The Gone-Away World

I have a local bookseller who may be the one person in my hometown I consistently wish to see. He recommended me this many years ago as one of his favorites. I was confused and called him to ask twice why he listed it so high. His reply was to ask what page I was on. When I finished I called him to tell him how right he was.

The Gone-Away World is an amalgam of delightfully absurdist plot elements described in fantastical language peppered with over-the-top metaphors wrapped in a dizzyingly pink-and-green cover. It is also a rollicking good read. If you enjoy Angela Carter, China Mieville, Kurt Vonnegut, or Chuck Palahniuk, the Gone-Away World should immediately jump to the top of your reading list. Other reviewers have noted the influence of Orwellian dystopias and have attributed the author's penchant for geeky excursions into sub-plots dealing with the arcana of the camshaft or the proper way to hammer in a tent peg to the discursive writings of Neal Stephenson. In some ways the richness of its intellectual heritage makes it easier to accept the novel's outlandish plot and style. It feels a little like discovering a long-lost relative; albeit a strange looking one with a fine sense of wit, an eye for the absurd, and a love of Saussurian linguistics. Ostensibly a post-apocalyptic novel, nearly half of the book deals with the prelapsarian world in the form of a coming-of-age sequence. Our narrator and man-of-the-hour is the unassuming sidekick to a popular, athletic, and seemingly effortlessly successful older brother/friend. Finding himself unemployable after a run-in with some overzealous domestic government security agency fond of torture (sorry, "harsh interrogation"), our hero joins the military as a top secret weapons researcher, sometimes combat medic, when he abruptly discovers his world made gone away in a classic case of unintended consequences. Thrust into a literal nightmare where the sign and referent have become completely unglued and monsters prowl the suburbs, he and his brother join forces to help lay what amounts to a giant sprinkler system traversing the earth. Throw in some ninjas, pirates, mimes, fancy tailors, androgynous magicians, special ops soldiers, and a healthy serving of Polish goulash, and you have the makings of thoughtful exploration of identity, meaning, and the fundamental underpinnings of humanity. The book does suffer from some unfortunate faults: sentences that run-on grammatically and, worse, conceptually; a catch-all plot that makes room for anything and everything; tropes that sometimes make you roll your eyes at the naked artifice of a writer trying too hard. Despite these shortcomings, The Gone-Away World never really disappoints. After all, writing in this manner is difficult. Why does the imagery of a troop of mimes burrying dead ninjas work but a scene with an army of pirates evacuating citizenry in luxury sedans seems exaggerated and just a little too much? I do not know, and that is Nick Harkaway's challenge. Perhaps this is something one only learns with practice, and, if we are lucky, Nick Harkaway will continue experimenting and send his little verbal innovations our way.

I simply loved this book. It is at times hilarious, touching, and profound. I would make a comparison to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, mixed with Chuck Palaniuk, and sprinkled with Joseph Heller. It's difficult to pinpoint what it is that makes the book so enjoyable, but in this informal recommendation I would say there's a mixture of: plot, character, and language. Plot: the narrative twists and turns and barely stops for breath. At each point we're left wondering, what could possibly happen next? Character: Like the best novelists, Nick Harkaway is able to sketch a character in a sentence and yet still surprise you with their unexpected (but in hindsight, understandable) behavior. Although this might be the weak point of the novel; the characters are interesting, but there's only a few that stand out a fully fleshed-out people. I guess that's just the nature of the beast though -- some characters need to be minor, in order to give the novelist space for those who are major. Language: And here is the real pleasure of this book. I don't think I've ever read anything as inventive, enjoyable and playful. I wanted to ball up these sentences and chew on them for hours and let them dribble down my face like linguistic steak juice. (Okay, maybe I'm getting carried away there.) There's something deeply enjoyable about reading a paragraph long sentence that ends in a joke and thinking, "How did he ever come up with that?" I truly hope more people will take a chance and get this book. And I wish I could find more books that were as fun to read. This is that rare work that transcends genre and shows people that literature and SF are just marketing categories.

This book is mind-blowing, in the very best way...it grips you from the very first page with the amazing narrative style and the incredibly immersive world Harkaway has created. The story mixes a bit of all the best genres; post-apocalyptic wasteland, fringe societies, black humor, razor-sharp satire, kung-fu slightly mystical sci-fi, and scruffy anti-heroes (particularly our wonderful nameless narrator). It did take a while for me to get into this book, including a couple of false starts. I think this is a story best approached in an open frame of mind, as the bizarre "gone-away" world here doesn't lend itself to light reading at first. Once read, though, this is a book you'll never forget. Fans of epic craziness like Gormenghast will probably love this (although it actually reminds me mostly of a gorgeous but defunct little webcomic called "5ideways.")

With all the promotion accompanying the publication of this book the story probably needs little introduction? However just in case: it is set in Britain in the not very distant future. We join the story and after the Go-Away War when civilisation relies upon and lives within reach of the globe encircling Jorgmund Pipe; and who knows what inhabits the regions beyond its reach? Problem: the pipe is on fire and professional trouble-shooter and all-round hero Gonzo Lubitsch and his crew are hired to extinguish the fire - but there is more to the fire, and the pipe than it seems. As we follow the charismatic Gonzo and his best friend (our apparently happily married narrator) in their exploits the story takes us back to their childhood and the time before the Go-Away War; we learn of the origins of their friendship, follow them to university and through military service and their subsequent involvement in the Go-Away War. Then we pick up the story again post-War; and this is when we learn of the effects of the fall-out, as well as more about the mysterious Jorgmund Company; we gradually understand the disastrous mess of a world which the Jorrmund Pipe appears to dominate and sustain. But what really makes this book something special is the quality of the writing. It is writing of such eloquence it simply demands to be read. Nick Harkaway (son of spy thriller writer John le Carré aka David Cornwell) juxtaposes the ordinary and the absurd with such naturalness that we almost don't question it; we might just pass it by if it were not so hilariously funny at times; such is the writer's skill. Every page is a pleasure and one wants to dwell on and enjoy each word, but one is torn between lingering at leisure and becoming absorbed in the detailed byways the story regularly takes and the urgent desire to learn what happens next. One thing we can be sure is that what happens next rarely predictable. As the story unfolds we encounter a wide range of unforgettable characters in addition to our two main protagonists. I'll mention just one as it will also give an indication of the time setting: our narrator's boyhood martial arts instructor the octogenarian Mr Wu of the Voiceless Dragon School, born in the 1930s, a wise, subtle and unassuming man who is relentlessly pursued by his family's arch-enemy the Ninjas, and whose very young female assistant sleeps on his couch. In addition to an array of interesting characters we should add a parade of weird and wonderful creatures. The Gone-Away World is an amazing tale; it is a fantasy, an odyssey, an epic; it is story of upheaval and disaster, of nightmare monsters becoming reality, of loyalty and friendship, an adventure encompassing tense drama contrasting more leisurely pursuits, a story which takes us along the way, with unhurried confidence, on many detailed diversions and anecdotes, a story which jumps from the mundane to the surreal, even miraculous. But all the while the full comic potential is fully exp