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The Grand Complication by Allen Kurzweil
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The Grand Complication (2001)

by Allen Kurzweil

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7342511,652 (3.42)24
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I liked this book a lot. It slowly reveals what is really happening and shares some of the mystery and intricacy of the subject: antique multi-function chronometers. I had a hard time putting it down. A fun read. ( )
  jguenther | May 17, 2013 |
On interesting concept but slow moving and not all that interesting. Really nerdy characters. ( )
  EctopicBrain | Jul 31, 2012 |
The first line is good: `The search began with a library call slip and the gracious query of an elegant man'. The elegant man was Henry James Jesson III. I often wonder how important the first line is for any author. Is it all down hill after that?
  jon1lambert | Mar 18, 2012 |
The Grand Complication follows a New York public librarian, Alexander, on his adventure to solve a case of a missing watch for a patron, the mysterious Mr. Jesson. It's no ordinary watch though, but the real life legendary Marie Antoinette watch that really was stolen out a museum in Jerusalem in 1983. This all sounded delightful to me and I was happy my husband bought it for me for Christmas, but it turns out that the premise is the best thing about this book. It honestly took the author about 150 pages to make the reader even realize what was going on and he kept going off on strange tangents. The characters were also thoroughly dreadful. Mr. Jesson was awful with his pompous shunning of all things modern. Alexander was beyond whiny and was married to a witchy Frenchwoman named Nic. If the book hadn't been a gift I don't know that I would have even finished it.

On a happier note though, the real life case of the missing watch was solved in 2008, about 7 years after this book was written. ( )
  RosyLibrarian | Jan 9, 2012 |
The Grand Complication by Allen Kurzweil is a pure work of art. The mystery which revolves around the search for a lost historical timepiece contains all of the elements of an intriguing mystery. The eccentric characters are an added pleasure while the construction of the text itself into a novel of 360 pages reflecting the importance of the timepiece is truly inspired. ( )
  EJStevens | Dec 28, 2010 |
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Epigraph
You have all heard of people whom the loss of their books has turned into invalids, or of those how in order to acquire them became criminals. These are the very areas in which any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.... And indeed, if there is a counterpart to the confusion of a library, it is the order of its catalogue.

- Walter Benjamin, Illuminations
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For my father
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The search began with a library call slip and the gracious query of an elegant man.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0786866039, Hardcover)

Penzler Pick, August 2001: Most avid readers love everything about books--not only the words, but also the paper, the edition, the age, the texture of the binding, all of which become part of the fascination for the printed word that makes a true bibliophile. So it is no wonder that the bibliophile mystery has achieved such popularity. The Grand Complication, well-written and well-researched, is the latest in a long line of such mysteries.

Alexander Short is a reference librarian who spends his days dealing with the minutiae of his work world. At night he goes home to his French wife who is also a book person. She makes pop-up books and other three-dimensional volumes, including a "girdle" that Alexander wears in the manner of medieval monks, tied around his middle and used for his "girdling" or taking notes--something Alexander does obsessively, to the detriment of his job. Two such people seem made for each other, but their obsessions make for a rocky marriage.

So Alexander is fascinated when he meets Henry James Jesson III, an elderly man with equally obsessive interests. He would like Alexander to help him after hours. In Jesson's Manhattan mansion there is a cabinet of curiosities that tell the life of an 18th-century inventor. But one of the compartments is empty. Jesson, and soon Alexander, are agog with curiosity about what was in that compartment. Finding out is half the fun of reading this book.

The other half, if you care (and somehow I think you do), is the design of the book itself. Kurzweil is the son of an engineer, and he designed the small icon, a gear, that appears on many of the book's pages. Over the course of the novel, which runs 360 pages, that gear turns 360 degrees. And then there are the endpapers.... --Otto Penzler

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 03 Jan 2013 06:59:29 -0500)

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