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Summary
Summary
An uproarious indictment of the ridiculousness of the modern world and its mores, this novel also tells the moving, memorable story of a father and son whose spiritual symmetry transcends all their many shortcomings.
Summary
Meet the Deans
"The fact is, the whole of Australia despises my father more than any other man, just as they adore my uncle more than any other man. I might as well set the story straight about both of them . . ."
Heroes or Criminals?
Crackpots or Visionaries?
Families or Enemies?
". . . Anyway, you know how it is. Every family has a story like this one."
Most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn't decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure.
As he recollects the events that led to his father's demise, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries--about his infamous outlaw uncle Terry, his mysteriously absent European mother, and Martin's constant losing battle to make a lasting mark on the world he so disdains. It's a story that takes them from the Australian bush to the cafes of bohemian Paris, from the Thai jungle to strip clubs, asylums, labyrinths, and criminal lairs, and from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition. The result is a rollicking rollercoaster ride from obscurity to infamy, and the moving, memorable story of a father and son whose spiritual symmetry transcends all their many shortcomings.
A Fraction of the Whole is an uproarious indictment of the modern world and its mores and the epic debut of the blisteringly funny and talented Steve Toltz.
Author Notes
Steve Toltz was born in 1972 in Sydney. His first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, was released in 2008. It is a comic novel which tells the history of a family of Australian outcasts. The narration of the novel alternates between Jasper Dean, a philosophical, idealistic boy, who grows up throughout the novel and his father, Martin Dean, a philosopher and shut-in described at the start of the novel as "the most hated man in all of Australia" The novel has repeatedly been compared favourably to John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. A Fraction of the Whole was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and the 2008 Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, Quicksand, is expected to be published in 2015. He will be at the Oz, New Zealand festival of literature and arts program in 2015 in London. He will also be at the Sydney Writers Festival 2015.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Steve Toltz was born in 1972 in Sydney. His first novel, A Fraction of the Whole, was released in 2008. It is a comic novel which tells the history of a family of Australian outcasts. The narration of the novel alternates between Jasper Dean, a philosophical, idealistic boy, who grows up throughout the novel and his father, Martin Dean, a philosopher and shut-in described at the start of the novel as "the most hated man in all of Australia" The novel has repeatedly been compared favourably to John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. A Fraction of the Whole was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and the 2008 Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, Quicksand, is expected to be published in 2015. He will be at the Oz, New Zealand festival of literature and arts program in 2015 in London. He will also be at the Sydney Writers Festival 2015.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the heart of this sprawling, dizzying debut from a quirky, assured Australian writer are two men: Jasper Dean, a judgmental but forgiving son, and Martin, his brilliant but dysfunctional father. Jasper, in an Australian prison in his early 20s, scribbles out the story of their picaresque adventures, noting cryptically early on that "[m]y father's body will never be found." As he tells it, Jasper has been uneasily bonded to his father through thick and thin, which includes Martin's stint managing a squalid strip club during Jasper's adolescence; an Australian outback home literally hidden within impenetrable mazes; Martin's ill-fated scheme to make every Australian a millionaire; and a feverish odyssey through Thailand's menacing jungles. Toltz's exuberant, looping narrative-thick with his characters' outsized longings and with their crazy arguments-sometimes blows past plot entirely, but comic drive and Toltz's far-out imagination carry the epic story, which puts the two (and Martin's own nemesis, his outlaw brother, Terry) on an irreverent roller-coaster ride from obscurity to infamy. Comparisons to Special Topics in Calamity Physics are likely, but this nutty tour de force has a more tender, more worldly spin. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A bloated first novel from Australia. The opening promises suspense. Narrator Jasper Dean is in prison; his father's body, he confides, will never be found. The suggestion of foul play, though, is a misleading tease. Moving back in time, the father, Martin, takes over as narrator; he and Jasper switch roles throughout. Martin tells of growing up in a bush town dominated by a prison. He and his younger half-brother Terry ask its most hardened criminal to mentor them in a life of crime. Terry is a quick study and starts killing sports celebrities tainted by drugs or bribes; he's an overnight sensation in sports-mad Australia, but is eventually caught and locked up. Martin's mother is dying of cancer while feeding Martin rat poison (don't ask); then both parents die in a fire which also destroys Terry and the town. Martin escapes to Paris and meets kooky Astrid; they make a baby (Jasper) before Astrid kills herself and Martin returns to Australia with Jasper. They have a complicated love-hate relationship, originating in Martin's belief that "this baby is me prematurely reincarnated." Martin is as weird as Terry was violent. We now get a second coming-of-age story, Jasper's, which is upstaged by Martin's antics; these make him as hated by his fellow Australians as Terry was loved. Toltz sometimes paints with a broad brush on a large canvas, sometimes highlights the minutiae of messy relationships: In neither area is he convincing. His plot twists include suicides (five) and transformations. He whisks father and son off to Thailand, where there are huge surprises. A dead character has been alive all along! A lifelong friend is in fact a bitter enemy! We end, exhausted, back in Australia. One thing after another in a novel that wallows in excess. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Given that this hilarious, sneaky smart first novel is as big and rangy as Australia, Toltz's home and the book's setting, the title is a laugh. No doubt Toltz could go on, but this torrent-of-consciousness saga of an eccentric father and unconventional son is capacious and unwieldy enough. But what satirical fun is found on the madcap pages of this rough-and-tumble tale of cruel schoolchildren, insane sports fans, and herd-mentality townsfolk. Beyond all the feverish action, this is also a deliriously philosophical novel (the title is from Emerson). Martin Dean spent much of his childhood in a coma and the rest of his life refusing to play by the rules, mightily resenting the worship of his younger brother, Terry Dean, an outlaw folk hero, and driving his motherless son, Jasper, crazy. Their roiling life stories take readers to prison, a mental institution, a house inside a labyrinth, and a strip club. A suggestion box leads to mayhem, a murderer writes a crime handbook, Jasper tangles with a redhead he calls the Towering Inferno, and Toltz salts it all with uproarious ruminations on freedom, the soul, love, death, and the meaning of life. This is one rampaging and irresistible debut.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
SOMEDAY in the future, when novels are considered quaint as daguerreotypes and Corvettes run on lemonade, literary historians will look at our age and see a generation of novelists in thrall to the first person. One can't open a first novel these days without being grabbed by the lapels and made to listen. Old men, young children, even the dead want to yak at us. Never has fiction been held aloft by so many filibusterers. Steve Toltz hails from Australia, where the badgering first person runs deep, so "A Fraction of the Whole," his 530-page debut, grows in the shadow of great expectations. But can it do more than just talk our ears off? The opening pages promise dire familial drama. Jasper Dean is trapped in a prison with a large chip on his shoulder. "One thing's for sure," he says. "My father punished me for existing, and now it's my turn to punish him for existing. It's only fair." Before long, Toltz is passing the narrative conch from Jasper to his father, Martin, and back again. Each Dean follows a different set of steppingstones in his life story, but the two can agree on one thing - that Martin's brother, Terry, "cop killer, bank robber, ... pride of the battler," was probably the guy who threw the Dean family truly out of whack. Terry was apparently many things to many Australians. Most important, though, he was his brother's protector. Just before Terry was born, Martin got sick and fell into a coma. He emerges months later with Harold Bloomian recall of what his mother read aloud by his bedside: "It was as though great big trucks filled with words drove up to our heads and dumped their contents directly into our brains." Terry's exploits as recounted by Martin - and the furor they cause - finally get this big, bloated zeppelin of a book off the ground. But they highlight one of its weaknesses. Without Terry, Martin is just a misanthropic blowhard who has an opinion about everything and the subtlety of a bad stand-up comic. ("The whole human race could get acute angina for all I care.") With Terry, or when talking about Terry, Martin has energy, a story to tell. "When they weren't fighting, they were stealing," he says of Terry and his first crew. "They swiped junked cars, broken car parts, school supplies, sporting goods; they broke into bakeries and stole bread, and if there wasn't any bread they stole dough; ... they robbed the post office of stamps and uncollected mail." In the end, Terry graduates to much worse and is put away for life - in a prison his father built, no less. Then the prison burns down, probably with him in it. Terry becomes an even greater legend, and the urgency of his example grows for Martin and through him is passed to his son, Jasper. Is Martin a thinker or a doer? He flees to Paris in search of his brother's ex-lover and makes a best friend, a story we get through his diaries. Later, we hear about the aftermath of this trip - during which Jasper was conceived - in Martin's autobiography, which is full of rambling asides and philosophical brain-droppings. "A Fraction of the Whole," which was recently long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, tries to create friction between Martin's and Jasper's different renditions of events, but this fails because they sound the same. Each has the rolling breathlessness of a two-hour panic attack, only Martin is slightly more relentless. "All I ever wanted was for everyone to like me," he says, and he narrates accordingly. He makes comments that belong in a teenager's journal - "Odor of Paris in my mouth, mint with a chewy center" - and cheap stabs at profundity: "Death is full of surprises." Thanks! "Babies have to learn to smile," he writes before Jasper is born, "so what if I never taught him or showed him laughter?" Since he is the voice behind these voices, it's hard not to feel that Toltz is also trying to teach his fuddy-duddy readers the therapeutic import of bleak laughter. It doesn't work. The book churns and whirls, spinning off new exploits - Martin falls for a woman named Anouk, who goes from housekeeper to Australia's richest woman that become emptier as Martin gets farther from his childhood and closer to madness. There are a few nice moments. One of them occurs early on, when Martin edits a handbook of crime written by one of Terry's cronies. The man's acknowledgment page is the sanest, funniest thing in the book: "I would like to acknowledge my father for giving me a taste for violence, my grandfather for giving my father a taste for violence. ... The New South Wales police force for their indefatigable corruption and tireless brutality." It's funny, pithy, says it all. It also makes you wonder what the other 529 pages are on about. 'My father punished me for existing, and now it's my turn to punish him. ... It's only fair.' John Freeman is the former president of the National Book Critics Circle. He is finishing a book on the tyranny of e-mail.
