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I Am Radar: A Novel
“Big, beautiful, ambitious . . . It takes narrative magic to pull off such a loopy combination, and luckily, Reif Larsen has it to spare. His prose is addictive and enchanting.” —Los Angeles Times
The moment just before Radar Radmanovic is born, the hospital’s electricity fails. The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, everyone present sees a healthy baby boy—with jet-black skin—born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. “A childbirth is an explosion,” an ancient physician explains. “Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn’t it?”
A kaleidoscopic novel both heartbreaking and dazzling, Reif Larsen’s I Am Radar rapidly explodes outward from Radar’s strange birth. In World War II Norway, a cadre of imprisoned schoolteachers founds a radical secret society that will hover on the margins of history for decades to come, performing acts of radical art and experimental science in the midst of conflict zones from embattled Bosnia to Khmer Rouge Cambodia and the contemporary Congo. All of these stories are linked by Radar—now a gifted radio operator living in the New Jersey Meadowlands—who struggles with love, a set of hapless parents, and a terrible medical affliction that he has only just begun to comprehend.
Drawing on the furthest reaches of quantum physics, forgotten history, and mind-bending art, Larsen’s I Am Radar is a triumph of storytelling at its most primal, elegant, and epic: a breathtaking journey through humanity’s darkest hours, yet one that arrives at a place of shocking wonder and redemption.
Praise for I Am Radar:
“A deeply patterned narrative that darts easily from small-bore domestic dramas to sweeping historical catastrophes with just the right fillip of silliness and levity to keep the whole text eminently approachable.” —The New York Times Book Review
The moment just before Radar Radmanovic is born, the hospital’s electricity fails. The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, everyone present sees a healthy baby boy—with jet-black skin—born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. “A childbirth is an explosion,” an ancient physician explains. “Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn’t it?”
A kaleidoscopic novel both heartbreaking and dazzling, Reif Larsen’s I Am Radar rapidly explodes outward from Radar’s strange birth. In World War II Norway, a cadre of imprisoned schoolteachers founds a radical secret society that will hover on the margins of history for decades to come, performing acts of radical art and experimental science in the midst of conflict zones from embattled Bosnia to Khmer Rouge Cambodia and the contemporary Congo. All of these stories are linked by Radar—now a gifted radio operator living in the New Jersey Meadowlands—who struggles with love, a set of hapless parents, and a terrible medical affliction that he has only just begun to comprehend.
Drawing on the furthest reaches of quantum physics, forgotten history, and mind-bending art, Larsen’s I Am Radar is a triumph of storytelling at its most primal, elegant, and epic: a breathtaking journey through humanity’s darkest hours, yet one that arrives at a place of shocking wonder and redemption.
Praise for I Am Radar:
“A deeply patterned narrative that darts easily from small-bore domestic dramas to sweeping historical catastrophes with just the right fillip of silliness and levity to keep the whole text eminently approachable.” —The New York Times Book Review
672 pages, Paperback
First published December 2, 2014
137 people are currently reading
3351 people want to read
About the author
Reif Larsen
11 books164 followersReif Larsen’s first novel, The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, was a New York Times bestseller and is currently translated into twenty-seven languages. The novel was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the James Tait Black memorial Prize and was adapted into a movie by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie). Larsen's essays and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Tin House, One Story, The Millions, Virginia Quarterly Review, Travel + Leisure, Asymptote Journal and The Believer. Larsen is currently serving as the International Writer-in-Residence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. His second novel, I Am Radar, was published in 2015 by Penguin Press in the US and Harvill Secker in the UK.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 326 reviews
February 2, 2015
I am Radar begins with the story of Radar, a black boy born to white parents in New Jersey in the 1970s. His mother’s frantic search for answers to this medical mystery eventually brings her into contact with a bizarre group of scientists and performance artists in Norway. His father, traumatised by his World War Two experiences, obsessed with radio, finds they have something in common and Radar’s life changes.
There is so much to admire in this book. How can you not love a story that brings together quantum physics, some of the major conflicts of the twentieth century and characters who are complex, colourful and acerbic? So why did I struggle?
The writing is brilliant in places but it is also very wordy. Each time a major character is introduced, we have to plough through the backstory not only of their parents, but their grandparents too. It’s easy to lose the flow, wondering what’s important and what’s just decorative. At certain key points in the book, where the drama should be at its highest, the narrative is slowed down by weighty descriptive passages. There is a certain amount of repetition.
Still, I loved the strongly drawn characters and their relationships. They all have extraordinary gifts that put them at odds with ordinary life. It’s intriguing learning about people (actually all the main characters are men, though mothers get strong supporting roles) in different periods and places, from the last days of Yugloslavia to colonial Cambodia. And there’s some fun unravelling the disputed accounts of the two authors supposedly recording the history of the group, including illustrations of apparent archive material.
I found myself in a double bind – the book was too good to abandon but my heart sank a number of times when I realised how far I still had to go. Interesting but on balance I wonder if it was worth the hefty investment of hours it required.
I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.
There is so much to admire in this book. How can you not love a story that brings together quantum physics, some of the major conflicts of the twentieth century and characters who are complex, colourful and acerbic? So why did I struggle?
The writing is brilliant in places but it is also very wordy. Each time a major character is introduced, we have to plough through the backstory not only of their parents, but their grandparents too. It’s easy to lose the flow, wondering what’s important and what’s just decorative. At certain key points in the book, where the drama should be at its highest, the narrative is slowed down by weighty descriptive passages. There is a certain amount of repetition.
Still, I loved the strongly drawn characters and their relationships. They all have extraordinary gifts that put them at odds with ordinary life. It’s intriguing learning about people (actually all the main characters are men, though mothers get strong supporting roles) in different periods and places, from the last days of Yugloslavia to colonial Cambodia. And there’s some fun unravelling the disputed accounts of the two authors supposedly recording the history of the group, including illustrations of apparent archive material.
I found myself in a double bind – the book was too good to abandon but my heart sank a number of times when I realised how far I still had to go. Interesting but on balance I wonder if it was worth the hefty investment of hours it required.
I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.
May 28, 2015
It takes a deft hand to write effective adult fairy tales, a genre distinct from fantasy, sci-fi, and speculative fiction, though sharing traits with all three. The writer is freed from the constraints of rational logic, but must use care not to insert too many colorful but extraneous myths that might distract from the narrative. The masters - Fuentes, Pynchon, Le Guin, De Lillo, Murakami, Atwood, Ballard, (insert your favorite name here) - know how to eschew chaos, or use chaos to achieve their own ends.
In his sophomore novel, Reif Larsen already is on his way to becoming a master. The insertion of illustrations and diagrams into the text might put off some readers as being too cute by half, but it helps accentuate the overall dazzle of the novel. A story involving puppeteers seeking to peddle their performance art at the site of the world's great atrocities could easily become overbearing and tragic, but in Larsen's hands becomes a joyful and comical read.
Although the action moves among such grim locations as Sarajevo during the mid-1990s shelling, a Khmer Rouge camp on the Thai-Cambodian border after the 1979 Viet invasion, and a modern Congo River north of Kinshasa, this is not the type of book that carries regular profound statements on the human condition, such as Terra Nostra or Gravity's Rainbow. If Fuentes and Pynchon can be seen as the Brothers Grimm, with the fantasy tale barely disguising the horrific content, then Larsen is a modern Hans Christian Andersen, where events are simultaneously serious and light. There is often much darkness in fairy-tale golems and puppets and robots, but here we find machines of loving grace.
Some readers may find a bit of inexperience on display when Larsen throws in mathematical equations or geographical trivia without delving into the role these play in the book - a name-dropping tourist, if you will. When he talks of robotic birds experiencing quantum entanglement as they search for the hive mind, one could almost see cheerleaders on the shore of the Congo River chanting "Go deep or go home!" If one wants to take readers into scientific or mathematical minutae, one indeed must dive deep, deep. But then again, think of the times when Pynchon dismissed a better explanation of a tangential reference by turning it into a song instead. ("Sanjak of Novi Pazar"? How many readers realized Pynchon was talking about the realm we now know as Kosovo?) There is a way in which Larsen uses vagueness or muddiness to his advantage in a manner similar to Pynchon. There are reams of documentary information offered on the cryptic Nordic group known as the Kirkenesferda, but a strange hole in the center in explaining why these performance artists feel compelled to do what they do - not unlike the organization known as The White Visitation in Gravity's Rainbow.
Larsen has a way of spoofing many of our greatest fears - racial signifiers and the color of skin, anxiety over technology gone haywire, fear of a slipping consciousness when faced with a condition like epilepsy - yet everything is bright and circus-colored. Each reader will find a section of the book particularly appealing, such as the description of a small village in Bosnia, the Meadowlands of New Jersey robbed of all electrical power and gadgets, or the history of a rubber plantation in rural Cambodia.
It is hard to adequately prepare for the final section of the book, named "Conference of the Birds" after the epic poem by the 12th century Sufi poet Farid ud-din Attar of the kingdom of Khorasan. Larsen provides images of a barge floating up the Congo River in what might otherwise be a re-imagining of Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now. Larsen's genius lies in melding the talking drum of Horeb the guide with Radar's spinning the short wave radio dial, DJ style. The river trip has the feel of David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which would indicate an odd form of apocalypse. Yet the flocks of robotic birds accompanying the Kirkenesferda questers suggest that the team is moving toward the light, not toward the darkness. The Uruguayan scholar Funes would seem to be a modern-day Hypatia, protecting yet another Library of Alexandria from falling victim to marauders, yet the burning of books suggests liberation, or one more atrocity at which the puppet show simply must commence.
