- Gebundene Ausgabe: 512 Seiten
- Verlag: Theia (August 2001)
- Sprache: Englisch
- ISBN-10: 0786866039
- ISBN-13: 978-0786866038
- Größe und/oder Gewicht: 23,6 x 15,5 x 3,3 cm
- Durchschnittliche Kundenbewertung: 5.0 von 5 Sternen Alle Rezensionen anzeigen (2 Kundenrezensionen)
- Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 801.597 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)
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Produktbeschreibungen
Amazon.com
Penzler Pick, August 2001: Most avid readers love everything about books--not only the words, but also the paper, the edition, the age, the texture of the binding, all of which become part of the fascination for the printed word that makes a true bibliophile. So it is no wonder that the bibliophile mystery has achieved such popularity. The Grand Complication, well-written and well-researched, is the latest in a long line of such mysteries.
Alexander Short is a reference librarian who spends his days dealing with the minutiae of his work world. At night he goes home to his French wife who is also a book person. She makes pop-up books and other three-dimensional volumes, including a "girdle" that Alexander wears in the manner of medieval monks, tied around his middle and used for his "girdling" or taking notes--something Alexander does obsessively, to the detriment of his job. Two such people seem made for each other, but their obsessions make for a rocky marriage.
So Alexander is fascinated when he meets Henry James Jesson III, an elderly man with equally obsessive interests. He would like Alexander to help him after hours. In Jesson's Manhattan mansion there is a cabinet of curiosities that tell the life of an 18th-century inventor. But one of the compartments is empty. Jesson, and soon Alexander, are agog with curiosity about what was in that compartment. Finding out is half the fun of reading this book.
The other half, if you care (and somehow I think you do), is the design of the book itself. Kurzweil is the son of an engineer, and he designed the small icon, a gear, that appears on many of the book's pages. Over the course of the novel, which runs 360 pages, that gear turns 360 degrees. And then there are the endpapers.... --Otto Penzler
From Booklist
*Starred Review* In a kind of sequel to Kurzweil's first novel, A Case of Curiosities (1991), Alexander Short, NYPL reference librarian, comes to the aid of a bibliophile named Henry James Jesson, who is searching for information about an eighteenth-century cabinet (the "case of curiosities") whose contents tell the tale of a man's life. Short's job is to determine what objects once occupied one of the cabinet's cubbyholes. No small task, but just right for this world-class reference librarian, who cultivates the most arcane of interests as a way of hiding from a plethora of life's more mundane complications--sex, love, commitment. This time, however, the search takes Short into rather than away from his own heart of darkness. Is Jesson really interested in the rare watch missing from the cabinet, or is it Short himself who is the object of the collector's passion? As Short is forced to confront the most challenging of reference questions (Who am I?), Kurzweil revels in the minutiae of librarianship while at the same time offering a thought-provoking, deeply philosophical meditation on the problem of identity. This is a delightfully intricate jewel box of a novel, and it works on multiple levels. Librarians will find the book a riotously funny in-joke (name the last novel in which the phrase "presort the reshelves" appeared), while connoisseurs of the most sophisticated literary-historical thrillers will lose themselves completely in Kurzweil's multifaceted world. The charismatic Short immediately joins the protagonists of Martha Cooley's The Archivist and Ross King's Ex-Libris on the short list of fiction's best bibliophile heroes. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
In diesem Buch
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Einleitungssatz
THE SEARCH BEGAN with a library call slip and the gracious query of an elegant man. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Auszug | Rückseite
THE SEARCH BEGAN with a library call slip and the gracious query of an elegant man. Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Alexander Short is a librarian. His job is in jeopardy and his marriage is coming apart. He meets a curious figure improbably named Henry James Jesson III, a book-lover who hires Alexander for some research in order to complete a cabinet of curiosities chronicling the life of the mysterious Henri Breguet, an eighteenth-century inventor. As his investigation progresses, Alexander understands that there a further secrets lurking in Jesson's cloistered world than those inside his elegant Manhattan town house.
An intellectual delight, this literary thriller will enchant you if you like books, antiques and watches. And Horace's sentence "Habent sua fata libelli" - All books have their fates - will stay on your mind forever!
An intellectual delight, this literary thriller will enchant you if you like books, antiques and watches. And Horace's sentence "Habent sua fata libelli" - All books have their fates - will stay on your mind forever!
Format:Taschenbuch|Von Amazon bestätigter Kauf
This is a book for someone who loves books and mysteries. The author takes the reader on a quest for an incredibly rare watch. While following the heroes of the book one learns a lot about librarians, how libraries are organized, and about the history of Marie Antoinette. There is never a dull moment and the best of it, the story has a real background!
Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen auf Amazon.com (beta)
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58 Rezensionen
21 von 21 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
An intellectual mystery which does not lose its audience.
