What do you think?
Rate this book
The Unnamable
The Unnamable.
Introduced by Eimear McBride.
Faber Faber.
Introduced by Eimear McBride.
Faber Faber.
224 pages, Paperback
Published March 13, 2025
2 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Beckett
926 books6,645 followersNovels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include
Murphy
in 1938 and
Malone Dies
in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as
Waiting for Godot
in 1952 and
Krapp's Last Tape
in 1959, and he won the Nobel Prize of 1969 for literature.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 12, 2026
Han langhåra nobelprisvinneren fra Strandebarm har skreve i et essay at alle romaner har ein meta-kommentar, i den måten at de, i sitt uttrykk, er med på å definera ka ein roman kan vere.
Det gir då stor meining at han Beckett som sitt sjølvskrivne store litterære forbilde…
Dette er nok ein av de mest utfordrande romanene eg har lest, og det er ingen tvil om at den, både gjennom form og innhold, redefinere premissene for ka ein roman kan vere.
Ingen lineær handling fra A til B, men et personløst subjekt som skrive (snakke) seg utover fra et slags sentralt punkt.
Det å sei om eg synes språket til Beckett er utrolig muntlig, eller utrolig skriftlig, er for meg heilt umulig.
Det gir då stor meining at han Beckett som sitt sjølvskrivne store litterære forbilde…
Dette er nok ein av de mest utfordrande romanene eg har lest, og det er ingen tvil om at den, både gjennom form og innhold, redefinere premissene for ka ein roman kan vere.
Ingen lineær handling fra A til B, men et personløst subjekt som skrive (snakke) seg utover fra et slags sentralt punkt.
Det å sei om eg synes språket til Beckett er utrolig muntlig, eller utrolig skriftlig, er for meg heilt umulig.
January 1, 2026
This book is astounding in so many ways, yet I hesitate to casually recommend it to readers. It's certainly one of the most difficult books I have read for a long time. Difficult in terms of both form and content. I wasn't even sure what the content really was until I was three-quarters of the way through it, and I'm still not absolutely confident I am right. The sense of the book (for want of a better word) seems to have entered some part of my mind not readily accessible to my consciousness. I think I understand The Unnamable on some level that defeats my powers of analysis. Maybe I am deluded and I don't understand it at all.
When I began reading it, I was instantly baffled. I wouldn't have persisted if it wasn't for the fact it is the third part of a trilogy and I had already read the previous two volumes. In fact it's not really a trilogy. Beckett himself never regarded the books as a trilogy. They are three connected novels that form a sequence that doesn't necessarily include causality. They aren't three members of a Set but each book is a Set that includes the other two as subsets. It's bewildering. It's also invigorating but invigorating in an extremely troubling manner.
My understanding at this precise moment is that Molloy is an avatar, not of anyone in particular, not of a force, but of the human condition pushed into an extreme awareness of the weight of existence. Moran, who seeks out Molloy, becomes Molly by a process of physical and psychological osmosis and unintentional mimicry. Both Molloy and Moran are trapped in strange towns and stranger forests. They have a certain latitude of movement. That's the first volume. In the second volume, it is revealed that both Molloy and Moran are inventions (avatars) of Malone, who is trapped in a room that is little more than a dungeon in a vast residential block that is also a prison. Malone's latitude of movement has been dramatically reduced. In the third volume, it seems to be the case that Malone himself is also an invention, of an unnamed (and unnamable) character, who exists perhaps in a jar, perhaps in a sphere, perhaps inside a head (your head) with no latitude of movement.
This final narrator is no longer a fictional creation. This final narrator is you, the reader, and myself, all of us, the universal "I". The sequence of three books seems to be about solipsism, perhaps not conventional solipsism but some kind of communal solipsism, if such a thing is logically valid. We are all solipsists and the weight of eternity is unbearable, just as unbearable as the weight of oblivion, also an eternal burden. The protagonist of The Unnamable is you, yes you out there, and me too, me right here. Because whoever we are, wherever we are, in time or space, whatever condition we are in, no matter what our environment is like, irrespective of our contexts, we all call ourselves "I" and death won't prevent living beings in the future calling themselves "I" and that "I" might as well be us, even if it isn't, because when we are no longer here what choice do we have? We will be there. We will manifest as others and those others act as if they are The One True "I", the same way we did (and do).