Does Larsen give enough voice to protagonist Radar Radmanovic? Is Radar merely a victim of his parents' experiments, or is the real Radar shining through in his fumbling flirtations at the supermarket and his attempts to break free of his epileptic Faraday cage? There may be a hole at the center of Radar's identity, but no bigger a hole than we would find with Tyrone Slothrop.
The reader may not walk away from I Am Radar with any greater understanding of the human capacity for genocidal acts, or the intersection between atrocity and performance art, but it is certainly a fairy tale very well told, a novel that will rank among the year's, and maybe the decade's, best.
In his sophomore novel, Reif Larsen already is on his way to becoming a master. The insertion of illustrations and diagrams into the text might put off some readers as being too cute by half, but it helps accentuate the overall dazzle of the novel. A story involving puppeteers seeking to peddle their performance art at the site of the world's great atrocities could easily become overbearing and tragic, but in Larsen's hands becomes a joyful and comical read.
Although the action moves among such grim locations as Sarajevo during the mid-1990s shelling, a Khmer Rouge camp on the Thai-Cambodian border after the 1979 Viet invasion, and a modern Congo River north of Kinshasa, this is not the type of book that carries regular profound statements on the human condition, such as Terra Nostra or Gravity's Rainbow. If Fuentes and Pynchon can be seen as the Brothers Grimm, with the fantasy tale barely disguising the horrific content, then Larsen is a modern Hans Christian Andersen, where events are simultaneously serious and light. There is often much darkness in fairy-tale golems and puppets and robots, but here we find machines of loving grace.
Some readers may find a bit of inexperience on display when Larsen throws in mathematical equations or geographical trivia without delving into the role these play in the book - a name-dropping tourist, if you will. When he talks of robotic birds experiencing quantum entanglement as they search for the hive mind, one could almost see cheerleaders on the shore of the Congo River chanting "Go deep or go home!" If one wants to take readers into scientific or mathematical minutae, one indeed must dive deep, deep. But then again, think of the times when Pynchon dismissed a better explanation of a tangential reference by turning it into a song instead. ("Sanjak of Novi Pazar"? How many readers realized Pynchon was talking about the realm we now know as Kosovo?) There is a way in which Larsen uses vagueness or muddiness to his advantage in a manner similar to Pynchon. There are reams of documentary information offered on the cryptic Nordic group known as the Kirkenesferda, but a strange hole in the center in explaining why these performance artists feel compelled to do what they do - not unlike the organization known as The White Visitation in Gravity's Rainbow.
Larsen has a way of spoofing many of our greatest fears - racial signifiers and the color of skin, anxiety over technology gone haywire, fear of a slipping consciousness when faced with a condition like epilepsy - yet everything is bright and circus-colored. Each reader will find a section of the book particularly appealing, such as the description of a small village in Bosnia, the Meadowlands of New Jersey robbed of all electrical power and gadgets, or the history of a rubber plantation in rural Cambodia.
It is hard to adequately prepare for the final section of the book, named "Conference of the Birds" after the epic poem by the 12th century Sufi poet Farid ud-din Attar of the kingdom of Khorasan. Larsen provides images of a barge floating up the Congo River in what might otherwise be a re-imagining of Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now. Larsen's genius lies in melding the talking drum of Horeb the guide with Radar's spinning the short wave radio dial, DJ style. The river trip has the feel of David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which would indicate an odd form of apocalypse. Yet the flocks of robotic birds accompanying the Kirkenesferda questers suggest that the team is moving toward the light, not toward the darkness. The Uruguayan scholar Funes would seem to be a modern-day Hypatia, protecting yet another Library of Alexandria from falling victim to marauders, yet the burning of books suggests liberation, or one more atrocity at which the puppet show simply must commence.
Does Larsen give enough voice to protagonist Radar Radmanovic? Is Radar merely a victim of his parents' experiments, or is the real Radar shining through in his fumbling flirtations at the supermarket and his attempts to break free of his epileptic Faraday cage? There may be a hole at the center of Radar's identity, but no bigger a hole than we would find with Tyrone Slothrop.
The reader may not walk away from I Am Radar with any greater understanding of the human capacity for genocidal acts, or the intersection between atrocity and performance art, but it is certainly a fairy tale very well told, a novel that will rank among the year's, and maybe the decade's, best.
February 3, 2019
I am Radar by Reif Larsen is a character study of a black man born to white parents.
This book was very slow and hard for me to read, I have to be upfront about that. The book is written beautifully and Reif Larsen is a terrific writer, but I just couldn't get into this book. It took me months to get through because it's so packed full of narrative. It is packed full of science, relationship drama, history and major character conflicts and soul searching.
I wish I would have loved this book more, because I am amazed at Reif's writing style. I fell in love with these characters, but then the story would switch up and go somewhere else. I just got devoted to Radar and his parents and then the story switched around and took me somewhere I didn't want to go. I wanted to watch Radar's life tumble in front of my eyes, but I didn't get that. Honestly though, Radar and his parents were my favourite part of this story. Watching them grow and react to life was a real gem. I wanted way more of that, because I absolutely loved them.
If you like books that follow the entire story of a person, including their backstory and their family's story - you'll love this book. It truly is a cool character study. Following Radar is the main purpose of this book, but we learn so much more about other characters as well. It's a fictional drama story that is written beautifully. That's where it stands with me. It also includes great illustrations and historic notes making it feel more non-fiction than fiction at times. Oh, and did I mention lots and lots of science and radio waves?
I would definitely suggest this as a book for an English class. I'd love to see someone pick it apart and explain it to me. I was just not invested enough to re-read sections and to go back and understand a lot of the book. It's not a book to just sit down and binge - it's too full of knowledge and information. You have to be willing to go back and understand everything that's happening to really get it. So, it's just not for me at this point in time.
Overall, the over 600 pages were not my cup of tea. I think Reif is a wonderful writer and I hope he finds his readers! He's too talented, I don't want it to go to waste! Pick up this book if you love a good drama full of science and knowledge. I'm honored to have read this book, because it is really cool. I'm just not his ideal reader.
Two out of five stars.
I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
This book was very slow and hard for me to read, I have to be upfront about that. The book is written beautifully and Reif Larsen is a terrific writer, but I just couldn't get into this book. It took me months to get through because it's so packed full of narrative. It is packed full of science, relationship drama, history and major character conflicts and soul searching.
I wish I would have loved this book more, because I am amazed at Reif's writing style. I fell in love with these characters, but then the story would switch up and go somewhere else. I just got devoted to Radar and his parents and then the story switched around and took me somewhere I didn't want to go. I wanted to watch Radar's life tumble in front of my eyes, but I didn't get that. Honestly though, Radar and his parents were my favourite part of this story. Watching them grow and react to life was a real gem. I wanted way more of that, because I absolutely loved them.
If you like books that follow the entire story of a person, including their backstory and their family's story - you'll love this book. It truly is a cool character study. Following Radar is the main purpose of this book, but we learn so much more about other characters as well. It's a fictional drama story that is written beautifully. That's where it stands with me. It also includes great illustrations and historic notes making it feel more non-fiction than fiction at times. Oh, and did I mention lots and lots of science and radio waves?
I would definitely suggest this as a book for an English class. I'd love to see someone pick it apart and explain it to me. I was just not invested enough to re-read sections and to go back and understand a lot of the book. It's not a book to just sit down and binge - it's too full of knowledge and information. You have to be willing to go back and understand everything that's happening to really get it. So, it's just not for me at this point in time.
Overall, the over 600 pages were not my cup of tea. I think Reif is a wonderful writer and I hope he finds his readers! He's too talented, I don't want it to go to waste! Pick up this book if you love a good drama full of science and knowledge. I'm honored to have read this book, because it is really cool. I'm just not his ideal reader.
Two out of five stars.
I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
Read
May 24, 2015Real life never quite measured up to the heightened and precise contours of her literary worlds. A real war was never as true as a fictive one.
I hate posting on what I abandon. This wasn't bad, just mediocre. I Am Radar isn't Neal Stephenson waxing on Pynchon and Enigma-era cryptography, this is a MFA graduate writing a Boy in Striped Pajamas about race, Tesla and the Khmer Rouge.
I hate posting on what I abandon. This wasn't bad, just mediocre. I Am Radar isn't Neal Stephenson waxing on Pynchon and Enigma-era cryptography, this is a MFA graduate writing a Boy in Striped Pajamas about race, Tesla and the Khmer Rouge.
September 14, 2015
A-Z Challenge with Karly and Jess
L = Larsen, Reif
3 stars
“And yet sometimes we become the person we most dread. Or maybe we dread most the person we know we are to become.”
The story begins in New Jersey in the 1970s when all of the hospital's electricity mysteriously fails during the delivery of Radar Radmanovic, a black baby born to two white parents who stand in shock at the sight of him. Admist questions of paternity, Radar's father, Kermin Radmanovic never raises any questions but accepts the boy as his own and believes him to be perfect just the way he is. Radar's mother however, begins a frantic search for answers to this percieved medical mystery. She wades through countless doctors, blood tests, skin pigmentation testing, which eventually lead her to a bizarre group of scientists and performance artists in Norway, the Kirkensferda.
