It is a magnificent achievement for a first-time author to be short-listed for the Man-Booker Prize.
It is wonderful when that author is an Australian, mostly writing about his people and his country.
It is significant when The Guardian describes the book as "Impressive" and The Times as "Utterly Brilliant" and The Age as "Spectacular".
Can you hear the big BUT… coming?
BUT… I don't like this book.
It is A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz. The title comes from a quote by Emerson: "The moment we meet anybody, each becomes a fraction."
Apparently, no-one agrees with me, because all the reviews have been glowing. Toltz has been described as a "genius" and a "comic talent".
I understand that it is satire. It is a crazy story about a man, Martin Dean, who competes for attention with his serial-murdering brother Terry, while trying to bring up his son Jasper free of all the constraints of relationships and society.
While I applaud the satirising of our consumer society, politicians, celebrity, the media, and even organised religion… this book ends up bleeding the colour and life out of everything.
I enjoyed Book One, the first 227 pages, and felt it could have ended there. By Book Three it was only a sense of duty forcing me to turn pages. Thank goodness Book Seven was short! At 711 pages, the best thing I can say is that this book is good value for money; but I am conscious of seven hours of my life I am never getting back.
So, why am I reviewing it?
It is obvious that I have satire lovers reading this blog; and many may find this as riotously funny as the reviewers. Also, this is a popular book, and it has a lot to say about God:
"To me, it was obvious man created God in his own image. Man hasn't the imagination to come up with a God totally unlike him ... Apparently he'd found God, which made him less violent but no less unendurable… It was God's will, he said, and I couldn't think of a persuasive argument against that, apart from saying I'd heard otherwise ... They feel their own death and they call it God."
Now, on one level these are clever comments, but I think it is dangerous to trivialise people's beliefs about God, unless those beliefs lead people to act in an amoral way.
In fact there's no moral certainty in this book, because it mocks anything that provides structure in society. At the end of the book, it is Martin's son Jasper who sums up the author's philosophy, having seen the ugliness of humanity:
"But when an extraordinary person operating on the other side of the spectrum, the good, rises to the surface, like Jesus or Buddha, immediately we elevate him to God… This is a reflection of how we see ourselves… we absolutely cannot believe that the best creature who tries to inspire imagination, creativity and empathy, can be one of us."
In other words, we should think more highly of what humans can become, humanity is the sum of the whole. Even though the book is a revelation of sin, we can rise above that.
I cried out for examples of grace and transcendence and community and faith in this book. Instead I found all the things that are keys to pleasure and meaning were ridiculed. I was struck by how much Totlz' vision of humanity needs an interventionist God!
