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tireless:
“Spaid’s debut novel delivers a bizarre, entrancing collection of anecdotes about a man who’s inappropriately interested in his neighbors ... Spaid’s prose is strong and smart ... offbeat satire ... a magnetic stream-of-consciousness narrative.”
– Kirkus Reviews
tireless: is a Kirkus Reviews Recommendation, June 14, 2013
Harassed? Unloved? Just watching life go by? Take this hilarious ride through the narrator’s painful world and find others who are even worse off than you. Next door you’ll meet Jim and his outrageous stories, the unattainable Olga, their dysfunctional children – as well as the appalling Rat and his companion, Roquefort, who’ll work their way into your life as they do with everybody else. In this satire on human behaviour, they’re not fair, not fair at all.
The narrator, an unemployed teacher and aspiring writer, lives in London. When Jim and Olga move in next door, his imagination is fired by the unhappy wife’s nude sunbathing and the pompous husband’s breathtaking tall stories. He recalls his comic victories in the classroom, while fantasizing that Britain’s south-east has broken off from the mainland. He remembers his own schooldays and considers the impact of young Miss Bugler. These anecdotes, like Jim’s stories, highlight the casual cruelties and misunderstandings in human behaviour and the evasive nature of fulfilment. A turning point is Jim’s recollection of a night in India when he hallucinated, suffering the taunts of the giant Rat and his close friend, Roquefort, a miniature cat. Humiliated by publishers’ rejections, by the rudeness of Jim’s daughter, Daisy, and even by his barber, the narrator transfers his sense of failure to Rat, who enters the narrative in a series of disturbing, yet uproarious adventures which merge illusion with the real world. The narrator removes the barber’s head, takes revenge on Daisy when she develops an infatuation for him and finally publishes a satirical essay on prison overcrowding, in contrast to a now unlucky Rat, who is arrested, almost has a nervous breakdown, is refused restaurant service and disappoints as an undergraduate at Oxford, where the noisy love-making of Bill and Penny emphasises his loneliness.
‘A colon comes in handy here, before examples: two dots on top of one another, like the cowboys who copulate on Brokeback Mountain, on a slope so far away you need binoculars to see them properly.’ ... from the chapter RAT ARRESTED! in tireless:
http://grahamspaid.com ...for samples from tireless:
http://grahamspaid.blogspot.com ...for new writing
– Kirkus Reviews
tireless: is a Kirkus Reviews Recommendation, June 14, 2013
Harassed? Unloved? Just watching life go by? Take this hilarious ride through the narrator’s painful world and find others who are even worse off than you. Next door you’ll meet Jim and his outrageous stories, the unattainable Olga, their dysfunctional children – as well as the appalling Rat and his companion, Roquefort, who’ll work their way into your life as they do with everybody else. In this satire on human behaviour, they’re not fair, not fair at all.
The narrator, an unemployed teacher and aspiring writer, lives in London. When Jim and Olga move in next door, his imagination is fired by the unhappy wife’s nude sunbathing and the pompous husband’s breathtaking tall stories. He recalls his comic victories in the classroom, while fantasizing that Britain’s south-east has broken off from the mainland. He remembers his own schooldays and considers the impact of young Miss Bugler. These anecdotes, like Jim’s stories, highlight the casual cruelties and misunderstandings in human behaviour and the evasive nature of fulfilment. A turning point is Jim’s recollection of a night in India when he hallucinated, suffering the taunts of the giant Rat and his close friend, Roquefort, a miniature cat. Humiliated by publishers’ rejections, by the rudeness of Jim’s daughter, Daisy, and even by his barber, the narrator transfers his sense of failure to Rat, who enters the narrative in a series of disturbing, yet uproarious adventures which merge illusion with the real world. The narrator removes the barber’s head, takes revenge on Daisy when she develops an infatuation for him and finally publishes a satirical essay on prison overcrowding, in contrast to a now unlucky Rat, who is arrested, almost has a nervous breakdown, is refused restaurant service and disappoints as an undergraduate at Oxford, where the noisy love-making of Bill and Penny emphasises his loneliness.