This is my first time reading Lasrsen, but I have heard that his first novel is phenomenal. Based on the writing in I Am Radar, I can see why that might be the case. Larsen truly knows how to spin a story and his writing skills shine through. However, he can get a bit wordy and more detailed than necessary. For starters, I don't find it necessary for authors to get technical and include mathmateical equations and diagrams, and I doubt many fiction readers do. Secondly, he delves into details about every single characters backstory. To some degree, this is nice, you gain a certain perspective on who and why the character is who they are. However, I do not need to know about their father, their grandfather, and their great-great-great-great grandfather. Basically it comes off as filler and you lose the essence of the story.
After 600+ pages, I was also expecting some profound ending. For some, I am sure the ending was perfect, for me, I wanted to throw the book. I'm not going to spoil, so I will just leave it there. But I was very frustrated. Ugh! Double u to the tee eph!
I did however grow to enjoy the characters a lot, especially Kermin and Radar, their interconnected relationships over a vast period of time and the overall storyline were entertaining. I think this is just a case of needing an editor to help the author condense and streamline his work a little more.
I received an arc copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you NetGalley!
dnf
January 21, 2015I made it to about page 200 and I got to DNF this one. This book is over 600 pages and the thought of pushing myself to finish for any longer was just too much for me. There is too much backstory and not enough actual plot. I do not caaaaare anymore.
January 25, 2015
I am Radar is a molecular orbital, whose narratives are occupied by Reif Larsen’s fevered imagination. The man has painstakingly crafted a secret history of the world where everything is entangled; a history of a history, if you could, in which he tracks Per Røed-Larsen’s history of the performance group Kirkenesferda across time and space. He tunnels deep into personal histories to find parallels in their future selves or eventual progenies, suggesting these events are much more interesting than the characters’ demises.
I am Radar is not about a boy who was born black to white parents during an electrical blackout. It is about the people irrevocably tangled in his vector from birth. In this story, distance is nothing. You go to Norway. It is nothing. You go to Serbia. It is nothing. You go to Cambodia. It is nothing. Into the heart of darkness? Nothing. Reif Larsen carefully aligns Radar with our heroes of dubious or unknown birth origins and arrows them to a shore where worlds burn.
The idea that events act at a distance is pervasive throughout I am Radar. The Danilovics created Miroslav. The burning madness of the youthful Charlene Radmanovich, before she was Radmanovich. The Cambodian Moses leading a Larsen to the promise of safety. Kermin’s message into the ether: Kakav otac takav sin.
One might wonder if the point of Kirkenesferda is defeated, if you think about entanglement as this, distilled to the very basic: one is up and another is down. If one becomes down, the another becomes up. Which brings us to the preoccupation of true puppetry we find throughout the novel. There is no truth to your motion if you are aware you are a puppet. With entanglement, a story is told, from the very beginning, where there was light. The first entangled up and down happened there, and it’s been up and down ever after, everything moving seamlessly like cogs in a cosmic narrative. Free will is put in question, and so is Kirkenesferda, in their push to change the world in big ways with the small; they dream to puppet a change, while being unwittingly entangled. On the other hand, that might be true puppetry because Reif Larsen is the puppetmaster of this story. But I digress.
Language is the Turkish bath that Reif Larsen loiters within, its soothing vapors suffusing I am Radar with mystery and confusion. It enthralls and bamboozles. The sheer amount of languages used here boggles the mind. English, Morse Code, French, Serbian, Cambodian, sign language, African drum languages. Larsen’s showing off his linguistics chops here and is also telling us there’s more than one way to say a thing. Being Deaf myself, I’m grateful to Larsen for his reasoned and respectful treatment of sign language. He’s saying what our demographic’s been saying for so long, that sign language is a true language to be employed by those who find it useful. The image of a boy genius in the emerald wilderness of Cambodia expressing unspoken sound for his Deaf grandmother won’t long leave me.
I am Radar throws so much at you that a single reading is not enough. It’s easily become my favorite book of the year, and I am in awe in the virtuoso skill wielded by its writer. It’s hard to express what this novel is all about because even as it’s telling you something, it obfuscates with its digressions and maps and diagrams. It becomes a history of a history. Small phrases of wisdom explode from every other page. The uncanny emerges, and despite this, you begin to doubt the fictional status of the novel. Is it truly possible that there was a doomed Kirkenesferda expedition to Serbia? Was there a boy who found a disease in a cure? And that book by Per Røed-Larsen.... my God, you just might start googling.
I am Radar is not about a boy who was born black to white parents during an electrical blackout. It is about the people irrevocably tangled in his vector from birth. In this story, distance is nothing. You go to Norway. It is nothing. You go to Serbia. It is nothing. You go to Cambodia. It is nothing. Into the heart of darkness? Nothing. Reif Larsen carefully aligns Radar with our heroes of dubious or unknown birth origins and arrows them to a shore where worlds burn.
The idea that events act at a distance is pervasive throughout I am Radar. The Danilovics created Miroslav. The burning madness of the youthful Charlene Radmanovich, before she was Radmanovich. The Cambodian Moses leading a Larsen to the promise of safety. Kermin’s message into the ether: Kakav otac takav sin.
One might wonder if the point of Kirkenesferda is defeated, if you think about entanglement as this, distilled to the very basic: one is up and another is down. If one becomes down, the another becomes up. Which brings us to the preoccupation of true puppetry we find throughout the novel. There is no truth to your motion if you are aware you are a puppet. With entanglement, a story is told, from the very beginning, where there was light. The first entangled up and down happened there, and it’s been up and down ever after, everything moving seamlessly like cogs in a cosmic narrative. Free will is put in question, and so is Kirkenesferda, in their push to change the world in big ways with the small; they dream to puppet a change, while being unwittingly entangled. On the other hand, that might be true puppetry because Reif Larsen is the puppetmaster of this story. But I digress.
Language is the Turkish bath that Reif Larsen loiters within, its soothing vapors suffusing I am Radar with mystery and confusion. It enthralls and bamboozles. The sheer amount of languages used here boggles the mind. English, Morse Code, French, Serbian, Cambodian, sign language, African drum languages. Larsen’s showing off his linguistics chops here and is also telling us there’s more than one way to say a thing. Being Deaf myself, I’m grateful to Larsen for his reasoned and respectful treatment of sign language. He’s saying what our demographic’s been saying for so long, that sign language is a true language to be employed by those who find it useful. The image of a boy genius in the emerald wilderness of Cambodia expressing unspoken sound for his Deaf grandmother won’t long leave me.
I am Radar throws so much at you that a single reading is not enough. It’s easily become my favorite book of the year, and I am in awe in the virtuoso skill wielded by its writer. It’s hard to express what this novel is all about because even as it’s telling you something, it obfuscates with its digressions and maps and diagrams. It becomes a history of a history. Small phrases of wisdom explode from every other page. The uncanny emerges, and despite this, you begin to doubt the fictional status of the novel. Is it truly possible that there was a doomed Kirkenesferda expedition to Serbia? Was there a boy who found a disease in a cure? And that book by Per Røed-Larsen.... my God, you just might start googling.
Read
February 3, 2018Should write something on this one. [but first I'm gunna eat my pizza=breakfast. brb] okay now I'm back. While I was eating that pizza, I read this piece from The Millions ::
"The Utopias of Ursula K. Le Guin"
by Kelly Lynn Thomas
https://themillions.com/2018/01/ursul...
As to Larsen's latest here under discussion :: It's good ; but not that good. If it's in the hysterical realism realm, as Moore claims down below, then it's in the Lite category, definitely not in the DFW=Pynchon realm. Fine. I'd say more in the Stephenson, perhaps Powers level. At any rate, higher than his first novel. [call these judgements hierarchical or rhizomatic, I'm fine either way] But I really didn't get spinning with it until the Third Part (page 261!) at which point the larger tapestry began to come into shape. And I polished the whole thing off in like three days ; which makes it what I call a Fine Beach=Read ; even if you read it on a rainy January day out back with the hummingbirds (!!! hummingbirds in Jan? wtf). A good entertainment. A good read. And a very nicely designed book although nowhere near as flashy as that first one. But a little more Grown Up than that first one which (methinks) ought to be read as a charming YA novel. Which is fine. But I think even at this calibre it does add up to something and I'd say what he's working with here thematically is perhaps closest to the Richard Powers thematic, that is, the conjunction of science/technology and art. And that part of it is really pretty chill. And really to top the whole sundae off with a nice cherry, towards the end when they sail up into Africa there's this really kind of fantastic Funes the Memorious character who is building this totally chill Borgesian library right there in the heart of Africa where it truly does belong.
In short, worth your time. But don't be oversold on it. It'll get you through and serve you well, but it won't blow your socks off. Your socks are safe.
Designed by Meighan Cavanaugh
_________
Steven Moore in The Washington Post ::
"A masterpiece of young geekhood", 09 Apr 2015
"Fifteen years ago, critic James Wood used the term “hysterical realism” to deride novels like this one, those that feature wacky characters involved in cartoonishly convoluted plots about mysterious connections, and often spiked with pop references and nerdy erudition. But this genre includes some of the greatest novels of our time, from Pynchon’s “V.” to David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.” That’s the troupe Larsen has decided to join, and “I Am Radar” is a dazzling performance."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
"The Utopias of Ursula K. Le Guin"
by Kelly Lynn Thomas
https://themillions.com/2018/01/ursul...
