Rating: 
Summary: This librarian is not impressed.
Review: Generally, I am a big fan of bibliomysteries. However, the only mystery here is how does anyone stay awake while reading this dreck. This is one of the most excruciatingly dull books I have ever read. There was nothing engaging about the plot or the characters. Libraries and librarians already have enough image problems to overcome without Kurzweil adding to them.
Rating: 
Summary: i did "get it," but i still didn't like it.
Review: several reviewers suggest that anyone who did not enjoy this book didn't "get it." this bit of snobbery is poppycock. i found kurzweil's A Case of Curiosities to be a delightful romp. it was written with profound love, and it managed to be erudite & arcane while remaining emotionally honest. i seldom leave a book unfinished, but i just couldn't take this one. it is a wan, uninspired, poorly executed attempt to recreate his debut effort. because i did so enjoy his first book, i sincerely hope kurzweil has another book in him, one that has the spirit and artistry of his first, not just the same stylistic shape.
Rating:
Summary: "The Grand Complication"
Review: Librarians in topless bars and peepshows?
Eccetric English squires? This is the worst book I've read since the Celestine Prophecies. I was totally disappointed. The narrative style and cliche-ridden dialogue seemed more like a screenplay than a novel. (In fact, this book might be better as a movie. I found the characters totally one-dimensional and without substance. (Nic, who at leat had the potential to be intersting, came off as a running gag about sexual frustation.) And what's with the "jewish" dialogue? ("You vont I should sell sumting?") It verges on the infantile. I'll admit to not reading Kuzweil's "Case of Curiousites", but unless I'm missing something really big, I don't get it.
Rating: 
Summary: grand indeed...
Review: This is a wonderful literary work of research and discovery. It reminded me a great deal of Possession by A.S.Byatt in the way that the reader discovered more about the central character at the same rate as he discovered about the object of his research. I never thought I would be gripped by a Dewey-Decimal quiz between research librarians, but the scene in this book is a corker! My only criticism is that the book builds and builds but the climax is one of the weaker parts and you are left slightly disappointed but all in all this is a great read.
Rating:
Summary: Grand Confusion
Review: It isn't often that a book spawns such a divergence of views as this one does; I am firmly in the camp of the naysayers. The premise is complicated and unbelievable to begin with and gets worse from there. A mid-level librarian is seduced into a friendship with an elderly eccentric on the basis of his ornate handwriting on a call slip. Our elderly gentleman is seemingly trying to get assistance in finding a long lost watch, part of a collection from a curio case, but his real purpose is murky as it appears he knows much of what our hero uncovers already. Meanwhile, our librarian, married to a pop-up book designer, spends much time fending off her amorous advances, for no apparent reason for most of the book. As for the library, our main character spends much of his time avoiding getting fired. Secondary characters are one-dimensional, idiosyncratic and mostly irrational. None of the characters made any sense to me. I also missed a lot of the story as I gather one had to read the author's first book to "get" this one. This last point is a problem; a great writer's work is often enriched by knowledge of his or her other books, but each work should also stand alone--Roth, Salinger and Faulkner come to mind. Much is made of the design of the hardcover edition--but the author's good luck in getting hooked up with a quality publisher doesn't do much to help what's printed between the covers. Kurzweil has a long way to go.