Library Journal Review
For those who, if they think of it at all, think of Australia as a bloated island full of Tasmanian devils, baby-devouring dingoes, and convicts, with an iconic opera house thrown in, this eagerly awaited Australian debut novel comes as further confirmation. Here the focus is the dysfunctional Dean family, which boasts the notorious Terry Dean, bank robber, cop killer, and bona fide Australian legend. Under his large and imposing shadow, his brother and his brother's son, Jasper, have both withered into reclusive, crotchety curmudgeons with more than their fair share of eccentric opinions, and Jasper is in rebellion against not only his uncle but his father as well. This is one Oedipus story told, though, with lots of snap and crackle, as well as pop. While there are no new stories, even Down Under, Jasper's progression reads like the trajectory of a gleefully crazed Roman candle across the southern skies in this sprawling, entertaining, decidedly quirky, and at times laugh-out-loud-funny romp reminiscent of John Irving's family sagas or Brocke Clarke's An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. Recommended for all public libraries.--Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
New York Review of Books Review
SOMEDAY in the future, when novels are considered quaint as daguerreotypes and Corvettes run on lemonade, literary historians will look at our age and see a generation of novelists in thrall to the first person. One can't open a first novel these days without being grabbed by the lapels and made to listen. Old men, young children, even the dead want to yak at us. Never has fiction been held aloft by so many filibusterers. Steve Toltz hails from Australia, where the badgering first person runs deep, so "A Fraction of the Whole," his 530-page debut, grows in the shadow of great expectations. But can it do more than just talk our ears off? The opening pages promise dire familial drama. Jasper Dean is trapped in a prison with a large chip on his shoulder. "One thing's for sure," he says. "My father punished me for existing, and now it's my turn to punish him for existing. It's only fair." Before long, Toltz is passing the narrative conch from Jasper to his father, Martin, and back again. Each Dean follows a different set of steppingstones in his life story, but the two can agree on one thing - that Martin's brother, Terry, "cop killer, bank robber, ... pride of the battler," was probably the guy who threw the Dean family truly out of whack. Terry was apparently many things to many Australians. Most important, though, he was his brother's protector. Just before Terry was born, Martin got sick and fell into a coma. He emerges months later with Harold Bloomian recall of what his mother read aloud by his bedside: "It was as though great big trucks filled with words drove up to our heads and dumped their contents directly into our brains." Terry's exploits as recounted by Martin - and the furor they cause - finally get this big, bloated zeppelin of a book off the ground. But they highlight one of its weaknesses. Without Terry, Martin is just a misanthropic blowhard who has an opinion about everything and the subtlety of a bad stand-up comic. ("The whole human race could get acute angina for all I care.") With Terry, or when talking about Terry, Martin has energy, a story to tell. "When they weren't fighting, they were stealing," he says of Terry and his first crew. "They swiped junked cars, broken car parts, school supplies, sporting goods; they broke into bakeries and stole bread, and if there wasn't any bread they stole dough; ... they robbed the post office of stamps and uncollected mail." In the end, Terry graduates to much worse and is put away for life - in a prison his father built, no less. Then the prison burns down, probably with him in it. Terry becomes an even greater legend, and the urgency of his example grows for Martin and through him is passed to his son, Jasper. Is Martin a thinker or a doer? He flees to Paris in search of his brother's ex-lover and makes a best friend, a story we get through his diaries. Later, we hear about the aftermath of this trip - during which Jasper was conceived - in Martin's autobiography, which is full of rambling asides and philosophical brain-droppings. "A Fraction of the Whole," which was recently long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, tries to create friction between Martin's and Jasper's different renditions of events, but this fails because they sound the same. Each has the rolling breathlessness of a two-hour panic attack, only Martin is slightly more relentless. "All I ever wanted was for everyone to like me," he says, and he narrates accordingly. He makes comments that belong in a teenager's journal - "Odor of Paris in my mouth, mint with a chewy center" - and cheap stabs at profundity: "Death is full of surprises." Thanks! "Babies have to learn to smile," he writes before Jasper is born, "so what if I never taught him or showed him laughter?" Since he is the voice behind these voices, it's hard not to feel that Toltz is also trying to teach his fuddy-duddy readers the therapeutic import of bleak laughter. It doesn't work. The book churns and whirls, spinning off new exploits - Martin falls for a woman named Anouk, who goes from housekeeper to Australia's richest woman that become emptier as Martin gets farther from his childhood and closer to madness. There are a few nice moments. One of them occurs early on, when Martin edits a handbook of crime written by one of Terry's cronies. The man's acknowledgment page is the sanest, funniest thing in the book: "I would like to acknowledge my father for giving me a taste for violence, my grandfather for giving my father a taste for violence. ... The New South Wales police force for their indefatigable corruption and tireless brutality." It's funny, pithy, says it all. It also makes you wonder what the other 529 pages are on about. 'My father punished me for existing, and now it's my turn to punish him. ... It's only fair.' John Freeman is the former president of the National Book Critics Circle. He is finishing a book on the tyranny of e-mail.