Rating: 
Summary: Good read overall
Review: Alexander Short is the main character of this book and reminds you of that one strange friend of yours that just gets very caught up in the weirdest things. The funny thing about this book is that you want it to be good and you want to like the characters but Kurzweil makes that a little difficult. The idea of the story is quite intriguing and as it unfolds you'll be amazed at all the intricate details and how it comes together. The problem is that by the end you don't want things to come out so . . . normal. The book is so fanciful in ideals and even the mechanics with which the plot unfurls itself that the end should be just as fanciful. Lets face it. If you can make it through the details and craziness of the first 359 pages, why change styles on the 360th? But don't get me wrong, these are just my problems with the book. Its still fabulous and an easy read most of the time. It might be a tad far-fetched but for a mystery or even a flat-out book lover, I think you'll be able to suspend your disbelief.
Rating: 
Summary: A captivating book!
Review: Allen Kurzweil has done it again! Quirky characters, grand inventions and, yes, grand complications. This book takes you into another world, the world of librarians and eccentric collectors, and makes you a part of it. You'll love the central character, the young librarian Alexander Short, and you'll live his life as if it was yours, as the mystery of his grand quest builds to an exciting, and unexpected, conclusion. I was completely captivated by the book, and couldn't put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: A grand, complicated, engrossing sprawl of a story
Review: This is a book-lover's book. It's for people who read obsessively, who buy up 10-cent paperbacks at flea markets, who haunt library discard sales, who can't venture inside a library or bookstore without somehow acquiring a few finds. It's also a book for thinkers, people who enjoy complication and subtlety and minutaie.The plot concerns a librarian, Alexander, who is drawn into an old man's search for a famous antique timepiece. It explores the nitpicky politics of his job, his polar relationship with his wife, and his personal dreams and the fears the prevent him from realizing them. It also comments on the nature of friendship and betrayal, the importance of searching over finding, and the nuances of a language and a world that can often hide within its own crevices. All of this is contained in an even 360 pages, at the end of which the book has wound mysteriously back to its opening. There are flaws, however. The author, while skilled in the crafting of plot and the intricacies of pun and puzzle, has no particular gift for linguistic beauty. The writing is congenial, but its aesthetic neutrality is glaring, especially given the subject matter and the high quality of the rest of the book. Passages that could be devastating with the appropriate word or phrase are instead merely interesting. The story's ending, which could be powerful and memorable, is instead satisfying. It's still good, and still very much worth reading, but the lack is sometimes keenly felt.
Rating:
Summary: A grand novel
Review: This is one of my favority books this year. It is a well-crafted book, the writing is superb, and it is fun to read. I learned a lot about worlds I knew nothing about. I hope the author will write many more books soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Gimmicky and sophomoric.
Review: Like so many other readers, I really wanted to like this book. Before even cracking the pages, I was enamored with the concept of a mystery involving the arcane worlds of collectors, horologists, bibliophiles and reference librarians. It sounded so promising.
But I finished the first chapter in a state of mild disbelief thinking "surely, this has got to get better." By the middle of the book, I had abandoned all hope except for the singular goal of plodding through to the finish line without breaking my record of never leaving a book unfinished. Sad to say, that is the only reason I followed this uninteresting and gimmicky story through to the end. Others have outlined the plot, which on paper sounds intriguing but in execution turned out to be unbelievable and tiresome. Not that the book was completely without merit - the bowels of the New York public library are interesting, there's a humorous (if predictable) Dewey-Decimal competition, and you get a glimpse into the netherworld of libraries and librarians. But despite the few bright lights, the book labors under the writing style and characterization.
Kurzweil's prose here could best be described as "precious" - the sort of tidy, circular writing and plot machinations (cutesy, artificial and over-orchestrated) that distinguish lesser works.
The character of Jesson is supposed to be an educated and erudite man, but he comes off as a parody - it was like reading a sophomore's checklist of what he thinks an erudite, wealthy man sounds like: "let's see, he's gotta wear a cravat, he's gotta say 'Splendid' and 'Precisely' a lot and, oh yeah, rich guys always refer to their mother not as 'my mother', but "Mother didn't approve of this, and Mother had a penchant for that."
The character of Nic (Short's wife) is as two-dimensional as her paper pop-ups; little more than a static collection of French phrases, seduction techniques, and thrown objects.
In other words, the books expects us to accept a lot of gimmicks, ticks and mannerisms in place of actual characterization.
The dialogue is not much better, rooted as it is in cartoonish characters who test the reader's patience for puns, puns on puns, gratuitous arcane references, and so many book-related metaphors (sample: "for three years, Nic and I were two acid-free volumes bound together as one") that you'd suspect the author was being paid by the metaphor. Frankly, The Grand Complication reminded this reader of the effort of a FictionWriting 101 student eager to convince you of his own cleverness ... and losing sight of the story in the process.
Rating:
Summary: Great Fun for Collectors and Bibliomaniacs
Review: I do not understand the angry and hostile reactions to this unassuming book. The nature of the criticisms might be appropriate if the publishers had touted the book as a direct challenge to Dickens or Dostoyevsky, but this clearly was not the case.
If you think you would enjoy a fast-moving, light-hearted and thoroughly entertaining story centered in the worlds of books, museums, libraries, antiques and collectors then you will almost certainly like this well written book.
Rating:
Summary: great premise never pays off (mild spoiler)
Review: I was really anticipating a great book -- lots of positive reviews and subject matter that closely overlapped my own interests -- but ultimately I didn't find this a satisfying read. The mystery was not intriguing enough. The writing was inelegant. Worst of all, the ending was disappointing -- so many things were hinted at in the novel, so many suggestions that this was going to be one of those satisfying books where the author somehow ties all the loose ends into an unexpected but plausible denouement -- the kind of book you want to start reading again right away to see where the real clues were hidden. Instead, the ending was anticlimactic and none of the innuendos were addressed. (Spoiler Warning) Instead, the protagonist feels betrayed by someone and perpetrates an uninspired revenge, while the novel itself ends with a tired literary device. Being a librarian I enjoyed the arcana, but thought most of the characters were two-dimensional and unsympathetic. The author contrives intriguing plot devices and writes decent dialogue, but neither devices nor dialogue reveal much beyond plot advancement. Type is big and white space is plentiful. A fast but clunky novel that does not meet the expectations it raises in the first three-quarters of the book. I probably won't buy the author's first book, but if someone gave me a copy I'd read it. I wanted to like this book, I just didn't. Since reviews are mixed, perhaps you should read some sample pages to decide for yourself. Unfortunately, sample pages can't save you from the sense of ultimate disappointment some readers have felt at the dispirited ending.
Rating:
Summary: Just Splendid
Review: This book is hilarious. Is someone erudite just because they have an extensive vocabulary? Apparently so. This book deals Kurzweils fight with his own latent homosexuality, building a fantasy world of bibliophilia and men who are as "articulate" and pedantic he (his "type"?). The crux of the story is basically the protagonist (Short) being conveniently estranged from his wife (he is incapable to have sex with her). In the interim (building up to restoring his marriage) Short becomes a sort of Rent-boy or show pony to the anachronistic Jesson. The Jesson guy is defeated in the end by a man Short enlists by showing his temporary-tattooed derrière (this guy is also high-tech antithesis of Jesson, helping Kurzweil work though his love of the old and, obviously, the ultra-new). A comedy of epic proportions written by a repressed homosexual. Well done dude, this book was a classic, what does your wife think?? Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: a clever work
Review: This book is much better than other reviewers imply. After reading A Case of Curiosities, I read The Grand Complication and couldn't put it down. The obsessions of the main characters are reflected in the combined structures of the two books, and the structural isomorphisms (combined with the creative use of vocabulary and peculiar stories) kept me interested. There is nothing cliche about this book. Granted, a few plot twists are a bit contrived, but that didn't significantly dull my appreciation for the work.
Rating:
Summary: 2 Stars For Clever Book Design
Review: When I started this book, I thought I was going to love it. It involves a Manhattan reference librarian who is hired by a wealthy, old, eccentric man who needs help tracking down a watch believed to have been owned by Marie Antoinette. A beach read for the literary set, the book is filled with puns, and clever word play all intentionally formatted to span exactly 360 pages, and resolve the conflict in sixty minute like chapters. The book to it's credit reads very fast, but about half way through I started to not really care about what was happening, and worse after some revelations late in the story, felt let down. I don't know what exactly I was expecting or what kind of pay off, but aside from being clever and well written, it's not something I'd recommend to many people.
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