I'm about to go to Sydney for a few days solo freewheeling, and I'm currently umming and ahhing about what book to take. I think I'll take Stevel Toltz's
A Fraction of the Whole. It's been much
lauded, and I've read the first chapter (extract
here <---linky) and it's right up my alley. Some here (and I can think especially of some usual suspects and accomplices) might want to take a guernsey at it, as I think it might be right up theirs too.
I think it's available as an ebook (epub) from Penguin UK, and it says it is in ebook form at Random House for the US, but I haven't looked further, seeing as I got it in a secondhand bookstore in pbook form.
Quote:
A Fraction of the Whole - ABOUT THE BOOK
Meet the Deans.
The Father is Martin Dean.
He taught his son always to make up his mind, and then change it. An impossible, brilliant, restless man, he just wanted the world to listen to him – and the trouble started when the world did.
The Uncle is Terry Dean.
As a boy, Terry was the local sporting hero. As a man, he became Australia's favourite criminal, making up for injustice on the field with this own version of justice off it.
The Son is Jasper Dean.
Now that his father is dead, Jasper can try making some sense of his outrageous schemes to make the world a better place. Haunted by his own mysteriously missing mother and a strange recurring vision, Jasper has one abiding question: Is he doomed to become the lunatic who raised him, or a different kind of lunatic entirely?
From the New South Wales bush to bohemian Paris, from sports fields to strip clubs, from the jungles of Thailand to a leaky boat in the Pacific, Steve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole follows the Deans on their freewheeling, scathingly funny and finally deeply moving quest to leave their mark on the world.
|