‘A colon comes in handy here, before examples: two dots on top of one another, like the cowboys who copulate on Brokeback Mountain, on a slope so far away you need binoculars to see them properly.’ ... from the chapter RAT ARRESTED! in tireless:
http://grahamspaid.com ...for samples from tireless:
http://grahamspaid.blogspot.com ...for new writing
- GenresFiction
ebook
First published January 1, 2013
177 people want to read
About the author
Graham Spaid
4 books6 followersSpaid once slept in a cemetery in Greece (it seemed like the safest place to spend the night outside). In India, he was forced off a bus by rioters. He’s been robbed – and mistaken for a thief, a priest, a concert pianist, Woody and Tony Blair. He was examined by a dentist called Dr Fang. The rest isn't silence. BBC Radio broadcast a humorous story he wrote, set in South India.
An Australian, he has travelled in over thirty countries, working as a language tutor in Greece, Italy and Taiwan, as well as a teacher in India, Australia and the UK, where he now lives with his wife.
An Australian, he has travelled in over thirty countries, working as a language tutor in Greece, Italy and Taiwan, as well as a teacher in India, Australia and the UK, where he now lives with his wife.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 12, 2013
I believe tireless: is completely open to interpretation—its dreamlike maneuvers bamboozles any attempts on the reader to grasp some cohesive reality. An important plot point is the introduction of Rat, who could be perceived, if you choose not to regard him as an independent character, as the less savoury alter-ego of Narrator. Rat makes his appearance during Jim’s recollection of a hallucinatory night in an Indian motel. There he invades tireless:, shrinking and swelling throughout the narrative, eventually expanding to become the main character.
One such interpretation is that Jim is hallucinating his life on an England that’s found a sizable chunk of itself separating from the main landmass (lacking any real knowledge of British current events, I can’t tell whether this is metaphorical or literal), hallucinating that he is the Narrator who recounts secondhand his conversations with Jim (himself), and Narrator has a deviant personality subset he calls Rat, and in coincidance to the appearance of the real life rat who perhaps attempts to sample the flesh of Jim.
And to push it further, there’s one point where Rat, having for some time befriended Roquefort, a cat the size of a keychain with a penchant for wearing different coloured (does it matter?) wellingtons, discovers he’s been an agent. Looming in particular is the entertaining scene in the Indian restaurant which Rat later discovers has been orchestrated with actors for his benefit. There’s a preoccupation with Shakespeare throughout tireless:, especially that of Hamlet, so it takes a hazy guess to venture a possible parallel between the two. Rat rejects Roquefort, branding him a traitor; he eventually sees him adangle from Jim’s keychain, wellingtonless.
Rat and Roquefort go for a battle on a double decker bus (which is another theme you find a lot in tireless: perhaps echoing from that time Jim squatted as a bus drove on in, disgorging passengers). Things happen, and you (by that I mean me and my conspiracy theorizing) discover that Roquefort, who has slipped away at the moment a commotion separately involving a condom and a pair of crutches, possibly has since been modifying the narrative from within, and his exit signals Rat’s transition into Narrator who is now describing Jim’s bleary-eyed departure from the motel. We also find Rat is still there, and instead of being the main character, he is being Narrated, and Rat’s integrated himself more sordidly in the lives of Olga and Jim which further reinforces the possibility that it’s all in Jim’s head.
Or all in my head.
It doesn’t look like there’s necessarily a point to this narrative, except if it’s “two dots on top of one another, like the cowboys who copulate on Brokeback Mountain, on a slope so far away you need binoculars to see them properly.” Spaid is writing only for the sake of writing, flexing his linguistic cunning as he kneads and stretches language the way he knows how. There are a lot of little word tricks, interplays of prose which thinly unpack themselves into a pseudo-narrative that might only be incidental...
In a book like this, which demands tireless attentiveness, it is definitely the journey, not the destination that counts.
One such interpretation is that Jim is hallucinating his life on an England that’s found a sizable chunk of itself separating from the main landmass (lacking any real knowledge of British current events, I can’t tell whether this is metaphorical or literal), hallucinating that he is the Narrator who recounts secondhand his conversations with Jim (himself), and Narrator has a deviant personality subset he calls Rat, and in coincidance to the appearance of the real life rat who perhaps attempts to sample the flesh of Jim.
And to push it further, there’s one point where Rat, having for some time befriended Roquefort, a cat the size of a keychain with a penchant for wearing different coloured (does it matter?) wellingtons, discovers he’s been an agent. Looming in particular is the entertaining scene in the Indian restaurant which Rat later discovers has been orchestrated with actors for his benefit. There’s a preoccupation with Shakespeare throughout tireless:, especially that of Hamlet, so it takes a hazy guess to venture a possible parallel between the two. Rat rejects Roquefort, branding him a traitor; he eventually sees him adangle from Jim’s keychain, wellingtonless.