As to Larsen's latest here under discussion :: It's good ; but not that good. If it's in the hysterical realism realm, as Moore claims down below, then it's in the Lite category, definitely not in the DFW=Pynchon realm. Fine. I'd say more in the Stephenson, perhaps Powers level. At any rate, higher than his first novel. [call these judgements hierarchical or rhizomatic, I'm fine either way] But I really didn't get spinning with it until the Third Part (page 261!) at which point the larger tapestry began to come into shape. And I polished the whole thing off in like three days ; which makes it what I call a Fine Beach=Read ; even if you read it on a rainy January day out back with the hummingbirds (!!! hummingbirds in Jan? wtf). A good entertainment. A good read. And a very nicely designed book although nowhere near as flashy as that first one. But a little more Grown Up than that first one which (methinks) ought to be read as a charming YA novel. Which is fine. But I think even at this calibre it does add up to something and I'd say what he's working with here thematically is perhaps closest to the Richard Powers thematic, that is, the conjunction of science/technology and art. And that part of it is really pretty chill. And really to top the whole sundae off with a nice cherry, towards the end when they sail up into Africa there's this really kind of fantastic Funes the Memorious character who is building this totally chill Borgesian library right there in the heart of Africa where it truly does belong.
In short, worth your time. But don't be oversold on it. It'll get you through and serve you well, but it won't blow your socks off. Your socks are safe.
Designed by Meighan Cavanaugh
_________
Steven Moore in The Washington Post ::
"A masterpiece of young geekhood", 09 Apr 2015
"Fifteen years ago, critic James Wood used the term “hysterical realism” to deride novels like this one, those that feature wacky characters involved in cartoonishly convoluted plots about mysterious connections, and often spiked with pop references and nerdy erudition. But this genre includes some of the greatest novels of our time, from Pynchon’s “V.” to David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest.” That’s the troupe Larsen has decided to join, and “I Am Radar” is a dazzling performance."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
March 24, 2015
I Am Radar reminds me of a big, frisky St. Bernard puppy who wants to be loved and who ends up making you laugh with delight at all its tricks. What words would I use to describe the novel? Audacious, swaggering, inimitable, bold, ambitious…well, you get the drift.
Despite over 650 pages, it’s remarkably easy to read. The prose is confident and accessible, and the pages are rife with diagrams, newspaper snippets and photos (reminding me just a tad of Marisha Pessl’s Night Film, both in scope and in presentation). And the opening – the birth of Radar Radmanovic, an ebony-black young boy born of two lily-white parents at the height of a New Jersey blackout – gently calls to mind John Irving’s The World According to Garp.
The plot is – to put it mildly – convoluted. Radar’s mother Charlene is obsessed with finding an answer to her son’s blackness, eventually traveling to Norway to meet with some avant-garde scientists, studying altered skin pigmentation. They’re very eager to test out their electrical experiments on him; the results end up opening up a new set of challenges for Radar.
Interspersed with this rather straightforward story, Reif Larsen weaves others: the tale of the Danilovic brothers during the Bosnian war, a look at Cambodian-born physicist Raksmey Raksmey and his adoptive father who believes “all children are experiments.” And interspersed with THAT are studies of performance art – particularly puppetry drama in war zones, quantum physics, father/son dynamics, the definition and costs of liberty and freedom and a whole lot more…including whether puppets are freer than the humans who manipulate them.
The book is so brash and so creatively engineered that it can be easy to forgive its excesses. And there ARE excesses: too much bloat (I could definitely see places where an editor’s firm hand would have been welcome), and times when I felt too distanced from the key character – Radar – because of the 100 pages or so that took me away from the key story. The descriptions of the enigmatic Kirkenesferda – artists and political operatives staging interventions and needing Radar to be part of them – can, at times, plunge the reader (as well as Radar) into the dark.
About half way through, I became a little exhausted with everything going on and put the book down to read another. But then I felt compelled to go back to it and take up where I left off. It’s that kind of book
-- fun to read, a little demanding, but ultimately, a feat of imagination.
Despite over 650 pages, it’s remarkably easy to read. The prose is confident and accessible, and the pages are rife with diagrams, newspaper snippets and photos (reminding me just a tad of Marisha Pessl’s Night Film, both in scope and in presentation). And the opening – the birth of Radar Radmanovic, an ebony-black young boy born of two lily-white parents at the height of a New Jersey blackout – gently calls to mind John Irving’s The World According to Garp.
The plot is – to put it mildly – convoluted. Radar’s mother Charlene is obsessed with finding an answer to her son’s blackness, eventually traveling to Norway to meet with some avant-garde scientists, studying altered skin pigmentation. They’re very eager to test out their electrical experiments on him; the results end up opening up a new set of challenges for Radar.
Interspersed with this rather straightforward story, Reif Larsen weaves others: the tale of the Danilovic brothers during the Bosnian war, a look at Cambodian-born physicist Raksmey Raksmey and his adoptive father who believes “all children are experiments.” And interspersed with THAT are studies of performance art – particularly puppetry drama in war zones, quantum physics, father/son dynamics, the definition and costs of liberty and freedom and a whole lot more…including whether puppets are freer than the humans who manipulate them.
The book is so brash and so creatively engineered that it can be easy to forgive its excesses. And there ARE excesses: too much bloat (I could definitely see places where an editor’s firm hand would have been welcome), and times when I felt too distanced from the key character – Radar – because of the 100 pages or so that took me away from the key story. The descriptions of the enigmatic Kirkenesferda – artists and political operatives staging interventions and needing Radar to be part of them – can, at times, plunge the reader (as well as Radar) into the dark.
About half way through, I became a little exhausted with everything going on and put the book down to read another. But then I felt compelled to go back to it and take up where I left off. It’s that kind of book
-- fun to read, a little demanding, but ultimately, a feat of imagination.
May 6, 2016
Let's assume you are a crafty scientist, better trying to communicate your work, and you have a hankering for visual media. Perhaps you'd end up with something akin to an infographic: comprehensive, stylish, factual, at least ideally. A piece of work for the consumption of information, that does as little as possible to confuse or misinterpret but remains pleasing to the eye. In the best possible case, the arrangement of this information would highlight certain truths that weren't as obvious till this work and a deeper understanding might emerge, a symbiotic pairing.
At many points whilst reading this book I thought about that infographic and wondered at Larsen's intentions: was his aim to create a fiction inspired by truths or explore scientific phenomena through art?
Such art may have been the intention but is certainly not embodied in 'I am Radar'.
I started this book with a lot of excitement because Larsen's debut, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, was so utterly enjoyable. Yes, it rambled at times but the story, characters, the sense of wonder and discovery were perfectly balanced. Coming off such a strong back I was willing to give this book quite a bit of leeway.
So where did it go wrong ?
Ladies and gents, I'd like to have a chat about tokenism from two quite different perspectives.
Science as magic
By profession I work in applied quantum Physics, more specifically particle physics - so if I tell you that fact checking a bunch of big names and institutions does not justify the mess that Larsen builds his plot around, you should believe me. Physics in this book is another word for magic. Larsen, interviewed here by Foyles claims:
You see, the thing is though, that you have to actually try and care about the science in your story. You have to at least try and understand what is happening and explore some facet of it: its implications to everyday life, extrapolations about what might be possible if a tiny aspect of it was changed, etc. and indeed if it has anything to actually do with the story. I just get the (very strong) feeling that at some point, when looking around for more content to throw into this mess of a book, Larsen saw the word entanglement and thought 'ooo, that's a fancy word, let's use it!'. You think I'm being too mean?
Tokenism. Using a language, a culture, a person you have no actual interest in exploring just to have it's face value somewhere in your synopsis.
And if you think I'm using this word lightly, let's move on to example 2.
The use of race
In the interview I linked above, Larsen is asked about the 5 seemingly unconnected novellas that this book comprises and the tenuous threads that link them back to the title character, Radar. Why did they happen?:
That's right, that is how much forethought went into, what could have been an interesting or at least considered exploration of racial identity from the 60's to the 2010's.
The book itself is really confused about how to talk about this issue and in the ends settles for: not at all.
For example, in Part 1 Radar's mother is so horrified and confused with giving birth to black baby she spends the first 4 years of her child's life trying to fix him i.e. turn him white.
Let that sink in for a minute.
But then in Part 3 she reveals the fatherhood of Radar could be called into question after all! He may in fact, be mixed race all along!
Radar's reaction to this is.. bizarre.
Radar then cycles off into the night, on some tangential quest, and briefly encounters a couple of policemen one of which is african american. He has the urge to tell one of them 'that he had just found out he was also black' but also 'sees how this isn't the best idea'.
What the hell is this thread about Larsen?
To make matters worse, his mother backtracks again in Part 5 and Radar again decides that she MUST BE right. What a reactionary character. His thought process in Part 5 goes along the lines of: he's not black of course not, and he must be the son of the radio technician who raised him. How else could he be so good with radios?
How indeed, Radar, how indeed.
Jesus.
Let's talk about the plot!
I actually really enjoyed Parts 1 and 2. Medical mysteries, Nordic cults, a bit of Tesla fan-service and some puppetry babble with a Serbian (likely, also very much NOT-Serbian) twist.
And if you're wondering how this list eventually turns into a coherent story: SPOILER, it doesn't. What Larsen sets up in these first two parts, he spends the rest of the novel trying to flesh out and provide some sort of justification for. There's just so much going on, so many back-stories and tidbits, that the reader starts to wonder what is relevant and what they should care about. I'm not even going mention that ending. Infact (direct quote):
I will say that the writing is not bad at all, which nearly drove me to give this book 2 stars rather than 1. The characters are mostly ok (oddly other than Radar, who is bland and buffoonish and seems grossly immature for someone in their mid-thirties). Some of the imagery is nice, but feels recycled.
