unicorndeburgh reviewed The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
Review of 'The Gone-Away World' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
This is a big, sprawling, ambitious book. It's science fiction, with a new technology causing massive changes for human society. It's also an old-fashioned book, telling a story about people from early childhood to adulthood, with parents, children, lovers and friends coming together and betraying and loving. It's also funny as hell. I was telling Ron about it, and said that the style reminded me of P.G. Wodehouse, despite there not being any country houses, gentlemen's gentlemen or debutantes. It was that reading it, I'd consciously slow down to savor a whimsical bit of digression. One I particularly enjoyed was on the subject of Hobbes' Leviathan, because who doesn't giggle at 18th century political economy? I was delighted to see in the Afterword that Harkaway says "I have, as is customary, borrowed from (read 'pillaged') every story that I have ever loved to write my own, but I must …
This is a big, sprawling, ambitious book. It's science fiction, with a new technology causing massive changes for human society. It's also an old-fashioned book, telling a story about people from early childhood to adulthood, with parents, children, lovers and friends coming together and betraying and loving. It's also funny as hell. I was telling Ron about it, and said that the style reminded me of P.G. Wodehouse, despite there not being any country houses, gentlemen's gentlemen or debutantes. It was that reading it, I'd consciously slow down to savor a whimsical bit of digression. One I particularly enjoyed was on the subject of Hobbes' Leviathan, because who doesn't giggle at 18th century political economy? I was delighted to see in the Afterword that Harkaway says "I have, as is customary, borrowed from (read 'pillaged') every story that I have ever loved to write my own, but I must bow especially to P. G. Wodehouse, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and to Alexandre Dumas. It's not what they did, but how they did it."
It's got university student angst, ninjas, romance, reconciliation, economics, anti-corporate and anti-government rants, action-go-boom, and just all sorts of good stuff. Here's a bit of prose that I marked: Perhaps Professor Derek — accursed be his name and his seed in eternity, and may giant badgers pursue him for ever through the Bewildering Hell of Fire Ants, Soap Opera and Urethral Infections — is still alive and trying to clean up his mess.
Amidst the funny, there's plenty of love, sacrifice and the nobler emotions. And lots of martial arts battles.