23. August 2001
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Alexander Short is a young librarian--precise and studious, with a need to catalogue and record, and on his way to becoming stuffy. But he was not always this way. His courtship and marriage to his French wife Nic, who designs pop-up books, was romantic--and spontaneous enough to have earned him a reprimand from the head of the library for his enthusiastic acceptance of her proposal on the library's electronic bulletin board. Now the marriage is in trouble, his career seems to have hit a snag, and he's holding himself and his life together by recording and alphabetizing his life experiences in a notebook he has attached to his waist. Into his life comes Henry James Jesson III, an elderly man in search of an object missing from a hidden compartment in an 18th century furniture case he owns. Short is enlisted to help in the search, and his life is suddenly turned upside down.
The book, and the research behind it, took the author ten years, and one of the greatest compliments I can pay is to say that it doesn't show. So smoothly does Kurzweil integrate all the esoteric details of compartmented antique furniture, 18th century watchmaking, library cataloguing and conservation procedures, the intricacies of fine art theft, and even Japanese irezumi tattooing, that it all feels right and appropriate, and not at all pretentious. His themes of order vs. spontaneity, life vs. stasis, permanence vs. change mesh perfectly with the search for a missing timepiece, which is what belongs in Jesson's case--a watch called The Grand Complication, which was originally commissioned by Marie Antoinette. The book's structure mirrors the intricacies of this mysterious watch, which was stolen..
As Short and Jesson conduct their search, the reader is, by turns, entertained, enlightened, and thoroughly engaged. Alexander Short is a character who comes to life, as, to a lesser extent, does Jesson, who is a sad case, not unlike his furniture piece, missing something necessary for personal completion. The library itself comes to life so fully that it almost becomes a character itself. The book is full of puns and literary allusions, which add yet another level of fun. With a terrific, bang-up conclusion which ties up all the loose ends of the plot, the characters' lives, and the themes, Kurzweil leaves his reader fully satisfied--and hoping not to have to wait ten more years for his next novel. Mary Whipple
The book, and the research behind it, took the author ten years, and one of the greatest compliments I can pay is to say that it doesn't show. So smoothly does Kurzweil integrate all the esoteric details of compartmented antique furniture, 18th century watchmaking, library cataloguing and conservation procedures, the intricacies of fine art theft, and even Japanese irezumi tattooing, that it all feels right and appropriate, and not at all pretentious. His themes of order vs. spontaneity, life vs. stasis, permanence vs. change mesh perfectly with the search for a missing timepiece, which is what belongs in Jesson's case--a watch called The Grand Complication, which was originally commissioned by Marie Antoinette. The book's structure mirrors the intricacies of this mysterious watch, which was stolen..
As Short and Jesson conduct their search, the reader is, by turns, entertained, enlightened, and thoroughly engaged. Alexander Short is a character who comes to life, as, to a lesser extent, does Jesson, who is a sad case, not unlike his furniture piece, missing something necessary for personal completion. The library itself comes to life so fully that it almost becomes a character itself. The book is full of puns and literary allusions, which add yet another level of fun. With a terrific, bang-up conclusion which ties up all the loose ends of the plot, the characters' lives, and the themes, Kurzweil leaves his reader fully satisfied--and hoping not to have to wait ten more years for his next novel. Mary Whipple
16 von 16 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
A Star is Reborn
1. August 2001
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
I love this book. To me it demonstrates a mind working the language at full capacity, with loads of linguistic twists and turns, puns, riddles, and more. The setting of the book is really the mind, specifically the mind of the librarian. It is a book for people who love books in every way, who enjoy holding them almost as much as they enjoy reading them. Henry James Jesson III is one of the characters, and he is someone who revels in his own acquired knowledge. The book's protagonist,
Alexander Short, loves the fact that Jesson is an intellectual/literary show off, and he falls under Jesson's spell.
I suppose that at its heart the book is a sort of intellectual thriller, with mysteries inside mysteries.Where is Marie Antoinette's stolen timepiece, The Grand Complication? Does it really exist? Is it what is learned along the chase that is as interesting to the protagonists as finding the watch? I also love the fact that it refers back to the author's previous novel, A Case of Curiosities, without in any way being a sequel.
This is the kind of novel I love to read during those luxurious-feeling summer moments.
15 von 15 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Fun but No Payoff
10. September 2001
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
This novel is right up my alley. It is the story of young librarian, Alexander Short, caught up in a search for a timepiece to complete a collection owned by a wealthy eccentric, Henry James Jesson III. Books, library searches, heraldry, theft, adventure and a wife who is constantly trying to seduce her husband. Who could ask for more?
And, indeed, this is a fun little book. I am particularly fond of the scenes set in the New York Public Library with its resources and its cast of interesting characters. I also find the search for the timepiece to be an interesting one with plenty of twists and turns along the way.
My only complaint about this book is the payoff. There really isn't one. I found that the book just kind of fizzled out in the last few pages. I have not read Kurzweil's first novel, A Case of Curiosities. I wish I had. I get the impression it might throw some light on this novel. Still, as it is, it's a quick novel and well worth a read.
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