Solpsism is a terrible idea, condition, option for a thinking entity. There is more horror in these three novels of Beckett than in any of the creations of horror writers. Let me be more specific. Fiction about demons, ghosts, vampires, in other words supernatural horror, or even fiction about psychopaths and torturers, feasible horror, has minimal effect on me: it is fiction and fulfils the obligations that we expect of fiction: it's not real, it's all directed at imaginary characters, we are on the outside and our connection with the dynamic is empathic and voluntary. We can bail out at any moment. But Beckett achieves an intellectual agony: an effect that borders on despair, panic, with no way out. We are trapped in infinity, either in eternal awareness or eternal oblivion or endless recyling, and there is nothing so heavy on the soul as infinity.
When I began reading it, I was instantly baffled. I wouldn't have persisted if it wasn't for the fact it is the third part of a trilogy and I had already read the previous two volumes. In fact it's not really a trilogy. Beckett himself never regarded the books as a trilogy. They are three connected novels that form a sequence that doesn't necessarily include causality. They aren't three members of a Set but each book is a Set that includes the other two as subsets. It's bewildering. It's also invigorating but invigorating in an extremely troubling manner.
My understanding at this precise moment is that Molloy is an avatar, not of anyone in particular, not of a force, but of the human condition pushed into an extreme awareness of the weight of existence. Moran, who seeks out Molloy, becomes Molly by a process of physical and psychological osmosis and unintentional mimicry. Both Molloy and Moran are trapped in strange towns and stranger forests. They have a certain latitude of movement. That's the first volume. In the second volume, it is revealed that both Molloy and Moran are inventions (avatars) of Malone, who is trapped in a room that is little more than a dungeon in a vast residential block that is also a prison. Malone's latitude of movement has been dramatically reduced. In the third volume, it seems to be the case that Malone himself is also an invention, of an unnamed (and unnamable) character, who exists perhaps in a jar, perhaps in a sphere, perhaps inside a head (your head) with no latitude of movement.
This final narrator is no longer a fictional creation. This final narrator is you, the reader, and myself, all of us, the universal "I". The sequence of three books seems to be about solipsism, perhaps not conventional solipsism but some kind of communal solipsism, if such a thing is logically valid. We are all solipsists and the weight of eternity is unbearable, just as unbearable as the weight of oblivion, also an eternal burden. The protagonist of The Unnamable is you, yes you out there, and me too, me right here. Because whoever we are, wherever we are, in time or space, whatever condition we are in, no matter what our environment is like, irrespective of our contexts, we all call ourselves "I" and death won't prevent living beings in the future calling themselves "I" and that "I" might as well be us, even if it isn't, because when we are no longer here what choice do we have? We will be there. We will manifest as others and those others act as if they are The One True "I", the same way we did (and do).
Solpsism is a terrible idea, condition, option for a thinking entity. There is more horror in these three novels of Beckett than in any of the creations of horror writers. Let me be more specific. Fiction about demons, ghosts, vampires, in other words supernatural horror, or even fiction about psychopaths and torturers, feasible horror, has minimal effect on me: it is fiction and fulfils the obligations that we expect of fiction: it's not real, it's all directed at imaginary characters, we are on the outside and our connection with the dynamic is empathic and voluntary. We can bail out at any moment. But Beckett achieves an intellectual agony: an effect that borders on despair, panic, with no way out. We are trapped in infinity, either in eternal awareness or eternal oblivion or endless recyling, and there is nothing so heavy on the soul as infinity.
March 14, 2026
This novel was punishingly long and painfully avant-garde. The premise of a disembodied consciousness being driven insane through isolation and total sensory deprivation was interesting. However, the entire book consists of the halfway incoherent ramblings of this disturbed mind...which sounds like it should be better than it is. The New Yorker described it as "the novelistic equivalent of an abstract painting" and they really weren't lying. Passages in it could be quite striking as a tortured being tries to make sense of the purgatory it finds itself in and as its thoughts loop together in strange ways. The endless, breathless monologue is hallucinatory and dream-like. To use a ridiculous comparison, the whole thing reminds me a bit of a scene in Spongebob Squarepants where Squidward finds himself all alone in "nowhere" which is an infinite nothingness and ends up being terrified and chased around by his own thoughts. I can't help but admire the originality that went into this. Beckett almost totally disregards the audience and any need to entertain them, and I appreciate the artistic vision of that. The reader is certainly made to suffer in what feels like a kind of hell right alongside the narrator. Unfortunately, despite these fertile aspirations the novel dips too far into pretentiously artsy territory. A very weird, disturbing gem that I wish had been more approachable.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews