Rating: 
Summary: Ring My Bell!
Review: Before you decide on reading this book, I greatly implore to the public to read Allen Kurzweil's first book, The Case of Curiosities. Maybe you will "get it" instead of panning the book with unjust ignorance. Bleeh!Anyhows, the book follows the travails of a young eccentric librarian with a penchant towards notes & secret compartments who strikes up a working relationship with a mysterious gentleman of long-winded literary nomenclature & of highly distinctive script. The librarian is intrigued. Who wouldn't be? The book is populated with even more eccentric characters such as his pop-up book illustrator wife and a Dewey Decimel spouting janitor.
The book is a great deal more lighthearted than his first book. But I cannot stress it enough: the first book is RECQUIRED reading.
Despite the lighthearted and carefree prose, the symbolism and design of the book was chosen with care. Makes one think of other books such as Graham Greene's Eleventh Hour, an ingenious children's book of puzzles & riddles. Or even The Ninth Gate. Also I guess I like it because I have worked in my fair share of libraries, presently part time at a "tony township in New Jersey." You meet your fair share of eccentrics at libraries.
Anyhow, another reason why I am partial to its charms is because the book is a loving tribute to the New York Public Library. What a beaut! Beaux art up the wazoo. Also, another thing, the selection of typography was excellent. Delicious even. Yes, I love type. (My favorite is Garamond presently.) As for the title of my review, I think you will have to scurry to my review of Allen Kurzweil's Case of Curiosities to catch my drift. Cheers.
Rating:
Summary: An intellectual mystery which does not lose its audience.
Review: Alexander Short is a young librarian--precise and studious, with a need to catalogue and record, and on his way to becoming stuffy. But he was not always this way. His courtship and marriage to his French wife Nic, who designs pop-up books, was romantic--and spontaneous enough to have earned him a reprimand from the head of the library for his enthusiastic acceptance of her proposal on the library's electronic bulletin board. Now the marriage is in trouble, his career seems to have hit a snag, and he's holding himself and his life together by recording and alphabetizing his life experiences in a notebook he has attached to his waist. Into his life comes Henry James Jesson III, an elderly man in search of an object missing from a hidden compartment in an 18th century furniture case he owns. Short is enlisted to help in the search, and his life is suddenly turned upside down. The book, and the research behind it, took the author ten years, and one of the greatest compliments I can pay is to say that it doesn't show. So smoothly does Kurzweil integrate all the esoteric details of compartmented antique furniture, 18th century watchmaking, library cataloguing and conservation procedures, the intricacies of fine art theft, and even Japanese irezumi tattooing, that it all feels right and appropriate, and not at all pretentious. His themes of order vs. spontaneity, life vs. stasis, permanence vs. change mesh perfectly with the search for a missing timepiece, which is what belongs in Jesson's case--a watch called The Grand Complication, which was originally commissioned by Marie Antoinette. The book's structure mirrors the intricacies of this mysterious watch, which was stolen.. As Short and Jesson conduct their search, the reader is, by turns, entertained, enlightened, and thoroughly engaged. Alexander Short is a character who comes to life, as, to a lesser extent, does Jesson, who is a sad case, not unlike his furniture piece, missing something necessary for personal completion. The library itself comes to life so fully that it almost becomes a character itself. The book is full of puns and literary allusions, which add yet another level of fun. With a terrific, bang-up conclusion which ties up all the loose ends of the plot, the characters' lives, and the themes, Kurzweil leaves his reader fully satisfied--and hoping not to have to wait ten more years for his next novel.
Rating:
Summary: A delicious complication
Review: Learned, lean and lots of fun - I thoroughly enjoyed this book. An erudite page-turner, Kurzeil's unique voice is a pleasure. This is the perfect beach book for someone who doesn't want to put their mind on vacation.
Rating:
Summary: grand complication: a very intriguing work...
Review: grand complication: a very intriguing work not just to read, but to relish and enjoy the twisting adventures. definitely a book to get.
Rating: 
Summary: The Grand Complication
Review: The Grand Complication is a strong follow-up to A Case of Curiosities and an engrossing and entertaining read. The story begins when the note-taking obssessed librarian, Alexander Short, is approached by the wealthy and mysterious collector Henry James Jesson III to help him find, as it eventually turns out, a pocket watch made for Marie Antoinette. The book is well written, full of historical and literary references. Like the watch it describes, the story is packed with clever features and diverting details. I would recommend this book to anyone, particularly any lover of books and libraries. My only complaint about the book is in the handling of some of the secondary characters, particularly Emmanuel Ornstein, an orthodox jewish jewelery broker. Although the character is meant to be somewhat comical, I felt that the use of dialect in rendering his yiddish accent was a little heavy handed. Moreover, although he turns out to be more ethical than is initially suspected, his character plays too easily into malicious old stereotypes of Jews as thieves or fencers of stolen goods. A hindu security guard, Mr. Singh, is treated similarly. This point aside, I greatly enjoyed The Grand Complication and I look forward to Mr Kurzweil's next book.
Rating:
Summary: A Star is Reborn
Review: I love this book. To me it demonstrates a mind working the language at full capacity, with loads of linguistic twists and turns, puns, riddles, and more. The setting of the book is really the mind, specifically the mind of the librarian. It is a book for people who love books in every way, who enjoy holding them almost as much as they enjoy reading them. Henry James Jesson III is one of the characters, and he is someone who revels in his own acquired knowledge. The book's protagonist, Alexander Short, loves the fact that Jesson is an intellectual/literary show off, and he falls under Jesson's spell. I suppose that at its heart the book is a sort of intellectual thriller, with mysteries inside mysteries.Where is Marie Antoinette's stolen timepiece, The Grand Complication? Does it really exist? Is it what is learned along the chase that is as interesting to the protagonists as finding the watch? I also love the fact that it refers back to the author's previous novel, A Case of Curiosities, without in any way being a sequel. This is the kind of novel I love to read during those luxurious-feeling summer moments.
Rating:
Summary: A different kind of mystery, rich and complex
Review: Reference librarian Alex Short finds work very boring as assisting customers is done more on an assembly line with pneumatic tubes than on a one-to-one basis. He enjoys lettering and on rare occasions, a customer's call slip is written in a historical style of graphics and he collects these rarities with a passion. The young man prefers to "girdle" by writing observations in his little notebook that he carries with him all the time more than he wants to have sex with his beautiful French wife. Sixtyish Henry James Jesson III submits a library call slip requesting Secret Compartments, an eighteenth century furniture book. The beautiful rarely seen-today writing style catches Alex's eye and he breaks the rules by delivering the book to the requester. Henry offers Alex a job to complete a collection that contains a secret compartment with a hanging nail inside but the attached item is missing. Henry begins to follow the trail of THE GRAND COMPLICATION, a lost eighteenth century watch, and a search that could prove to cost him his soul. THE GRAND COMPLICATION is a different type of mystery one that seems so simple yet is so rich and complex. The library, Nic's pop-ups, eighteenth century cabinets to conserve precious items, and Henry's Manhattan townhouse are filled with layers of detail weaved into the delightful story line. The investigation is intelligent and adds to the strange relationship between Henry and Alex. Readers who delight in well-written, off beat literature will want to obtain Allen Kurzweil's first novel in a decade because few writers enter the soul of his characters quite like this author does. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Henry James Reborn... Unfortunately
Review: OK, the story line is original (I can't imagine anyone could have come up with it), but totally boring. Searching for a missing watch to complete a "case of curiosities" is hardly engaging material. Though, the interaction between the characters prevents this book from being a total snoozer. Worst of all (for me), the writer's prose reads as if the book were written in the late 1800's, which would be great, if you find that sort of thing entertaining. I don't. The story is a mystery, just not kind of mystery that I would have picked (the book was a gift) or preferred to read. Bottom line, to the writer's credit, there is great potential as the character development is excellent, but they're caught in a weak story line.
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