Rat and Roquefort go for a battle on a double decker bus (which is another theme you find a lot in tireless: perhaps echoing from that time Jim squatted as a bus drove on in, disgorging passengers). Things happen, and you (by that I mean me and my conspiracy theorizing) discover that Roquefort, who has slipped away at the moment a commotion separately involving a condom and a pair of crutches, possibly has since been modifying the narrative from within, and his exit signals Rat’s transition into Narrator who is now describing Jim’s bleary-eyed departure from the motel. We also find Rat is still there, and instead of being the main character, he is being Narrated, and Rat’s integrated himself more sordidly in the lives of Olga and Jim which further reinforces the possibility that it’s all in Jim’s head.
Or all in my head.
It doesn’t look like there’s necessarily a point to this narrative, except if it’s “two dots on top of one another, like the cowboys who copulate on Brokeback Mountain, on a slope so far away you need binoculars to see them properly.” Spaid is writing only for the sake of writing, flexing his linguistic cunning as he kneads and stretches language the way he knows how. There are a lot of little word tricks, interplays of prose which thinly unpack themselves into a pseudo-narrative that might only be incidental...
In a book like this, which demands tireless attentiveness, it is definitely the journey, not the destination that counts.
July 23, 2016
Let's Go Prospecting
Reading this I felt like an old prospector panning for gold. There I was squatting over the author's stream of consciousness dipping in and out and watching for a shiny bit. Poke the gravel, swish around the slurry, and grab another shiny nugget. I mean that in a completely positive way, because that's a perfectly fine reading experience.
This book is anecdotal, a little heavily into magical realism, and essentially plotless. It is often inappropriate, in a very conscious fashion. (Maybe I do want to see the squirrel.) But, behind it is an engaging, calm, playful and alert intelligence.
I don't mind experimental novels, and there are a lot of good small press type books out there. But boy there are a lot of authors who write in all capital letters, or who think they're geniuses because they can make a joke about Nietzsche, (anyone can make a joke about Nietzsche), or who were given a thesaurus and an assignment to misuse as many big words as possible. I could go on.
But my point is that Graham Spaid is just having some fun writing in an interesting way about interesting people thinking interesting thoughts. Some of this is ha-ha funny, some is ironic, some is dark, some is edgy and some is a bit rueful. There are parts I didn't get or got and didn't particularly care for, but I feel that way about Dr. Seuss and he's a classic.
And I'm pretty sure that would be O.K. with Graham Spaid, assuming he is a real person and not a remarkably advanced AI. What I did not get from this book was a sense of being bullied, (in the patronizing style of, say, a David Foster Wallace), or conned, or straightened out. I was being shown some of the things you can do with words, plot, characters, structure, syntax and a sense of humor. (Luckily, Spaid is not one of those guys who think fonts can save the world.) That was enough for me.
Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.
Reading this I felt like an old prospector panning for gold. There I was squatting over the author's stream of consciousness dipping in and out and watching for a shiny bit. Poke the gravel, swish around the slurry, and grab another shiny nugget. I mean that in a completely positive way, because that's a perfectly fine reading experience.
This book is anecdotal, a little heavily into magical realism, and essentially plotless. It is often inappropriate, in a very conscious fashion. (Maybe I do want to see the squirrel.) But, behind it is an engaging, calm, playful and alert intelligence.
I don't mind experimental novels, and there are a lot of good small press type books out there. But boy there are a lot of authors who write in all capital letters, or who think they're geniuses because they can make a joke about Nietzsche, (anyone can make a joke about Nietzsche), or who were given a thesaurus and an assignment to misuse as many big words as possible. I could go on.
But my point is that Graham Spaid is just having some fun writing in an interesting way about interesting people thinking interesting thoughts. Some of this is ha-ha funny, some is ironic, some is dark, some is edgy and some is a bit rueful. There are parts I didn't get or got and didn't particularly care for, but I feel that way about Dr. Seuss and he's a classic.
And I'm pretty sure that would be O.K. with Graham Spaid, assuming he is a real person and not a remarkably advanced AI. What I did not get from this book was a sense of being bullied, (in the patronizing style of, say, a David Foster Wallace), or conned, or straightened out. I was being shown some of the things you can do with words, plot, characters, structure, syntax and a sense of humor. (Luckily, Spaid is not one of those guys who think fonts can save the world.) That was enough for me.
Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.
April 26, 2016
ATTENTION (April 2014 change): I have revised this review to show a well-deserved 5 rather than 4 star rating -- I am a more experienced reviewer now, and I see some ratings from earlier reviews were a bit too high or low based on the standard overall. I'm not marking down any I think I may have given a star too many because it seems unnecessary and kind of mean. But, I thought I ought to show full regard when merited with my rating if I am serious enough to actually have written a review in the first place. To fail to make this change would do the work and the writer a disservice. Thanks for reading/scanning this review, everyone. Cheers.
This is an abstract work of literature -- a very good one, mind, but it's not for every taste. The stream-of-consciousness novella, with its playful and mysterious style, is bound to leave impressions at least as varied and numerous as its readership.
During my own reading of tireless:, Nabokov's literary masterpiece Lolita and the 2003 Crispin Glover cinematic vehicle Willard appeared at the forefront of my consciousness more than once. That's what I call some evocative stuff...Cheers, Graham Spaid.
Please be advised I received a free copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway.
This is an abstract work of literature -- a very good one, mind, but it's not for every taste. The stream-of-consciousness novella, with its playful and mysterious style, is bound to leave impressions at least as varied and numerous as its readership.
During my own reading of tireless:, Nabokov's literary masterpiece Lolita and the 2003 Crispin Glover cinematic vehicle Willard appeared at the forefront of my consciousness more than once. That's what I call some evocative stuff...Cheers, Graham Spaid.
Please be advised I received a free copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway.
September 21, 2013
This is the best-written indie book I've read for a long time. It shines out in a sea of mediocre soft porn, mystery and romance. It's a very funny and very strange book. I loved it.
September 15, 2013
A crazy, amazing book! Full of strange things but somehow believable. I don't know how he did it. Fantastic.
September 19, 2013
You can’t mix this up with anything else. It’s unique. It’s also a great read which gets into your heart as well as your mind. I can’t remember when I last had so much fun reading something, and really laughed, then stopped to think about what I’d read. I felt a number of different emotions but it was always satisfying. There isn’t a boring or badly written bit in the entire book. I was left wanting to read more.
October 28, 2013
It's fun. And it's a while since I found a book as imaginative as this. The word satire is used a lot, but the stuff I've looked at lately is rarely funny and I tend to give up on it. Tireless really is hilarious, as the blurb says, and most people won't give up on it. It's pretty intoxicating.
December 21, 2013
There is a probability theorem that goes something along the line of a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will almost certainly type the complete works of William Shakespeare or something similar. The correlative theorem is that you will also, for certain, have millions of pages covered with monkey crap.
I think the monkey just got himself published.
TIRELESS is the type of book that calls itself a novel and then does nothing which would make the reader think it was a novel. This is more of a free form, drug induced memoir of a conversation and actions which the author may have lived through, or may have hallucinated through, or recalled through a fever-induced dream. In a rear cover blurb the exercise is called a satire, but a satire of what I do not know.
To be honest, I did not complete the reading of this book and if it got better later in the thin stack of pages, well... I will live with that loss. At about sixty pages in, spurred by thoughts of the monkey's output, I decided a nice bowel movement would be far better use of my time than reading anymore of this thing.
I think the monkey just got himself published.
TIRELESS is the type of book that calls itself a novel and then does nothing which would make the reader think it was a novel. This is more of a free form, drug induced memoir of a conversation and actions which the author may have lived through, or may have hallucinated through, or recalled through a fever-induced dream. In a rear cover blurb the exercise is called a satire, but a satire of what I do not know.
To be honest, I did not complete the reading of this book and if it got better later in the thin stack of pages, well... I will live with that loss. At about sixty pages in, spurred by thoughts of the monkey's output, I decided a nice bowel movement would be far better use of my time than reading anymore of this thing.
August 26, 2016
Thank you to the author, publisher, and Goodreads for this free 'first-read' to read and review.
But...
Yes, the writing style is good, yet taken as a whole did nothing for me in enjoying as it was too bizarre and not at all to my taste in its imitating a form of decent literary satire concerning a major mixture of switching First to Third Person and back and forth in a very strange storyline. Thank goodness it was a short read.