Rating:
Summary: Unrealistic
Review: I guess I should begin this review by telling anyone who reads it that I am a librarian. Keeping that in mind, my opinion (as that is all it is) will be colored. I was confused and ultimately annoyed with the portrayal of libraries and librarians in this book. Libraries generally are not at all as Kurzweil portrayed them to be. Nor are librarians. I wonder if Kurzweil did any actual research about libraries when he wrote this book. Moving beyond my personal experience with libraries, Jesson was an irritating, dated, and unrealistic character who infuriated me with his irrelevance. Jesson was so incredibly unbelievable (even for a work of fiction) that it taints to rest of the book. In addition, as at least one other reviewer wrote, this work does not pay off. Kurzweil's book would have been more accomplished if he had sustained the interesting, sinister atmosphere created in the first part of the book. For whatever reason, he wasn't able to/chose not to continue that atmospheric arc, which made the book ultimately unsatisfying. The relationship between Short and his wife is dramatic, but why? That is never fully explained or explored. I just can't understand why she is even in the story. So Short and his wife do not get along, he suffers from impotency, and their marriage is strained. It seems to me that Kurzweil wanted Short to be married so he could discuss pop-up books and to put in a quirky French sexpot. That's it. The wife has no real role and seems a vanity for the author. While the writing and story are strained, the information on the various contraptions was exciting. I certainly learned a thing or two from this book. Given that, clearly Kurzweil knows how to research and use a library, so why did he get the portrayal of libraries and librarians so wrong? And by the way, for what it's worth, librarians do not speak as Kurzweil indicated they do.
Rating: 
Summary: Librarians and watchmakers in a wild rumpus!
Review: Kurzweil is simply masterful in his portrayal of the librarian psyche. Alexander Short is so very like myself and so many of my librarian colleagues and the explication of our eccentricities is as droll as it is on target. The plot is deliciously complicated and the whole thing is simply a pleasure to read. Heady fiction for smart people. Can't wait for another. The comparisons to Fowles, Eco, Calvino, Kundera, Voltaire, Rabelais, and Thackeray are all right on too. A wonderful diversion from current events.
Rating:
Summary: Grand indeed, and very complicated
Review: The Grand Complication is a wonderfully oddball book. Alexander Short is a librarian possessed of arcane interests. He is a scholar of the eighteenth century, enamoured of the essayists. He has a notebook tethered to his coat and everywhere he goes he takes notes on the things that he sees. Since he lives in a run down tenement where many a drug deal takes place, his note taking is regarded with suspicion and sometimes gets him into trouble. Henry James Jesson III is a bibliophile who indulges his eccentric passions quite freely for he is rich enough to get away with anything he wants to do. He has come into possession of a cabinet of curiosities which chronicles the life of an eighteenth century inventor. Unfortunately the cabinet is incomplete, one item is missing. Since Jesson feels uncomfortable in the modern world of computer based library indexes, he hires Alexander Short to research the missing item. For all his eighteenth century affectations, Short is perfectly at home with computer catalogues and he embraces his task with enormous zeal. A series of fortuitous discoveries quickly identifies the missing item and Jesson and Short embark on a quest to find it and restore the cabinet to its original glory. Or do they? There are wheels within wheels and Jesson is curiously uninformative about the cabinet. It begins to look as if there are grander, more complex designs behind the scenes. Jesson and Short himself are both manipulating and being manipulated. The book is replete with arcana. There are fascinating discourses on how to manufacture pop-up books, the mechanics of hidden compartments and the measurement of time. I'm not at all sure that the mish-mash makes sense but my goodness me it holds the attention.
Rating:
Summary: Fun to Read
Review: I loaned this to a friend, telling him it was a book set in the library about a librarian. "Sounds exciting," he said sarcastically. While not exactly exciting, The Grand Complication is engrossing and fun to read. I liked the plot twists and the ironic ending, though I felt the irony was a bit predictable.
Rating:
Summary: DIsappointing
Review: I was looking forward to Kurzweil's new book, having been a fan of "Case of Curiosities" way back when, and wondering when he'd finally get around to finishing his sophomore effort. The new book is simply not worth the wait. The characters are paperthin, their motivations are unexplained, the plot meanders and the ending is contrived and unbelievable. Very puzzling, given that we know Kurzweil to be a talented writer. It is a very peculiar book, almost as if the whole thing were an extended inside joke to which only the author was privy. And the continued references to his first book are annoying given that it was written almost 10 years ago and that the author has produced nothing else since. They only add to the inside joke feel of the novel. Better luck next time, Allen.
| 
