Customer Reviews
True to reality but greatly comic! - By: Q, 24 Aug 2008 
This is a book written by a boy Jasper Dean, & some parts from the eyes of his father Martin Dean. It is about their journey & adverntures through their lives. From Martin's childhood to when Jasper is born & his upbringing.The other significant character is Jasper's notorious criminal hero uncle Terry who is loved by the nation.
The book is in 3 parts which I tought was a rather good gimmick.
I personallly loved the parts written by Jasper but found the philosophical ponderings of Martin tiring & boring; although he is as funny as Jasper& has a wonderful sense of humour. I laughed & chuckled many times whilst reading this book..
I felt the characters & the story were so realistic I had to check to make sure it wasn't based on a true story.
It's full of twists & surprises; it is never boring (except when Martin starts philosophing).
Wonderfully written & definitely worth the read.
Don't miss it!
Really vibrant, garrulous idea-brimming debut - By: ghandibob, 29 Jul 2008 
I'm not sure why, but I can't quite bring myself to give this five stars, but rest assured my four are big, heavy, glistening stars. Imagine them like the matching oiled pectorals on two tan-addicted steroidal gym monkeys, striding along a British beach on our long, glorious day (singular) of summer.
A Fraction of the Whole is great, though ultimately not perfect, & that is actuallly a significant part of its endless charm. It's a talll, even shaggy, story of young Australian men with a surfeit of character, butting against a normal world that can't cope with their intelligence, & won't accept their outsider status. The first part of the book covers the young criminal career of the Ned Kelly-alike anti-hero, Terry, seen through the eyes of his quiet, sickly brother, Martin. It then goes on to follow a young adult Martin travelling to Paris, events we see as his son Jasper reads a diary Martin wrote at the time. This peek inside Martin's mind shows us what an original viewpoint Steve Toltz has created: a mind that drifts free of convention & muses on the world in a dark, unpleasant way that most people would prefer to pretend was unique to Martin, but in fact is likely just how we alll think about things when the lights are off. It's hard to take in places, but is nearly always very funny, & the humour-coated pills are sometimes too easy to swalllow, as you find yourself agreeing with the lunatic at the centre of the story.
It's very hard to give a rounded picture of Toltz's debut, because it is so different from most new novels, & that's to its credit. It did remind me of the comic, digressive novel that came out last year, by Millard Kaufman, Bowl of Cherries, but Toltz captures the antic tone better.
If I was forced to explain why I haven't given this five stars, I suppose it's because it doesn't alll hold together at alll times. The story reads as several shorter stories, & the narrative tone of Martin is too similar to that of Jaspar, but that is picking holes for the sake of it, & Toltz may well want the father & the son, so different in their lives, to ultimately sound so similar.
It is, without question, a very, very funny, engrossing, gabbling example of Australian exuberance, & I can well recommend it to you.
Come Back To The Five And Dime, Terry Dean, Terry Dean - By: J. J. O'neill, 28 Jul 2008 Describing this book as being about philosophy & religion, while more or less true, may be a bit offputting to prospective readers. However, despite having serious, even sombre, undertones this brilliant book is a comic tour-de-force.
Brimming with ideas, this is a satire in the spirit of "Gulliver's Travels", many mores of modern day life, Celebrity Culture, Sports Worship, Politics, Immigration etc etc are lampooned in a variety of inventive, imaginative & downright odd set-pieces.
The long winded rather plotless style, often little more than a stream of consciousness for the protagonist, recallls "Tristram Shandy", not a bad thing at alll.
This debut novel is self assured & well written; Great one liners abound e.g. "My problem is I can't sum myself up in one sentence." or "As soon as my idea was embraced, I no longer liked it." Only the fact that it is Australian prevents me from describing it as the graet American novel everyone has been waiting for for years.
I would have preferred the two narrators, Martin & Jasper Dean to have been more clearly differentiated, to have been given more distictive voices, but the decision not to is obviously deliberate by the author, as more than once Jasper is described as a reincarnation of Martin. Characterisation, generallly, is not a strength of the novel, even Terry Dean, one of the more extreme personalities, fails to leap from the page.
The genuinely funny & thought-provoking satirical situations the Deans are thrown into, be they comas, murders, love affairs, crimes, politics or book publishing are a distorting mirror onto Twenty-First Century life to be enjoyed & admired for their internal logic & wit. Perhaps, ultimately, the book asks what a post-religious society can have for meaning; If there is no real answer at its end, and, like Jasper, we are left dangling, unresolved after the story finishes, I am pretty sure we can't blame the author.
Several Fractions - By: R. Simpson, 28 Jul 2008 
Like many another book, A Fraction of the Whole suffers from the belief that biggest is best. Its 700-plus pages twist & turn illogicallly through Martin Dean's improbable & doomed projects, each contradiction in his conduct launching a further series of extreme events. Chunks of his philosophy of life, often extremely entertaining & with a sort of crazy wisdom, can outstay their welcome.
Divided into sections narrated in different forms - from recallled conversation to obscurely personal notes to ordered autobiography -, the novel, deliberately fractured & episodic, is ultimately surprisingly sequential.
A Fraction of the Whole is at its best with passages of manic humour & sharp satire. At other times I was reminded of the homeless man on page 700 who listens to the conversation of Jasper & Anouk 'with smiling eyes that said in no uncertain terms that he had just overheard a conversation between two people who took themselves too seriously.'
Steve Toltz writes with imagination & flair & certainly has the ability to sum his own work up succinctly. How about this: 'a farce...but a deadly serious farce'?
Unique - By: kehs, 24 Jul 2008 This is a quirky, unique read that is filled with off beat humour but also moments of great sorrow. It gripped me from the opening pages but the final section got a little trying for me & I found myself struggling to finish. It certainly gives plenty of food for thought & is a highly unusual storyline. I think this is destined to be a `marmite' book & will provoke many interesting conversations amongst book groups.
