Photo-Illustration: Vulture
In 2008, Zadie Smith wrote in The New York Review of Books that there were “two paths for the novel.” One was represented by Tom McCarthy’s Remainder, about a man who wakes from an accident-induced coma to find that he no longer understands the world around him, leading him to elaborately restage various episodes of his life in an attempt to create an experience that feels authentic. The other path was epitomized by Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, about a rudderless financier in post-9/11 New York who is estranged from his wife and finds direction and meaning in the pals he makes playing cricket on the weekends. Smith praised Remainder as an avant-garde exploration of the limits of language and perception. She…