Larsen says this book is not only about the novel, that the story transcends a book and is also about performance art and the experience (there's a website and the book launch was in a puppet museum) but other than making a statement that he did ART his viewpoint in the book contradict each other a lot. He talks about how a lack of deep understanding is holding us back from each other but tokenizes race and science for buzzwords and shock value. He presents us with 648 pages filled with descriptions of a performance group that waxes lyrical about the spontaneous performance
In your own words Mr Larsen:
At many points whilst reading this book I thought about that infographic and wondered at Larsen's intentions: was his aim to create a fiction inspired by truths or explore scientific phenomena through art?
Such art may have been the intention but is certainly not embodied in 'I am Radar'.
I started this book with a lot of excitement because Larsen's debut, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, was so utterly enjoyable. Yes, it rambled at times but the story, characters, the sense of wonder and discovery were perfectly balanced. Coming off such a strong back I was willing to give this book quite a bit of leeway.
So where did it go wrong ?
Ladies and gents, I'd like to have a chat about tokenism from two quite different perspectives.
Science as magic
By profession I work in applied quantum Physics, more specifically particle physics - so if I tell you that fact checking a bunch of big names and institutions does not justify the mess that Larsen builds his plot around, you should believe me. Physics in this book is another word for magic. Larsen, interviewed here by Foyles claims:
" Some of the science in this book is impossible but I’m ok with that. If you get enough right, I think a scientist would give you some leeway."Which is a completely reasonable thing to say. Indeed there is a whole genre built around this idea.
You see, the thing is though, that you have to actually try and care about the science in your story. You have to at least try and understand what is happening and explore some facet of it: its implications to everyday life, extrapolations about what might be possible if a tiny aspect of it was changed, etc. and indeed if it has anything to actually do with the story. I just get the (very strong) feeling that at some point, when looking around for more content to throw into this mess of a book, Larsen saw the word entanglement and thought 'ooo, that's a fancy word, let's use it!'. You think I'm being too mean?
"I think unfortunately the internet often breeds a false entanglement. We feel we’re connected but it’s very fleeting and I think that true entanglement requires deep concentration, there’s no shortcut to that."
Tokenism. Using a language, a culture, a person you have no actual interest in exploring just to have it's face value somewhere in your synopsis.
And if you think I'm using this word lightly, let's move on to example 2.
The use of race
In the interview I linked above, Larsen is asked about the 5 seemingly unconnected novellas that this book comprises and the tenuous threads that link them back to the title character, Radar. Why did they happen?:
"I wasn’t quite sure how they would connect but I felt really compelled to write them. And then I realised with Radar that I had to go back in time, because I couldn’t just drop in the line ‘he was once black but now’s he white’. You can’t just slip that in there!"
That's right, that is how much forethought went into, what could have been an interesting or at least considered exploration of racial identity from the 60's to the 2010's.
The book itself is really confused about how to talk about this issue and in the ends settles for: not at all.
For example, in Part 1 Radar's mother is so horrified and confused with giving birth to black baby she spends the first 4 years of her child's life trying to fix him i.e. turn him white.
Let that sink in for a minute.
But then in Part 3 she reveals the fatherhood of Radar could be called into question after all! He may in fact, be mixed race all along!
Radar's reaction to this is.. bizarre.
He was filled with a terrific sense of lightness, as if his whole body were lifting off the ground.
"I'm black!" he whispered to the wounded whale.
"No," Charlene cried. She came up to him on the bed. "You aren't black".
Radar then cycles off into the night, on some tangential quest, and briefly encounters a couple of policemen one of which is african american. He has the urge to tell one of them 'that he had just found out he was also black' but also 'sees how this isn't the best idea'.
What the hell is this thread about Larsen?
To make matters worse, his mother backtracks again in Part 5 and Radar again decides that she MUST BE right. What a reactionary character. His thought process in Part 5 goes along the lines of: he's not black of course not, and he must be the son of the radio technician who raised him. How else could he be so good with radios?
How indeed, Radar, how indeed.
Jesus.
Let's talk about the plot!
I actually really enjoyed Parts 1 and 2. Medical mysteries, Nordic cults, a bit of Tesla fan-service and some puppetry babble with a Serbian (likely, also very much NOT-Serbian) twist.
And if you're wondering how this list eventually turns into a coherent story: SPOILER, it doesn't. What Larsen sets up in these first two parts, he spends the rest of the novel trying to flesh out and provide some sort of justification for. There's just so much going on, so many back-stories and tidbits, that the reader starts to wonder what is relevant and what they should care about. I'm not even going mention that ending. Infact (direct quote):
[...] declares this ending "a curious failure of invention for a man whose only gift was an overactive imagination." Other reviews complained about how an ending left too much unexplained. [...] "this last line... a plea for information, for anything concrete... becomes the voice of a reader left in the lurch."Larsen, you're just writing this review for me.
I will say that the writing is not bad at all, which nearly drove me to give this book 2 stars rather than 1. The characters are mostly ok (oddly other than Radar, who is bland and buffoonish and seems grossly immature for someone in their mid-thirties). Some of the imagery is nice, but feels recycled.
Larsen says this book is not only about the novel, that the story transcends a book and is also about performance art and the experience (there's a website and the book launch was in a puppet museum) but other than making a statement that he did ART his viewpoint in the book contradict each other a lot. He talks about how a lack of deep understanding is holding us back from each other but tokenizes race and science for buzzwords and shock value. He presents us with 648 pages filled with descriptions of a performance group that waxes lyrical about the spontaneous performance
In your own words Mr Larsen:
"If you ask me," said Fabien, "it sounds like a lot of bullshit."
March 29, 2015
Back in August of 2003, when I lived on 89th Street and 3rd Avenue in NYC, I lived through and survived the blackout that plunged the entire Northeast and parts of the Midwest into total darkness and confusion. It should have been terrifying but it wasn’t. I remember the evenings hanging out in my 8th floor apartment, everything bathed in candlelight, windows flung open in the middle of the sweltering night, and thinking, “How cool is this?” Like you’re a kid again, and discover school has been cancelled for a couple days. The event was so epic and rare and full of earnest grand adventure, all one could do was go bacchanalian out of boredom and necessity: drink all the beer and vodka before it goes tepid; eat all the ice cream before it melts; find a sushi place selling hamachi and toro half off and live dangerously; take advantage of the dim light and the bright stars (look, the sky, no more light pollution!) and indulge in al fresco, au natural sleeping arrangements. Yep, good times.
Anyway, my review, my digression…
So this was the memory that lit up in the back of my mind as I read Reif Larsen’s I Am Radar, a 600-page epic that forms itself, like a geological phenomenon, in the primordial pool of that kind once-in-a-lifetime moment-ness. The strange moment in the novel is the birth of Radar Radmanovic in Elizabeth, New Jersey to Charlene and her Serbian immigrant husband Kermin. As Radar is born, the lights flicker and go out in the hospital. Radar is born into the arms of a doctor holding a flashlight. Stranger still, Radar is a genetic anomaly: he comes into the world with jet-black skin—a shock, no doubt, to his white parents. (Larsen doesn’t address the implied racial component of this in much detail, so don’t go looking for race politics here.)
Kermin is completely chill about his son’s condition and accepts him as he is, while Charlene develops a kind of nutty crusader’s obsession with seeking a cure for her son. Kermin, an amateur tinkerer of all things electronic sees his son as special. Eventually, in her research, Charlene makes contact with a zany group of Norweigan physicist puppeteers with radical politics who claim to have an experimental treatment—something to do with electrocution (?!)—that can fix Radar’s condition. Kermin is dubious, even horrified, but eventually Charlene wins the argument, and they all fly to Norway.
Cute little Radar, a toddler at this point, is eventually cured—but now has to live with the side effects. He now suffers from epilepsy and goes bald. But it seems he’s also gained something in this weird Faustian deal: an ability to read radio transmissions by touch. There was always an aura of sorts to him; now that his outer layer has been shed, he’s like an exposed wire. Poor guy.
Radar’s story then frustratingly drifts to the background, and Larsen pulls the rug out from under us, steering the narrative to different places and completely different stories. From Norway, we travel back to New Jersey, but then the novel spins off into other directions. Yugoslavia, Cambodia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are the other major settings in the book.
Where I Am Radar excels is in how Larsen is able to fashion this kind of fantastical, slightly ridiculous premise and pull together a decent story out of it. For the most part, Larsen succeeds. But ultimately the novel just flatlines for me.
Another reason, I didn’t quite warm to the book is the use of scientific minutiae that permeates its pages. Usually, minutiae is a good thing. But here it’s like Larsen is trying to be weighty by freighting the book in all this contrived, hipsterish, showy science. It distracts and clouds the narrative rather than burnishing it with complexity. In many ways, the book evokes a kind of Wes Anderson-style of storytelling, esoterically charming but also exasperating. When it works, it works, but I’m not sure it works that well here. Maybe it was the constant reference to puppetry and theatre, which casts a shadow across the book’s various storylines. Also, all the travel across the oceans to different continents seemed all so unnecessary in the end, even a little insultingly colonial and White Man’s Burden-ish.
By far, I Am Radar should get points for sheer imaginative storytelling; Larsen brazenly rejects narrative conventions. But ultimately I just tired of the book long before I reached the end. I didn’t rip through this; the story drags and grows tedious in places. Larsen does a remarkable job showing off his love of research, and kudos to him for that, but it’s like he made the novel structure an afterthought, a mere modus operandi for the sake of convenience. As in Larsen’s first novel, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, which I enjoyed, this one is full of marginalia, pictures, excerpts, footnote-type facts, but it just never really comes together and gels into a satisfying story arc. (Clocking in at 600 pages, there should be an arc, for goodness sakes!) Reading it was like observing an ice sculpture that you once marveled at momentarily at the beginning, until it all melted and dribbled away and now you have no recollection of its original form.
[Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest and candid review.]
Anyway, my review, my digression…
So this was the memory that lit up in the back of my mind as I read Reif Larsen’s I Am Radar, a 600-page epic that forms itself, like a geological phenomenon, in the primordial pool of that kind once-in-a-lifetime moment-ness. The strange moment in the novel is the birth of Radar Radmanovic in Elizabeth, New Jersey to Charlene and her Serbian immigrant husband Kermin. As Radar is born, the lights flicker and go out in the hospital. Radar is born into the arms of a doctor holding a flashlight. Stranger still, Radar is a genetic anomaly: he comes into the world with jet-black skin—a shock, no doubt, to his white parents. (Larsen doesn’t address the implied racial component of this in much detail, so don’t go looking for race politics here.)
Kermin is completely chill about his son’s condition and accepts him as he is, while Charlene develops a kind of nutty crusader’s obsession with seeking a cure for her son. Kermin, an amateur tinkerer of all things electronic sees his son as special. Eventually, in her research, Charlene makes contact with a zany group of Norweigan physicist puppeteers with radical politics who claim to have an experimental treatment—something to do with electrocution (?!)—that can fix Radar’s condition. Kermin is dubious, even horrified, but eventually Charlene wins the argument, and they all fly to Norway.
Cute little Radar, a toddler at this point, is eventually cured—but now has to live with the side effects. He now suffers from epilepsy and goes bald. But it seems he’s also gained something in this weird Faustian deal: an ability to read radio transmissions by touch. There was always an aura of sorts to him; now that his outer layer has been shed, he’s like an exposed wire. Poor guy.
Radar’s story then frustratingly drifts to the background, and Larsen pulls the rug out from under us, steering the narrative to different places and completely different stories. From Norway, we travel back to New Jersey, but then the novel spins off into other directions. Yugoslavia, Cambodia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are the other major settings in the book.
Where I Am Radar excels is in how Larsen is able to fashion this kind of fantastical, slightly ridiculous premise and pull together a decent story out of it. For the most part, Larsen succeeds. But ultimately the novel just flatlines for me.
Another reason, I didn’t quite warm to the book is the use of scientific minutiae that permeates its pages. Usually, minutiae is a good thing. But here it’s like Larsen is trying to be weighty by freighting the book in all this contrived, hipsterish, showy science. It distracts and clouds the narrative rather than burnishing it with complexity. In many ways, the book evokes a kind of Wes Anderson-style of storytelling, esoterically charming but also exasperating. When it works, it works, but I’m not sure it works that well here. Maybe it was the constant reference to puppetry and theatre, which casts a shadow across the book’s various storylines. Also, all the travel across the oceans to different continents seemed all so unnecessary in the end, even a little insultingly colonial and White Man’s Burden-ish.
By far, I Am Radar should get points for sheer imaginative storytelling; Larsen brazenly rejects narrative conventions. But ultimately I just tired of the book long before I reached the end. I didn’t rip through this; the story drags and grows tedious in places. Larsen does a remarkable job showing off his love of research, and kudos to him for that, but it’s like he made the novel structure an afterthought, a mere modus operandi for the sake of convenience. As in Larsen’s first novel, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, which I enjoyed, this one is full of marginalia, pictures, excerpts, footnote-type facts, but it just never really comes together and gels into a satisfying story arc. (Clocking in at 600 pages, there should be an arc, for goodness sakes!) Reading it was like observing an ice sculpture that you once marveled at momentarily at the beginning, until it all melted and dribbled away and now you have no recollection of its original form.
[Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest and candid review.]
October 25, 2015
Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com
During a big black out Radar is born, an ebony skinned baby, to his white parents. His mother's search for an explanation (and possibly a cure) brings them to Norway to a rather peculiar set of artists, physicists and puppeteers.
I don't know where to start. This was definitely different from what I expected, but in a good way. Even though it's quite the story, coming in at over 650 pages, and at times the story is a bit slow, it felt like so much was going on all at once. Radar may be the book's namesake, he didn't feel like the main character.
Interspersed with Radar's story, the book follows the lives of several other people in a number of 20th century conflicts. It is during these flashback, which I think make up at least half of the book, that Radar is completely absent. It also takes quite a while before it becomes clear just how these stories fit together in the main story.
However, I was never bored and in fact it was an easier read than I at first expected. While at times it felt a bit like it was trying too much to be the next special novel, I still enjoyed it a lot and would recommend it.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
During a big black out Radar is born, an ebony skinned baby, to his white parents. His mother's search for an explanation (and possibly a cure) brings them to Norway to a rather peculiar set of artists, physicists and puppeteers.
I don't know where to start. This was definitely different from what I expected, but in a good way. Even though it's quite the story, coming in at over 650 pages, and at times the story is a bit slow, it felt like so much was going on all at once. Radar may be the book's namesake, he didn't feel like the main character.
Interspersed with Radar's story, the book follows the lives of several other people in a number of 20th century conflicts. It is during these flashback, which I think make up at least half of the book, that Radar is completely absent. It also takes quite a while before it becomes clear just how these stories fit together in the main story.
However, I was never bored and in fact it was an easier read than I at first expected. While at times it felt a bit like it was trying too much to be the next special novel, I still enjoyed it a lot and would recommend it.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
May 19, 2015
I can't believe I waded through the whole thing! About 1/3 of the way through, I considered tossing it but continued on, all the way to the abrupt, meaningless ending. This book is less interesting than listening to excessively talkative airplane passengers yacking in the seat behind you, making you really glad cell phones aren't allowed on planes.
There is no story to the book, no interesting characters, no plot, just 648 pages of meandering, disjointed babble involving only distantly connected characters. Even Radar is hard to view as a protagonist. It is like a series of vaguely related books, none of which was dependent on the other but which shared a character with one of the others. The author is pseudo-scientific, bringing in rare bits of technobabble as though he is trying to impress readers with his wide range of knowledge, but fails terribly in doing so. His frequent use of quotes in other languages, like Serbian or French also seem a failed attempt to impress readers with his wide knowledge.
You have must have a very high tolerance for boredom to wade through this thing, when there are so many actually interesting books out there.
There is no story to the book, no interesting characters, no plot, just 648 pages of meandering, disjointed babble involving only distantly connected characters. Even Radar is hard to view as a protagonist. It is like a series of vaguely related books, none of which was dependent on the other but which shared a character with one of the others. The author is pseudo-scientific, bringing in rare bits of technobabble as though he is trying to impress readers with his wide range of knowledge, but fails terribly in doing so. His frequent use of quotes in other languages, like Serbian or French also seem a failed attempt to impress readers with his wide knowledge.
You have must have a very high tolerance for boredom to wade through this thing, when there are so many actually interesting books out there.
January 6, 2015
I got this from Penguin's First to Read program.
Larsen's telling of the early life of Radar Radmanovic is part historical fiction, part science fiction, and it's beautiful, intricate, and messy. It centers on the performance artistry of a small troupe based in northern Norway, nearly at the Russian border. Its five parts tell of the unlikely interweaving of this troupe and its members, which ultimately include Radar himself. Parts 1, 3, and 5 tell Radar's story. Sections 2 and 4 are beautiful, in many ways my favorite parts, but, truth be told, they could be lifted clean out of the novel and it would still hold together well. Part 2 tells the story of Miroslav Danilovic, a man who grows up in the last part of the 20th century in Bosnia (Visegrad), and the section is a lovely tale of historical fiction, as lovely as a tale of a family in wartime can be that would be a great little novella on its own. Part 4 is about the family and life of Raksmey Raksmey, a man of uncertain birth who grows up in Cambodia in the latter half of the 20th century, and improbably becomes a particle physicist. Again, it could be lifted out of the novel, but it makes the novel all the richer.
And then there is Radar, of Serbian heritage and from New Jersey, and his adventure to the Democratic Republic of Congo in part 5. Altogether, we get a tour of several parts of the world, linked by puppetry, ambitious artistry fed by genius and almost always doomed, and histories of conflict and injustice. It's a sweeping tale which, in the end, is purposely unfinished.
I do have to say that enjoying this book requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief. The connections and happenings are incredibly unlikely. But the hard part, for me, was the science. There are quite a few references to physics, and especially quantum physics, that are poetic but based on nothing even approaching science. The idea of quantum entanglement comes up, and is actually a wonderful metaphor for the relationships in the book, but only if you use the poetic interpretation the author uses -- he seems to have heard of the term but understood nothing of it. That's hard for me to get over. But if you can get past the bad science and live in the poetry, it's rewarding.
