above, I rated the book five stars, because really, how could I not? Imperfect as it may be, it deserves nothing less.)
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LibraryThing member adzebill
A previous LibraryThing reviewer put it concisely: "an affable, gabby, and overlong sub-Pynchon cartoon." I was trying to put my finger on just what was so irritating about it.
Harkaway's writing is not even a pastiche of Pynchon: he'd be quite happy to be as erudite as Neal Stephenson and as funny
Anyone who gets sick of the author's style and abandons _The Gone-Away World_ after a few hundred pages is, however, doing him a disservice. There's a major plot twist four-fifths in which makes things much more interesting, and you realise that everything that's gone before has to be seen in a completely different light, accompanied by a nagging suspicion that the author's pulled a fast one, but it would be too tedious to slog back to the beginning and check so you let it slide. Is the game worth the candle? Does this plot twist redeem quite a few passages that made me exclaim, "Oh, just shut up!" out loud while reading them? Probably not. The consequences of the twist are fudged away, we're back to an action-packed finale, and the great existential threat looming over the protagonists is hastily redefined in the last few pages as not that bad and actually quite interesting. So one's perseverance is, sadly, not rewarded.
I would have enjoyed this book much more when I was an annoyingly-precocious teenager who wouldn't shut up about his nerdy preoccupations. It's the sort of book I would have liked to have written, back then. I don't have much time for it now.
Harkaway's writing is not even a pastiche of Pynchon: he'd be quite happy to be as erudite as Neal Stephenson and as funny
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as Douglas Adams, but instead reminds me of those nerdy types who corner you at parties and hold forth at great length, convinced they're sparkling conversationalists. He aims at wit but comes across as a smartarse; tries for profundity but sounds like someone who owns too many books about ninjas.Anyone who gets sick of the author's style and abandons _The Gone-Away World_ after a few hundred pages is, however, doing him a disservice. There's a major plot twist four-fifths in which makes things much more interesting, and you realise that everything that's gone before has to be seen in a completely different light, accompanied by a nagging suspicion that the author's pulled a fast one, but it would be too tedious to slog back to the beginning and check so you let it slide. Is the game worth the candle? Does this plot twist redeem quite a few passages that made me exclaim, "Oh, just shut up!" out loud while reading them? Probably not. The consequences of the twist are fudged away, we're back to an action-packed finale, and the great existential threat looming over the protagonists is hastily redefined in the last few pages as not that bad and actually quite interesting. So one's perseverance is, sadly, not rewarded.
I would have enjoyed this book much more when I was an annoyingly-precocious teenager who wouldn't shut up about his nerdy preoccupations. It's the sort of book I would have liked to have written, back then. I don't have much time for it now.
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LibraryThing member suetu
I'm a reader given to pronouncements like: I hate science fiction. And for the most part it's really not my cup of tea. Well, The Gone Away World is undeniably science fiction, and it is the most interesting novel I've read in quite some time. The back copy on the galley I read compared it to Kurt
How can I describe the plot? As the novel opens, we're in a post-apocalyptic version of the world we know. We meet our first-person narrator and his team of trouble-shooting compatriots. Something possibly disastrous has happened, and they're off to save the day--as long as they'll be adequately compensated for the job. That's what they do. They're the Haulage & Hazmat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company of Exmoor County, a tight-knit group of life-long friends and war buddies.
The first chapter was nearly 50 pages, and I have to admit it was very strange and confusing, but undeniably funny. After that first chapter set in the novel's present, the clock is rolled back several decades, and the next 250 pages tells the life story of the unnamed narrator. And suddenly the book became far more accessible, because there were references to things like Elvis Pressley and Tupperware. It was a world I could recognize. And gradually all the weird stuff from the first chapter was explained. What was the "Go Away War," why it was called that, and how the radically altered (not for the better, I can assure you) world came to be. It's a strange, deeply disturbing story leavened with a lot of humor and some wonderfully whimsical and likeable characters.
