Tom McCarthy is a writer and conceptual artist. He was born in 1969 and lives in central London. He is known for the reports, manifestos, and media interventions he has made as General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious avant-garde network. Remainder is his first novel.

McCarthy's debut novel Remainder initially made no impact on larger UK publishers. It was eventually published in November 2005 by small Paris-based art publisher Metronome Press and distributed through gallery and museum shops, but not in chain bookstores [1] and then received widespread critical attention in the literary and mainstream press. The London Review of Books called it "a very good novel indeed" and The Independent claimed that "its minatory brilliance calls for classic status".[2] The novel was re-published in a much larger UK print-run by the more conventional English publisher Alma Books (2006), and in the US by Vintage (2007), where it ranked as an Amazon top one-hundred seller and entered the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list. On its American publication the New York Times dedicated the front cover of its book section to the novel, calling the book "a work of novelistic philosophy, as disturbing as it is funny".[3] In 2008 Remainder won the fourth annual Believer Book Award.[4] Zadie Smith wrote in the New York Review of Books that it was "one of the great English novels of the last ten years", suggesting it showed a future path that the novel "might, with difficulty, follow".[5] It has since been translated into fourteen languages, and an adaptation for cinema by Film4 Productions was begun in 2008.[6][7] Since the success, several big publishing houses who had turned it down originally returned to him with enthusiastic offers, which McCarthy rejected, commenting that "it's the same book as it was two years ago."[1]

Book Description

Publication Date: February 13, 2007

A man is severely injured in a mysterious accident, receives an outrageous sum in legal compensation, and has no idea what to do with it.

Then, one night, an ordinary sight sets off a series of bizarre visions he can’t quite place.

How he goes about bringing his visions to life–and what happens afterward–makes for one of the most riveting, complex, and unusual novels in recent memory.

Remainder is about the secret world each of us harbors within, and what might happen if we were granted the power to make it real.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McCarthy's debut novel, set in London, takes a clever conceit and pumps it up with vibrant prose to such great effect that the narrative's pointlessness is nearly a nonissue. The unnamed narrator, who suffers memory loss as the result of an accident that "involved something falling from the sky," receives an £8.5 million settlement and uses the money to re-enact, with the help of a "facilitator" he hires, things remembered or imagined. He buys an apartment building to replicate one that has come to him in a vision and then populates it with people hired to re-enact, over and over again, the mundane activities he has seen his imaginary neighbors performing. He stages both ordinary acts (the fixing of a punctured tire) and violent ones (shootings and more), each time repeating the events many times and becoming increasingly detached from reality and fascinated by the scenarios his newfound wealth has allowed him to create—even though he professes he doesn't "want to understand them." McCarthy's evocation of the narrator's absorption in his fantasy world as it cascades out of control is brilliant all the way through the abrupt climax. (Feb.)

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From Bookmarks Magazine

Rejected in England before it was acquired by a small French publishing house, Tom McCarthy's debut novel is now a popular and critical success. The author, who in 1999 launched the semihoax International Necronautical Society (INS)—designed to map and colonize the space of death—transfers some of the Society's philosophical concerns to his novel. About human reality, social constructions, and the quest for identity, Remainder offers a highly original and insightful allegory of our times. In a clear, deadpan tone, the narrator, "an existential Everyman" (Los Angeles Times), tells a bizarre, disorienting, and compelling story. The vagueness may bother some readers, but most will enjoy pondering the ambiguity of it all.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist

The nameless British narrator of McCarthy's clever debut is the sort of Everyman one would never want to be. He loses virtually all of his memory in a bizarre accident ("it involved something falling from the sky") and accepts an 8.5 million settlement from the responsible party on the condition that he won't speak a word about the tragic turn of events. Our hero is at a loss as to how to spend the money until, one evening at a friend's party, he experiences a strange flash of deja vu. Inspired by this snippet from his past, he hires a facilitator to help render an exact replica of the tenement-style building he once inhabited. He even holds a "casting call" to select the building's residents, whom he directs to repeatedly perform certain tasks. The narrator then orders reenactments of seemingly random events that run the gamut from inane to insane. Londoner McCarthy delivers crisp, precise prose, though his offbeat tale might have been rendered in far fewer words. Allison Block

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“Hypnotically creepy . . . McCarthy’s portrait of the pursuit of total control is arresting, and he is alert to the bland amorality that underlies it.” —The New Yorker

“What fun it is when a crafty writer plays cat and mouse with your mind, when you can never anticipate his next move and when, in any case, he knows all the exits to the maze and has already blocked them. . . . McCarthy’s superb stylistic control and uncanny imagination transport this novel beyond the borders of science fiction. His bleak humor, hauntingly affectless narrator and methodical expansion on his theme make Remainder more than an entertaining brain-teaser: it’s a work of novelistic philosophy, as disturbing as it is funny.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A chillingly clever novel of patterns that fools you into thinking it’s a novel about plot . . . [McCarthy] is a new author who’s ambitious and intelligent.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Fresh, funny, and deeply disturbing.” —New York Magazine

“A novel of astonishing genius. . . . . It demands to be read in one sitting. So deftly does McCarthy absorb you into the mind of his hero that you quickly feel you are living with him inside his head. . . . The book caught me in such a delirious spin toward fragmentation and left me feeling every detail of the matter of life more keenly.” —Sarah Cook, The Believer

“Addictively strange.” —Details

“Tom McCarthy is shockingly talented. . . . Remainder is one of those novels that you finish and turn immediately back to the beginning, to fill in the gaps you may have missed the first time around. It leaves you feeling sort of shaken and very impressed.” —Gawker.com

“Nihilistically modern and classically structured. . . . Tightly knit, suspenseful . . . [Remainder] pursues an authenticity with the monomaniacal focus of Francis Ford Coppola circa Apocalypse Now. . . . McCarthy tells his tale calmly, as if taking long, yogic breaths.” —Bookforum

“Captivating and challenging. . . . Remainder isn't a mystery novel—there's no villain here apart from time and space—so if its core ripples with ambiguity, all the better for the reader, as this is a book to be read and then reread, rich as it is with its insights, daring as it is with its contradictions.” —Los Angeles Times

“The nameless narrator in this eerie debut is a Londoner severely injured in an accident. Months later, he received an £8.5 million settlement on the condition that he never speak about the payout or the incident again—not a problem, since he doesn’t remember it. Our hero then begins to wholly recreate and re-enact portions of his old life with a salaried cast of extras, set designers, and stuntmen. In taut and chilly prose, McCarthy describes how this mission becomes a disturbing obsession; the horrifying conclusion is visible 30 pages off, but it’s no less shocking when it arrives.” —Entertainment Weekly, A-

“Tom McCarthy’s first novel offers a vivid, subtle portrait of creeping madness.” —Time Out New York

“A quick and gritty novel that begs, thanks largely to a cinematic plot, to be read in one sitting.” —BookSlut

“A stunningly strange book about the rarest of fictional subjects, happiness.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude

“Remainder is a beautifully strange and chilly book. Very smart and unlike anything else you're likely to read.” —Scott Smith, author of The Ruins

“Tom McCarthy has a singularity, a precision, a surreal logic and a sly wit that is all his own. It will be a long time before you read a stranger book—or a truer one.” —Rupert Thomson, author of Divided Kingdom

“It will remain with you long after you have felt compelled to re-read it.” —Time Out London

“An assured work of existential horror. . . . Perfectly disturbing.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Strangely gripping. . . . Remainder should be read (and, of course, reread) for its intelligence and humour.”

—The Times Literary Supplement (London)