Larsen's telling of the early life of Radar Radmanovic is part historical fiction, part science fiction, and it's beautiful, intricate, and messy. It centers on the performance artistry of a small troupe based in northern Norway, nearly at the Russian border. Its five parts tell of the unlikely interweaving of this troupe and its members, which ultimately include Radar himself. Parts 1, 3, and 5 tell Radar's story. Sections 2 and 4 are beautiful, in many ways my favorite parts, but, truth be told, they could be lifted clean out of the novel and it would still hold together well. Part 2 tells the story of Miroslav Danilovic, a man who grows up in the last part of the 20th century in Bosnia (Visegrad), and the section is a lovely tale of historical fiction, as lovely as a tale of a family in wartime can be that would be a great little novella on its own. Part 4 is about the family and life of Raksmey Raksmey, a man of uncertain birth who grows up in Cambodia in the latter half of the 20th century, and improbably becomes a particle physicist. Again, it could be lifted out of the novel, but it makes the novel all the richer.
And then there is Radar, of Serbian heritage and from New Jersey, and his adventure to the Democratic Republic of Congo in part 5. Altogether, we get a tour of several parts of the world, linked by puppetry, ambitious artistry fed by genius and almost always doomed, and histories of conflict and injustice. It's a sweeping tale which, in the end, is purposely unfinished.
I do have to say that enjoying this book requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief. The connections and happenings are incredibly unlikely. But the hard part, for me, was the science. There are quite a few references to physics, and especially quantum physics, that are poetic but based on nothing even approaching science. The idea of quantum entanglement comes up, and is actually a wonderful metaphor for the relationships in the book, but only if you use the poetic interpretation the author uses -- he seems to have heard of the term but understood nothing of it. That's hard for me to get over. But if you can get past the bad science and live in the poetry, it's rewarding.
August 23, 2018
I don’t know what the hell this was doing but I enjoyed floating alongside it watching it do it
January 19, 2021
"A container does not contain something—it 'is said to contain something'. The same can be said of a good book."Although this assertion comes quite late in I Am Radar, I think it strikes at the heart of Reif Larsen's remarkable novel—a book which certainly can be said to contain many things... although I'm still not sure what all of them were. This review struggles with that complexity, and I hope you'll bear with me as I ramble.
—Captain Daneri of the good ship Aleph, p.543
*
I Am Radar begins with an undeniable prodigy. Radar Radmanovic, born of white parents in New Jersey, comes into the world with jet-black skin. Radar is unique, in other words, and from the moment of his birth he is entangled (a word which comes up frequently) with questions of identity that resonate throughout Reif Larsen's long and discursive novel.
I Am Radar is not science fiction, but it is SF-adjacent. Its frequent digressions into electrical and quantum-mechanical jargon, and its many figures and diagrams, definitely give it a science-fictional veneer. The self-referential Figure 5.6 on p.620, for one, struck me as simply beautiful.
In retrospect, I was skeptical about many of Larsen's scientific and historical claims, including—for one minor example—the notion that car alarms were already ubiquitous in (or around) the year 1976 (p.30). I do not remember that having occurred until much later.
However, I was pleased, in a small way, by Larsen's mention of Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minnesota (p.43), since my daughter graduated from that very institution. Sure, it's not directly relevant, and most people wouldn't even notice such an offhand detail, but I noticed... and such attention to detail on Larsen's part helped shore up my other doubts about the book.
*
Despite its playfulness in other respects, I Am Radar attempts very few typographical tricks—-the book's so mannered otherwise, in fact, that I was surprised when Radar's mother Charlene's life strayed outside the margins on p.61.
I am quite sure that was intentional—as was Radar's father's assessment of American ingenuity shortly thereafter:
"In this place, brilliance does not matter. It is lucky asshole who wins. Like Edison. He electrocutes the elephant and says, 'Screw you, Tesla.' And he wins. Tesla is brilliant, but he lose. He talks to pigeons and dies like the poor man."
—Kermin Radmanovic, p. 76
*
Much of I Am Radar revolves around a strange troupe of artists calling themselves Kirkenesferda. Their connection with Radar is not at all clear, at first, though eventually we realize that their fates have been deeply intertwined since before Radar's birth. And I was fascinated by Larsen's portrayal of Kirkenesferda's work with puppets, beginning on p.107, especially since I recently rewatched the film Being John Malkovich (1999), whose protagonist Craig Schwartz (played by John Cusack) is a gifted (if highly unusual) puppeteer.
*
The student shrugged. He stopped moving the ball across his hands. From out of his bag he produced a lackluster ferret, which he held up to Danilo, as if offering it to him for a good price.The phrase "lackluster ferret" just thrilled me, for some reason—as did Larsen's frequent blurring of genre lines, as in this later example:
—p.216
Above, he could see stars, stars that had never been there before. But no: they had always been there; they had just been hidden by a scrim of light. To see the stars, you must first be able to see the night.Light pollution is just one of the ways that Larsen's novel repeatedly brings up scientific themes in the course of what is otherwise a mainstream, literary novel.
—p.347
*
"What you are is what you have been."This observation seems to me to be quite broadly applicable...
—p.396
*
I Am Radar is globe-spanning fiction. Larsen's settings range from the salt marshes of New Jersey to the upper reaches of the Mekong River in Cambodia. All of Part 4, "The Principles of Uncertainty," is set in what would later become the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, in fact. Then the fifth and final section of I Am Radar, "The Conference of Birds," follows Radar on a slow boat trip up the Congo River, during which their guide Horeb—who gets the best lines in the book!—regales them with a retelling of the Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur's best-known work, The Conference of the Birds. (This connects Larsen's book directly to the next novel I read, by the way: G. Willow Wilson's The Bird King; I find myself pleased beyond all measure by this entirely serendipitous relationship.)
"Historical fiction disgusts me," he writes. "No—all fiction, no matter its time or place, sends me into an existential tailspin. Why invent? Why invent when so much of the truth—the real truth—remains unknown?"I do like footnotes in fiction, and this one seems to come perilously close to being slyly self-deprecating as well.
—Pers Røed-Larsen, footnote, p. 431
Here's Horeb again:
"Everyone wants something, but they don't understand that today is not the last day. There are many last days to come."
—Horeb, p.568
"When people live too close together, you see the best and worst side of them," said Horeb. "You step over human waste in the street, but you are also given food by strangers. You see people robbed by guns, but you also see young men helping old women carry their bags. Sometimes you see the good and evil in the same afternoon. Everyone understands how difficult it is to live like this. It can make you hard, like a nut, but it also leaves you open for hope, for the words of a prophet—whether this is Jesus, Muhammad, or even"—he gave a little laugh—"one of our presidential candidates. Every nut has a soft inside."
—Horeb, p.606
"Did Islam begin with Muhammad's first revelation or when his wife became his first believer?"
—Horeb, one more time, on p.608
*
I was disappointed when I realized that, despite the title, Radar never gets to tell his own tale: all of I Am Radar was actually written in the third person. And I did not really like the ending—it felt really abrupt, after having spent so long with such an interesting fellow.
On the other hand...
It can be said that I Am Radar is said to contain marvels—but you cannot know for yourself whether that is true without opening it to peer inside...
September 13, 2015
Ο Λάρσεν έγινε αμέσως γνωστός με το πρώτο του βιβλίο, το The Selected Works of T.S. Pivet. Νόμιζα πως τώρα θα διαβάσω ένα χαρούμενο αφήγημα, με ένθετες εικόνες και σχέδια και τελικά πιάστηκα απροετοίμαστος. Η φαντασία του συγγραφέα, οι ταραγμένες, σουρεάλ ζωές του Ραντάρ και όλης της κουστωδίας που περνάει από τις σελίδες του βιβλίου με σαγήνευσαν.
Μα τι έχουμε εδώ: ένας παιδί γεννιέται μαύρο σαν την πίσσα από λευκούς γονείς. Οι αναζήτηση απαντήσεων για αυτό το αλλόκοτο απότοκο τους οδηγεί σε μια οργάνωση στη Β. Νορβηγία, που για δεκαετίες επιδίδεται σε αινιγματικά δρώμενα που συνδυάζουν την σωματιδιακή φυσική με την τέχνη. Ο αναγνώστης θα βρεθεί από εκεί, στην Γιουγκοσλαβία, στην Σερβία του ‘90 και ακόμα πιο μακριά, σε σημαδιακές ιστορικές περιόδους και σε εξωτικές, για τον δυτικό αναγνώστη, κουλτούρες.
Είναι η πληθώρα των τοπωνύμιων, των αναφορών σε ιστορικά πρόσωπα και γεγονότα τα οποία πλαισιώνουν τους ήρωες, για τους οποίους ο Λάρσεν φροντίζει να δίνει μια μυθική και παραμυθιακή διάσταση μαζί με την αληθοφανή, έτσι όπως βρίσκονται στο μάτι του κυκλώνα. Θαρρείς πως επέδρασσαν με τις απίθανες πράξεις τους στο ρου των ιστορικών εξελίξεων. Είναι και ο Σέρβος θρύλος του Τσέλα, που χάθηκε στις σκιές της ιστορίας και τα επιτεύγματά του έχουν μείνει να ισορροπούν μεταξύ του αληθινού και του εξωπραγματικού. Και κάπως έτσι οι ήρωες του Λάρσον δρουν, με την επιστήμη τους ταγμένη σε κάποιον ομιχλώδη στόχο. Οι εικόνες -σχεδιαγράμματα κατασκευών, σκαριφήματα, χάρτες και φωτογραφίες- μέσα στο κείμενο θυμίζουν το έργο του Τζ. Γ. Σεμπάλντ και δημιουργούν μια αίσθηση νοσταλγίας, εντείνοντας την ψευδαίσθηση πως διαβάζεις κάτι πραγματικό. Κάπου διάβασα πως αυτή η λογοτεχνία ονομάζεται εργοδική, όπου ο αναγνώστης πρέπει να συμβάλει το κατιτίς νοητικά, για να αφομοιώσει το κείμενο. Κι ίσως να ισχύει εδώ. Με το κινητό στο πλάι μου να ψάχνω για πληροφορίες, πολλές φορές αποκοπτόμουν εντελώς από το περιβάλλον και βυθιζόμουν όλο και πιο βαθιά στον κόσμο του Λάρσεν.