Around the 300 page mark, we are back where we were at the top of the novel, and our heroes are off to save the world. But nothing goes according to plan. And just when you think you've got a grasp on the rules of this strange world and this odd novel, Harkaway pulls the rug from under your feet and suddenly all the rules change and everything you think you know has changed!
This is a dense and challenging 500-page novel. Some parts of it are wonderfully light and comic. Other parts were so dark and disturbing I wasn't sure I wanted to continue reading. But I did continue, often forcing friends to listen to me read pages of text aloud. The language is fabulous and the many tangents and asides are priceless--such as a meandering discussion of the role of sheep in times of war. Other times it's a single sentence such as: "You have to worry about someone even mimes find creepy." that you want to stitch onto a pillow and place on your couch.
I wouldn't recommend this novel to everyone I know, but for readers with an open mind and a tolerance for absurdity, satire, and speculative fiction it's a must read. It may be one of the best debut novels I've ever read. It is the most interesting novel--period--that I've read in years.
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Vonnegut meets Joseph Heller meets Mad Max. I immediately assumed that was hyperbole of the worst kind, but damn if that doesn't sum it up perfectly! How can I describe the plot? As the novel opens, we're in a post-apocalyptic version of the world we know. We meet our first-person narrator and his team of trouble-shooting compatriots. Something possibly disastrous has happened, and they're off to save the day--as long as they'll be adequately compensated for the job. That's what they do. They're the Haulage & Hazmat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company of Exmoor County, a tight-knit group of life-long friends and war buddies.
The first chapter was nearly 50 pages, and I have to admit it was very strange and confusing, but undeniably funny. After that first chapter set in the novel's present, the clock is rolled back several decades, and the next 250 pages tells the life story of the unnamed narrator. And suddenly the book became far more accessible, because there were references to things like Elvis Pressley and Tupperware. It was a world I could recognize. And gradually all the weird stuff from the first chapter was explained. What was the "Go Away War," why it was called that, and how the radically altered (not for the better, I can assure you) world came to be. It's a strange, deeply disturbing story leavened with a lot of humor and some wonderfully whimsical and likeable characters.
Around the 300 page mark, we are back where we were at the top of the novel, and our heroes are off to save the world. But nothing goes according to plan. And just when you think you've got a grasp on the rules of this strange world and this odd novel, Harkaway pulls the rug from under your feet and suddenly all the rules change and everything you think you know has changed!
This is a dense and challenging 500-page novel. Some parts of it are wonderfully light and comic. Other parts were so dark and disturbing I wasn't sure I wanted to continue reading. But I did continue, often forcing friends to listen to me read pages of text aloud. The language is fabulous and the many tangents and asides are priceless--such as a meandering discussion of the role of sheep in times of war. Other times it's a single sentence such as: "You have to worry about someone even mimes find creepy." that you want to stitch onto a pillow and place on your couch.
I wouldn't recommend this novel to everyone I know, but for readers with an open mind and a tolerance for absurdity, satire, and speculative fiction it's a must read. It may be one of the best debut novels I've ever read. It is the most interesting novel--period--that I've read in years.
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LibraryThing member chalambe
Nick Harkaway, in his first novel, The Gone-Away World, provides us with a handle on the world that actually works, that actually opens a sort of window we otherwise wouldn’t have. It does this in a number of ways. In part, by describing a world that we recognize as essentially the world we know,
But all this would count for nothing if the novel weren’t also preoccupied with what Harkaway describes as ‘the whole business of how to be a person’. The novel is haunted by alienation, from the early reworking of it in its pure Marxist state (cf. Fingermuffin, capitalist) to the central trope of the novel, which I won’t reveal. It’s concerned with who we are, as individuals and in our relations with others. The core of the novel is a moving recognition of community and how it might survive, against all odds. This seriousness is never far beneath the fun to be had, although there are moments I feel the latter may be overdone. The riff on fashion towards the end of the novel, for example, struck me as heavy-handed, though enjoyable (and then, with an odd swoop, utterly creepy). And there are passages in the second half of the novel, after it’s caught up with itself (you’ll know what I mean when you read it), when the thrust of the story is slowed down by a tendency not to miss a trick in terms of language, when a surface glamour distracts both the teller and the tale. But mostly it’s spot on. A grand job.
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a world in which Tupperware and Star Wars and, er, cake-making remain points of reference; in part by drawing on other richly imagined worlds, or arcane worlds – I’m thinking martial arts, here - as imaginative ballast. He mentions his debt to the great story tellers of the past, from Wodehouse to Dumas in the acknowledgements (and this tells us everything about the range of his style), but much of the strength of the tale comes from its equally firm footing in the dozens of less formal narratives that compose us: education, cooking, friendship, love, not to speak of the popular imagined pre-/post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max and Dr Strangelove. In part because the exuberance and invention and sheer delight of the language is unfailing, with a goon-show-like energy that only occasionally veers into flippancy. In part because Harkaway knows how bruschetta should be pronounced. (Yes, it matters.)But all this would count for nothing if the novel weren’t also preoccupied with what Harkaway describes as ‘the whole business of how to be a person’. The novel is haunted by alienation, from the early reworking of it in its pure Marxist state (cf. Fingermuffin, capitalist) to the central trope of the novel, which I won’t reveal. It’s concerned with who we are, as individuals and in our relations with others. The core of the novel is a moving recognition of community and how it might survive, against all odds. This seriousness is never far beneath the fun to be had, although there are moments I feel the latter may be overdone. The riff on fashion towards the end of the novel, for example, struck me as heavy-handed, though enjoyable (and then, with an odd swoop, utterly creepy). And there are passages in the second half of the novel, after it’s caught up with itself (you’ll know what I mean when you read it), when the thrust of the story is slowed down by a tendency not to miss a trick in terms of language, when a surface glamour distracts both the teller and the tale. But mostly it’s spot on. A grand job.
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LibraryThing member ScoLgo
I loved this book. The Gone-Away World is a rip-roaring apocalyptic adventure story delivered in almost (but not really) stream-of-consciousness style. It is complete with danger, love, mystery, tension, ninjas, mimes and... well, I'll say no more because I don't want to spoil it for any other
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readers. Suffice to say that it's a wild ride with lots & lots of hilarious and heart-breaking digressions along the way. Once Harkaway begins to wrap things up, the denouement pulls it all together beautifully. Show Less
LibraryThing member guy-montag
The man says he never met a word he didn't like and this book follows that maxim down a very twisty road indeed. It's literally all over the place, and while the gonzo writing style makes it notable, it also makes it fatiguing to read. A very skilled writer, a book well worth reading if you have
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the fortitude! Show Less
LibraryThing member MyopicBookworm
WTF. This book sucked my brain out for several days. I had to read it very fast, as the library wanted it back, but it's such a polysyllabic impressionistic stew of a book that I don't think that mattered. Some of the other reviews sum it up well. Part Philip K. Dick with a bit of Stanislav Lem,
I will go and read another of this author's novels, but not for a while, when I've got my breath back. It takes stamina, but it was worth the ride.
MB 15-xii-2021
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part Dickensian social satire, Catch-22 meets Lake Wobegon Days: the book is insane.I will go and read another of this author's novels, but not for a while, when I've got my breath back. It takes stamina, but it was worth the ride.
MB 15-xii-2021
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LibraryThing member FuguTabetai
I picked up this book a while back, and once I started reading it I had a hard time putting it down. This was my first time reading anything by Nick Harkaway, and I found his writing style to be a bit verbose, but very refreshing.
The setting is interesting; a broken world after a scientific
Also, ninjas.
I really enjoyed the book, and in a way it reminded me of works by Haruki Murakami (one of my favorite authors) where there is some underlying fantastic element to life. It is much more obvious here, but I felt the same sense of an awakening wonder as I read.
The setting is interesting; a broken world after a scientific
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disaster that allows the fantastic to leak into (or completely overrun) the world we are familiar with. The story isn't as much about the fantastic creatures and events, but about how people deal with things, and in particular, the protagonist and his circle of friends. There is also a very interesting comment on society and capitalism and the role of corporations.Also, ninjas.
I really enjoyed the book, and in a way it reminded me of works by Haruki Murakami (one of my favorite authors) where there is some underlying fantastic element to life. It is much more obvious here, but I felt the same sense of an awakening wonder as I read.
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LibraryThing member BookMason
I picked this up in the store because the PINK FUZZY cover grabbed my attention. This is Nick Harkaway's first novel and I generally give a new writer the first 4 or 5 pages in the bookstore to decide whether I will buy their book or not.
I liked it enough last fall to pick it up, wasn't sure why
I compare this a little to the Sci Fi tined tales written by Jonathan Lethem, but only because both are brilliantly written and compelling. Gone Away World exceeds on every level. The story surprises you with plot twists you didn't see coming, but that make perfect sense in the world created by Harkaway.
It is at times a coming of age story, a comedy, a tragedy and a martial arts primer. Harkaway appears to have melded everything he loves seamlessly into a whole; ninjas and Mad Max meet in a tale of love and redemption.
Highly recommended to anyone looking for something completely unexpected.
I liked it enough last fall to pick it up, wasn't sure why
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as little of the actual tale is told at the start, I just liked the feel. Finally made it to top of my TBR pile a week ago and should have been there right after I bought it.I compare this a little to the Sci Fi tined tales written by Jonathan Lethem, but only because both are brilliantly written and compelling. Gone Away World exceeds on every level. The story surprises you with plot twists you didn't see coming, but that make perfect sense in the world created by Harkaway.
It is at times a coming of age story, a comedy, a tragedy and a martial arts primer. Harkaway appears to have melded everything he loves seamlessly into a whole; ninjas and Mad Max meet in a tale of love and redemption.
Highly recommended to anyone looking for something completely unexpected.
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LibraryThing member tinLizzy
This is among the top maybe 5, for sure 10, books I've ever read. The prose and language is beautiful, the storytelling compelling and engaging, the plot twisty and rollercoastery, the resolution I didn't remotely see coming. I laughed, I cried, I shouted out loud while reading it in public places.
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I will revisit this in years to come. Show Less
LibraryThing member raycun
Not as funny, exciting, or dramatic as it needs to be, or thinks it is. I wanted to like it, but it just got draggy.
LibraryThing member seldombites
The blurb sounds rather boring and it did take me a few tries to get into this novel. My persistence paid off however and I recommend giving The Gone-Away World a fair go. At first the story seems rather ordinary for a fantasy but, as time goes on, and we delve into the backgrounds of Gonzo and his
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friend, our interest is piqued and each twist is more intriguing than the last. Eventually, events take a sinister turn, and we are plunged into a dark world of greed and violence. My only gripe with this book is that there are times when the author went a bit heavy on the italics, which I found annoying and distracting. However, given that the copy I read was an uncorrected bound sample, it's probable that his editor picked up on this during the publication process. In the end, I am left feeling glad that I gave The Gone-Away World one last try because it wound up being the best fantasy novel I have read in ages. Show Less
LibraryThing member jwalther
Wow. Haraway's talent is incredible, in his seamless story weaving he brings the reader to a completely unrealistic place and you buy into it 100%. Not only a fascinating story and direction for new fantasy, it's a chilling statement on world politics, foreign policy, and the use of force.
LibraryThing member mojacobs
Wonderful, strange, lovely, horrible, nice, funny, sad book about the post-apocalyps world. Hard to put it in a category, but great reading. The characters and images will be staying with me for a while yet, I think.
LibraryThing member brettjames
Like a big bowl of sugar.
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — First Novel — 2009)
British Science Fiction Association Award (Shortlist — Novel — 2008)
Locus Recommended Reading (First Novel — 2008)