Reviews

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

Only show reviews with written explanations

gorob4ik's review against another edition

4.0

It's difficult to read because the narrator needs to mention everything that's on his mind, and the sentences get complicated (sometimes unnecessarily so). But it's an exciting read (if you don't quit reading out of annoyance). It's creative, informative, and entertaining. I'd give it 5 starts if reading wasn't like trying to go though cobwebs.

tarakingwrites's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

This book kept me up too late reading night after night. When I finally put it down, I couldn't sleep. And when I did sleep, my dreams were in the narrator's voice. It's a little bit Catch-22, a little bit Neal Stephenson, and a lot of awesome.

mabersold's review against another edition

Go to review page

1.0

I wanted to like this book and I had heard so many good things about it, but I just couldn't get through it. I think it was the narration style that really bothered me. There were so many allegories and metaphors and random stuff that I guess was supposed to be whimsical or entertaining, but it made reading this book a chore. I could barely follow the story because of it. I stopped reading after five chapters when I realized I wasn't enjoying this at all and it wasn't worth continuing.

justiceofkalr's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

I felt the pacing was kind of off on this book. The first three hundred pages or so were interesting enough but kind of slow to get through, then suddenly the last two hundred pages or so (after the protagonist's revelation comes where he discovers that

Spoiler

he is actually one of the new people and is Gonzo's imaginary friend/conscience made real

) were packed with everything. All the flash backs and full history of Gonzo and the protagonist were a pain to slog through at times, and though by the end it becomes clear that they were necessary to help set-up the previously mentioned revelation, while reading them it got kind of tedious. The world was definitely interesting but the strangeness with the origins of the FOX and how it's actually made felt a little rushed over and only semi legitimately explained. In the end despite my issues with the pacing I did really like the story. And the mimes. Actually, the mimes were probably the best part.

readingwithhippos's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

I can honestly say I’ve never read a wackier book. I finished the last page and thought, “That is what it is like inside Nick Harkaway’s brain.” This is a guy whose imagination must do, like, ten thousand pushups a day. And it made me wonder why I trap myself into thinking in the same tired loops every day, worrying about how our toddler refused breakfast again or analyzing my thigh-dimples in the bathroom mirror.

How much brainpower have I wasted? How many hours—nay, days—nay, years!—have I allowed my brain to wallow in the boring, bland, blasé gutter of daily life, when I could have been dreaming up an apocalyptic vision of the future, complete with evil ninjas, machines taking over mankind, and a mime collective with a spokesman named Ike Thermite? This book made my brain’s imagination muscles seem sad, flabby, and out of shape, but once I turned it loose, it really enjoyed the exercise.

And this book was a workout. Harkaway has a vast vocabulary and flaunts it to delightful effect. He’s also totally unintimidated by long sentences. Here’s a taste, from page 425: “No one else has noticed him yet (I can tell because there’s no screaming) but the moment Sippy Roehunter decides it’s time to show the board members what she’s got, or Dan deLine gets a hankering to bare his musculature for the benefit of the Jorgmund Ladies’ Lacrosse Team, it will be hard for anyone to ignore a top-hatted H.G. Wells-looking lunatic sitting in the lotus position on the edge of Dick Washburn’s giant pink sex pool.” Out of context, you have no idea what he’s talking about, but you know you’ve got to hear more, don’t you? I mean, there’s a giant pink sex pool!

There are several pleasing surprises in the book that I won’t ruin for you here, but I will say that the initial adventure set up in the first chapter is over by around page 300, and there’s still 200 pages of book left. I wondered what else Harkaway was going to find to talk about, but then some foreshadowed-yet-still-incredible-twists happened, and I was sucked in all over again. In fact, to my taste, the book went from simply entertaining to truly compelling only after that point.

This book is so twisted, crazy, and downright weird that it is a total escape from real life. If you’ve grown tired of reading books about people like you with problems like yours, if you want a break from literature that reads like a mirror into your own soul, if you want to completely forget about your stable office job or tedious household chores, I can think of no book that will get you there faster. The dinner dishes aren’t going anywhere—they’ll be there waiting for you when you’re done.

More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com

smithel's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

I loved this book! I was a little worried when the first chapter seemed to be very Mad Max and basically contain Tough Men and Trucks, but it was well worth persevering. It ended up being quite a complex story that I found completely engrossing. It is told from the point of view of an orphaned boy adopted into the family of his new friend Gonzo Lubitsch. The protagonist became Gonzo's more thoughtful, calmer, slightly gentler sidekick, and the novel largely the ways in which they are similar and different to each other shape their lives - and how they survive the end of the world. I'm deducting one star because the occasional "men are men and women are women" stuff occasionally thrown in annoyed me a lot, but on the whole this is a clever book about an interesting and likable character. It's not quite like anything else I've read, and it's always a pleasure to find genuinely creative sci fi.