A Fraction of the Whole, by Steve Toltz

This book caused me to miss a flight. Literally. I was reading it on the subway and missed my transfer point and by the time I backtracked and got to the airport, it was too late. Everything worked out nicely, however, as this gave me an extra hour to read before the next flight departed.

There was much to love about this book. The story was, at times, compelling and sometimes riveting. There were many laugh-out-loud moments. Many wonderful turns of phrase. And much philosophizing on the nature of humanity and relationships between fathers and sons. It was beautifully written.

That said, I find myself disagreeing with most of the raving reviews at Amazon.com. On the whole, I give it three stars because (1) the characters were uniformly unlikeable; (2) it didn't make me think; (3) the story was ridiculously unbelievable; and (4) I don't think I learned much of anything.

I can handle crazy plots, where unlikely things happen to people. What I can't handle is a narrator who, at ten years old, spends all day thinking extremely deep complex sophisticated thoughts, but is an abject failure at school and goes on to be an utter zero in every way – except in that he maintains a brilliant and sophisticated inner dialogue about his feelings, and his frustration at the vapidity of the general public.

Ditto the father character who was a ragingly selfish and lazy misanthrope but somehow managed to think endless deep thoughts and write a gorgeous account of his life. And I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who noticed that the “writing style” of father and son were nearly identical – something that kept me all too aware that this was fiction and kept me from ever getting fully drawn into their world as with a novel such as David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

The 3-star reviews at Amazon do a fine job of summing up my frustrations so I’ll just share a few of the lines and interludes that I really did like a whole bunch, and are apropos of the book’s style:

“So, he’s not insane?” my father asked.

“Oh, don’t get the wrong idea. He’s crazy as a coconut. But open!”

“We’re not violent people,” my father said. “This whole thing is a mystery to us.”

“No man’s life is a mystery. Believe me, there is order and structure in the most ostensibly chaotic skull. There seem to be two major events in Terry’s life that have shaped him more than any others. The first I would not have believed had I not unwavering faith in his honesty.” The doctor leaned forward and said, almost in a whisper, “Did he really spend the first four years of his life sharing a bedroom with a comatose boy?”

My parents looked at each other with a start.

“Was that wrong?” my mother asked. “We didn’t have any room,” my father said, annoyed. “Where were we supposed to put Martin? In the shed?”

***

“I shook my head, stood up, and walked out of the pub. I heard her calling my name, but I didn’t turn around. Outside, I broke into tears. What a hassle! Now I’d have to become rich and successful just so she could regret dumping me. That’s another thing to do in this short, busy life. Christ. They’re adding up.”

***

“Shockingly, almost all my reforms were agreed upon. Criminals would be allowed the option of going into the army instead of being locked up; cash rebates would be offered to those who could demonstrate self-awareness, and the stultified and fearful would be taxed higher . . . every healthy person would have to look after at least one sick person until he died or got better; we would pick people indiscriminately to be prime minister for a day; all drugs would be legalized for one generation to see what happened. Even my most controversial idea was taken up: rearing any child in a religious belief, freezing the child’s mind when it is most vulnerable, would be treated as child abuse. I said all this and people said, ‘OK, we’ll see what we can do.’ It was unbelievable!”

***
“Eddie, that disgusting bastard! That oily, rancid, horny bandit! I felt guilty for my failure to protect that poor girl, but if someone you’ve known since childhood is so determined to commit a crime he’s willing to kick you in the throat, what can you do? Anyway, it was too late now. That field had made away with the girl and left me stranded in the middle of nowhere. And where the hell was I, anyway, other than the exact place where all the heat in Thailand gathered for a meeting?”

In the end, I think that what frustrated me most about this book was that the first 100 pages were fantastic and I had great expectations that were not met. And what did transpire was occasionally spectacular, but in the end unfulfilling.

This having been Toltz’s first book, I am hopeful that his second will be even better, and I will read it for sure.