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GoneAway World Nick Harkaway 9780099519973 Books

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GoneAway World Nick Harkaway 9780099519973 Books

I wanted to love this book, I really did. Unfortunately, I had such a hard time getting into it that I eventually gave up. I suspect there's a decent story somewhere inside the book's fuzzy covers, but I couldn't find it.

Many people are comparing Harkaway's style to that of early-era Vonnegut -- but I think that's a bit misleading. Vonnegut's writing was non-linear, to be sure, but Harkaway's borders on being schizophrenic. When it came to emotionally investing in the characters or the plot (assuming there was one), I just couldn't gain traction.

It's with genuine disappointment, that I've put this book back on the shelf, unfinished.


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GoneAway World Nick Harkaway 9780099519973 Books Reviews

This is a post-apocalypse-type novel. Very creative and original treatment of the post-apocalypse meme. The story is told in first person and, the main character's inner thoughts are communicated very well. Although, it's not a comedy by any stretch of the imagination, this book is full of great humor. I laughed out loud several times. Of course what some people think is funny, others don't, but I think Harkaway's use of language and juxtaposition is very witty. It is also appropriate when the main character is at his lowest point, the humor recedes, but as he recovers, so do the funny bits.

The plot line is twisty. The story starts out in the present, but then there's a long flashback where we learn a lot of the main character's (the narrator's) personal history. We synch back up w/ the initial scene and the story moves ahead from there, but now we have a much better grasp of the world and the way the main character seems to fit into it. Also, some things mentioned casually throughout the story turn out to be important later, but some of these are less that obvious. I enjoyed that. It's fun to pay attention to what's happening w/o being bludgeoned by the author.

There are many secondary characters, and they're interesting and mostly believable. The pacing is very good. Harkaway's descriptions of the world and what's happened to it are detailed enough to yield a strong impression w/o being burdensome. All-in-all, I really liked this book.
I got interested by reading quotes and reviews saying this was some masterful next-generation combination of the best of Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. A Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five combo? - Sign me up! Sorry, but not even close to that description. Meanders all over the place, loses narrative threads, and has gaping logical holes that even cheesy sci-fi tries harder to plug. It tries to convey some sadness and melodrama that just comes off as silly in the overall silly context of ninjas and ghosts. It might have been a little more fun if it just embraced the silliness all the way and skipped trying to wrench our hearts with its smattering of emotional loss and melodrama. I was hoping for a lot better, but this book definitely does not have the "stuff" of Vonnegut or Heller.
I really enjoyed Nick Harkaway's writing style in this book. Even if there were no story or characters, the colourful comic style would have been enough to keep me reading. It did remind me, in that respect, of PG Wodehouse, and I think some other reviewers might have mentioned this. But the comparison is misleading a bit. Apart from comic language, Wodehouse also creates comic drama and populates it with ridiculous characters, which Harkaway does not attempt. The story itself and basic concept were quite interesting, with a tremendous twist revealed about two-thirds of the way through. It's only sci-fi in as much as the basic concept (which underlies the aforementioned twist) relies upon some currently-non-existent science and technology. Apart from that, it's set in the present age, and there's no spaceships or aliens.
There are many fine, hardworking craftsmen of the written word, and the sum of the parts of their novels are very enjoyable to read, but then there are writers who also possess the skill of an artist. In their novels every word is perfectly chosen and placed in combination with every other word in an inevitability that makes structure disappear, and the whole is much greater than just the sum of its parts. The Gone–Away World by Nick Harkaway is such a work.

In it we follow an unnamed protagonist through childhood and college into a proxy “Un-War” in the Elective Theatre, formerly known as the prosperous and peaceful country of Addeh Katir. There he is reunited with his childhood best friend Gonzo. When the enemy launches a chemical attack, our side answers with “the most advanced weapon in the history of warfare,” The Go Away Bomb that disappears the enemy “We are… feeling a bit superior and waiting for the order to do some more demonstrative world-editing, when our very own Green Sector vanishes from the map… like a sandcastle being washed away by the tide… The same thing is happening everywhere. Not just in the Elective Theatre.”

Predictably, the effects are unpredictable and uncontrollable; the tide that ebbs also flows, carrying back a recombinant and deadly genesis of the thoughts, forms, feelings, memories, dreams and nightmares of everything it supposedly erased. Most of humanity has been made “Gone-Away” and the survivors battle desperately “this is not an attack. It’s an atmosphere.”

Protagonist, Gonzo and a ragtag group are rescued by Piper 90 (“love child of a bulldozer and a shopping mall”) which is laying “The Pipe” that contains the anti-stuff, called FOX, which makes the Gone-Away stuff go away, “making a strip of land which is safe to live in.” This is where the remnants of humanity begin to rebuild.
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Fast forward a few years and this outfit of roughnecks is hired for a dangerous job of putting out a fire on The Pipe that looks like sabotage. Here the story takes a shocking turn that throws into question the protagonist’s entire history and future, and a horrible secret is found to underlie the system that keeps this strip of the old world, this “Livable Zone,” intact.

A rousing dystopian story with a terrific story arc that can be enjoyed on just those terms, The Gone-Away World is also a cautionary tale that confronts the endemic, species-defining stupidity and hidden moral equivocations of human life on Earth. Notwithstanding, Nick Harkaway is fundamentally an optimist, and quite funny; I will definitely be reading more of him. Highly recommended!
I wanted to love this book, I really did. Unfortunately, I had such a hard time getting into it that I eventually gave up. I suspect there's a decent story somewhere inside the book's fuzzy covers, but I couldn't find it.

Many people are comparing Harkaway's style to that of early-era Vonnegut -- but I think that's a bit misleading. Vonnegut's writing was non-linear, to be sure, but Harkaway's borders on being schizophrenic. When it came to emotionally investing in the characters or the plot (assuming there was one), I just couldn't gain traction.

It's with genuine disappointment, that I've put this book back on the shelf, unfinished.