Story jumped around and I actually enjoyed some of it while other numbing sections of a kinda literary ramblings were pretty much down right perverse. S**ting in the Street? I need not go further with this...
It will also be the last time I believe in a Kirkus review where they praised it wholeheartedly. In keeping with this author's pseudo-prose: the Kirkus' Reviewer had their head firmly wedged up their arse, and with that lack of oxygen became extremely delirious in any judgment.
Other Readers may have gotten the point of the story the author was trying to present/project, but for myself, I honestly wish I had the time spent repealed.
Should had been entitled TIREDNESS.
Sorry. Wasn't my cup of tea – or so they say.
But...
Yes, the writing style is good, yet taken as a whole did nothing for me in enjoying as it was too bizarre and not at all to my taste in its imitating a form of decent literary satire concerning a major mixture of switching First to Third Person and back and forth in a very strange storyline. Thank goodness it was a short read.
Story jumped around and I actually enjoyed some of it while other numbing sections of a kinda literary ramblings were pretty much down right perverse. S**ting in the Street? I need not go further with this...
It will also be the last time I believe in a Kirkus review where they praised it wholeheartedly. In keeping with this author's pseudo-prose: the Kirkus' Reviewer had their head firmly wedged up their arse, and with that lack of oxygen became extremely delirious in any judgment.
Other Readers may have gotten the point of the story the author was trying to present/project, but for myself, I honestly wish I had the time spent repealed.
Should had been entitled TIREDNESS.
Sorry. Wasn't my cup of tea – or so they say.
November 2, 2013
Pulsating. Full of energy, but energy that’s controlled. I think this book is about writing, what it’s like writing and what it feels like to be an author. Not at all in an academic way. From the first paragraph to the last I felt I was being teased, asked to look at the world again in a different way, not once, but again and again, finding there isn’t just one right way, and maybe no right way at all. The writing on display here makes a lot of our so-called top current authors look dull and stodgy. Tease me again. Please!
November 1, 2013
I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway contest winner. I found the characters unlikable as the author probably intended. Thus, I struggled to care what was on the next page. The story is about a substitute teacher who spies on his neighbors wife while she sunbathes and listens to bizarre stories told by her husband. I withheld one star because of the above stated difficulty. It is hard for me to rate because this style of writing may appeal to others.
November 30, 2013
Received free as a first read from goodreads
Having read the book I have to confess it was not my cup of tea, its like slapstick comedy of a narrative that's completely open to each individuals own interpretation.
Parts of the book had me in stitches with laughter especially those yarns related to India whilst at other times I found myself looking back in case I had missed the punchline.
Overall for me a bit too bizarre and at times hard to follow.
Having read the book I have to confess it was not my cup of tea, its like slapstick comedy of a narrative that's completely open to each individuals own interpretation.
Parts of the book had me in stitches with laughter especially those yarns related to India whilst at other times I found myself looking back in case I had missed the punchline.
Overall for me a bit too bizarre and at times hard to follow.
December 13, 2013
You should read this book for yourself.
This was an odd book. I am not quite sure how I feel about it. It is quite unique and not a style I would normally choose to read. There are parts of the book that are very funny. I really liked the stories from India. Some of the book I absolutely did not understand. I will probably read the book again. I will probably also read more by this author.
I received a free ebook copy of this book from Netgalley.
This was an odd book. I am not quite sure how I feel about it. It is quite unique and not a style I would normally choose to read. There are parts of the book that are very funny. I really liked the stories from India. Some of the book I absolutely did not understand. I will probably read the book again. I will probably also read more by this author.
I received a free ebook copy of this book from Netgalley.
February 28, 2015
Reading this I felt like Alice in Wonderland talking to the Mad Hatter. From beginning to end I was left scratching my head. I’m still not sure what exactly it was that I read. There seem to be two types of people when it comes to opinions of this book. You either love it or you don’t. I’m glad I tried a new author but it wasn’t my cup of tea. Too often I wasn’t sure who was talking or what was happening. I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
November 20, 2014
I enjoyed this book. It was more realistic and funny than the things I had read previously and was a welcome respite to the fantastic stuff I'd been reading previously. On a side note, it took me a year to write this brief review, despite having read maybe 90 or 100 books since this one. I really ought to post here more often.
November 15, 2013
I didn't get this. Just not to my taste.
November 8, 2013
I won this book via first reads and I thought it was very well written. The author described everything very well. When Graham Spaid writes more books i will probably read them.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews