From Publishers Weekly
Musing on Rousseau, the French encyclopedists and the vagaries of chance and identity, Crumey (Pfitz; D'Alembert's Principle) has written another novel of ideas in the grand tradition of Calvino, Borges and Kundera. This delightful romp around the knottiest concerns raised by Enlightenment philosophers and postmodernists alike centers on the long-vanished Rosier's Encyclopaedia, a 200-year-old French text that may challenge the existence of the universe. Setting out to track down Rosier's work, dotty old Mr. Mee, a reclusive British book collector, embarks on a quest that introduces him to the Internet in all its seamy variety (he finds an unclad woman reading a Rosier-related text on one site) and brings on the attentions of a "life scientist" named Catriona, who introduces him to the pleasures of the flesh. Mee's narrative alternates with that of a Dr. Petrie, a professor of French literature desperately in love with one of his students, and Ferrand and Minard, the bumbling 18th-century French copyists charged with reproducing Rosier's original manuscript. Mee may be the most endearing narrator, and Ferrand and Minard the most haplessly slapstick, but Petrie proves the most perceptive, lacing his lovelorn lamentations with reflections on Proust and Flaubert. Crumey also provides tantalizing glimpses of the Encyclopaedia itself, its treatises all absurdly outdated and yet provocatively applicable to modern-day computer science and physics. The novel isn't perfect--its philosophical asides can be hard going, and it's easy to lose patience with the exaggerated ineptitude of all its narrators--but Crumey's light treatment of hefty material should win the minds, if not the hearts, of his readers. (Mar.)Forecast: Crumey has yet to achieve the name recognition of Umberto Eco or even Arturo P‚rez-Reverte, but this strong effort and the many glowing reviews it's bound to receive should attract a few more readers to him.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In what has become his trademark narrative style, British novelist Crumey (Pfitz, D'Alembert's Principle) offers readers three ongoing stories loosely intertwined on a philosophical spool. The title character is an elderly and incredibly sheltered scholar who, in the course of the volume, learns about both computers and the female anatomy. The other two tales involve a pair of ne'er-do-well 18th-century French copyists who come a cropper of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as a contemporary philosophy professor with a penchant for a young female student. While each of these stories is moderately clever, none of the male characters is sympathetic, and the female characters have frustratingly brief walk-ons that promise more intellectual stimulation than they are allowed to deliver. The three tales are drawn together in a messy denouement that is neither engaging nor insightful. While there are a few standout passages along the wayAincluding the scene in which Mr. Mee describes his initial introduction to the InternetAthere is little to recommend this to any audience.AFrancisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
