A Fraction of the Whole (Hardcover)

Starred 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.)
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“A fantastic, rollicking adventure of a novel, both startlingly original and hysterically funny. Surely this is the new picaresque, rivaling Ignatius Reilly and Billy Bathgate.”
– David Francis, author of The Great Inland Sea

“ [A] sprawling, dizzying debut from a quirky, assured Australian writer. . . . Toltz’s exuberant, looping narrative [is] thick with his characters’ outsized longings and with their crazy arguments. . . . Comic drive and Toltz’s far-out imagination carry the epic story. . . . Comparisons to Special Topics in Calamity Physics are likely, but this nutty tour de force has a more tender, more worldly spin.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

This misanthropic, laugh-out-loud funny novel tells the story of a brilliant, eccentric and star-crossed outsider and his son in contemporary Australia. With its chance encounters, mysterious criminals, malevolent townspeople, attacks of mental illness and mad schemes for civic and national improvement, A Fraction of the Whole is not so much a shaggy dog story as a woolly mammoth story. Martin Dean and his son Jasper take turns narrating a story steeped in Australian cultural icons: sporting mania, brush fires, the Ned Kelly myth, rapacious right-wing media barons, Sydney Harbour Bridge. It's also a story of Big Universal Questions as the two characters ruminate on religion, philosophy and death. Toltz's analytical, nihilistic loners are like Dostoyevsky characters who have wandered into an episode of Seinfeld, which, come to think of it was a Dostoyevskian sitcom.
- Winnipeg Free Press

"A rich father-and-son story packed with incident, humour, and characters reminiscent of John Irving...A Fraction of the Whole soars like a rocket." –Los Angeles Times

"A riotously funny first novel...harder to ignore than a crate of puppies, twice as playful, and just about as messy." –The Wall Street Journal

"A startling debut....A non-stop, politically incorrect diatribe about — for and against — religion, politics, relationships, sex, marriage, work, play, children, sleep, friends, art, labyrinths, schemes, and dreams....Devastatingly funny." –The Seattle Times

"Rollicking....laugh-out-loud funny." –Entertainment Weekly

"That rarest of long books — utterly worth it....Witty and intellectual, a physical comedy and literary rant all at once....Comically dark and inviting." –Esquire