Ωστόσο, όσο απολαυστική κι αν ήταν η ανάγνωση δεν ξέρω αν θα το πρότεινα δίχως προϋποθέσεις. Νομίζω πως αυτό ακριβώς το δυσεπίλυτο της αφήγησης μπορεί να κάνει τον κάποιον αναγνώστη να σκάσει. Η γλώσσα του Λάρσεν, αν και πλούσια δεν είναι στρυφνή, και η υπόθεσή του είναι μια περιπέτεια μέχρι το κόκκαλο που θα μπορούσε να την σκηνοθετήσει ο Σπίλμπεργκ. Μα θέλει να σκύψεις πάνω σ’ αυτά που εγκιβωτίζει στα γραπτό του ο Λάρσεν για να αγαπήσεις τούτο το βιβλίο.
Ένα ξεχωριστό βιβλίο αυτό του Λάρσεν. Ο εξοπλισμένος με φαντασία και περιπετειώδη ρομαντισμό αναγνώστης ας προσέλθει.
Μα τι έχουμε εδώ: ένας παιδί γεννιέται μαύρο σαν την πίσσα από λευκούς γονείς. Οι αναζήτηση απαντήσεων για αυτό το αλλόκοτο απότοκο τους οδηγεί σε μια οργάνωση στη Β. Νορβηγία, που για δεκαετίες επιδίδεται σε αινιγματικά δρώμενα που συνδυάζουν την σωματιδιακή φυσική με την τέχνη. Ο αναγνώστης θα βρεθεί από εκεί, στην Γιουγκοσλαβία, στην Σερβία του ‘90 και ακόμα πιο μακριά, σε σημαδιακές ιστορικές περιόδους και σε εξωτικές, για τον δυτικό αναγνώστη, κουλτούρες.
Είναι η πληθώρα των τοπωνύμιων, των αναφορών σε ιστορικά πρόσωπα και γεγονότα τα οποία πλαισιώνουν τους ήρωες, για τους οποίους ο Λάρσεν φροντίζει να δίνει μια μυθική και παραμυθιακή διάσταση μαζί με την αληθοφανή, έτσι όπως βρίσκονται στο μάτι του κυκλώνα. Θαρρείς πως επέδρασσαν με τις απίθανες πράξεις τους στο ρου των ιστορικών εξελίξεων. Είναι και ο Σέρβος θρύλος του Τσέλα, που χάθηκε στις σκιές της ιστορίας και τα επιτεύγματά του έχουν μείνει να ισορροπούν μεταξύ του αληθινού και του εξωπραγματικού. Και κάπως έτσι οι ήρωες του Λάρσον δρουν, με την επιστήμη τους ταγμένη σε κάποιον ομιχλώδη στόχο. Οι εικόνες -σχεδιαγράμματα κατασκευών, σκαριφήματα, χάρτες και φωτογραφίες- μέσα στο κείμενο θυμίζουν το έργο του Τζ. Γ. Σεμπάλντ και δημιουργούν μια αίσθηση νοσταλγίας, εντείνοντας την ψευδαίσθηση πως διαβάζεις κάτι πραγματικό. Κάπου διάβασα πως αυτή η λογοτεχνία ονομάζεται εργοδική, όπου ο αναγνώστης πρέπει να συμβάλει το κατιτίς νοητικά, για να αφομοιώσει το κείμενο. Κι ίσως να ισχύει εδώ. Με το κινητό στο πλάι μου να ψάχνω για πληροφορίες, πολλές φορές αποκοπτόμουν εντελώς από το περιβάλλον και βυθιζόμουν όλο και πιο βαθιά στον κόσμο του Λάρσεν.
Ωστόσο, όσο απολαυστική κι αν ήταν η ανάγνωση δεν ξέρω αν θα το πρότεινα δίχως προϋποθέσεις. Νομίζω πως αυτό ακριβώς το δυσεπίλυτο της αφήγησης μπορεί να κάνει τον κάποιον αναγνώστη να σκάσει. Η γλώσσα του Λάρσεν, αν και πλούσια δεν είναι στρυφνή, και η υπόθεσή του είναι μια περιπέτεια μέχρι το κόκκαλο που θα μπορούσε να την σκηνοθετήσει ο Σπίλμπεργκ. Μα θέλει να σκύψεις πάνω σ’ αυτά που εγκιβωτίζει στα γραπτό του ο Λάρσεν για να αγαπήσεις τούτο το βιβλίο.
Ένα ξεχωριστό βιβλίο αυτό του Λάρσεν. Ο εξοπλισμένος με φαντασία και περιπετειώδη ρομαντισμό αναγνώστης ας προσέλθει.
September 3, 2015
I
really
wanted to love this book, but only loved the first half. I have given it almost a week since I finished to write down my thoughts, and the main feeling I get when I think about it is disappointment. So, three out of five stars. I really enjoyed the artful way the author wrote his characters, and how he told a story. I loved the footnotes and marginalia and diagrams that helped illustrate. I loved how in-depth the author wrote about different eras and different regions of the globe. And I even loved how there was a thin thread connecting characters from the 70s in New Jersey to Norway in WWII, Croatia during the Balkan wars of the 90s, Cambodia in the 70s, and the Congo in the 2000s. You can't say you read many novels hitting those locations! But I kinda feel like he took advantage of his Artist-in-Residence grant funding to travel to interesting places around the globe, and then figured out a way to retrofit them into the story he was writing.
I have more thoughts, but there are spoilers below:
I don't feel like the 600+ pages of this novel paid off in the end for me. Your mileage may vary.
I have more thoughts, but there are spoilers below:
I don't feel like the 600+ pages of this novel paid off in the end for me. Your mileage may vary.
October 31, 2015
I wanted to like this book. It is hugely ambitious, ranging from quantum physics to philosophy to world history to thoroughly developed, believable characters whose stories ultimately intersect. Perhaps more disappointing than the ending, when, after decades of toil (and 600+ pages) the puppeteers finally accomplish their goal - and I am left asking, so what? - the author does not deal with serious ethical issues he raises. Two in particular are racial identity and genocide. His characters experience them, but they do not talk about it, leaving me feeling like a drive by tourist.
Read
September 7, 2015No stars since it was unfinished and will not be re read. The first part was great. The second...terrible. Anyway, I will never know because I have lost all desire to read it. Not recommended.
February 9, 2015
Disclosure: I got this as an ARC from Penguin Books, for which I was thrilled as I am a huge fan of Reif Larsen's first novel "The Collected Works of T.S. Spivet." But, I promise this is an honest review.
The only reason I did not give "I Am Radar" five stars is that I would have liked a little more of a conclusion than the book has. I must also admit that there are things I don't understand in Larsen's writings - especially the math/technical sounding things (which could be made up for all I know) and the illustrations, but the storytelling is so strong that you just keep reading! This novel is funny, intelligent, philosophical, historical, and, in itself, is a piece of performance art.
Both of Larsen's novels are about the strange journeys of young men. The title character, Radar Radmanovic, is born as a black child to white parents. His parents spend the first few years of his life trying to get a scientific explanation for how this could happen and whether there is anything that can be done for the child. Radar is gifted, especially in things electronic, like his Serbian father (who listens to two radios at once and can fix anything electric). Parts of the book tell Radar's story.
Other parts of the book tell the story of Miroslav Danilovic and his family. Through them, we are taken through the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the horrors that brought to small-town life. Milo, too is a gifted child, but he has no social skills. He shows a flair for unique puppetry and that leads him to university and beyond into the world.
There are other young men whose stories we learn as we go through the Vietnam & Cambodian & Congolese conflicts. You will come to a new appreciation for the insidious way the quest for power takes over a population. Larsen's gift is in telling these stories in ways that raise them beyond the physical and makes us work mentally and spiritually to understand the people and the times.
The last chapters twist together the stories of these young men's journeys to make a whole. The novel includes a lot of performance art and it took me a while to understand that the book itself is also performance art. It exists to blow your mind. Well done, Reif Larsen, well done! Mind blown!
The only reason I did not give "I Am Radar" five stars is that I would have liked a little more of a conclusion than the book has. I must also admit that there are things I don't understand in Larsen's writings - especially the math/technical sounding things (which could be made up for all I know) and the illustrations, but the storytelling is so strong that you just keep reading! This novel is funny, intelligent, philosophical, historical, and, in itself, is a piece of performance art.
Both of Larsen's novels are about the strange journeys of young men. The title character, Radar Radmanovic, is born as a black child to white parents. His parents spend the first few years of his life trying to get a scientific explanation for how this could happen and whether there is anything that can be done for the child. Radar is gifted, especially in things electronic, like his Serbian father (who listens to two radios at once and can fix anything electric). Parts of the book tell Radar's story.
Other parts of the book tell the story of Miroslav Danilovic and his family. Through them, we are taken through the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the horrors that brought to small-town life. Milo, too is a gifted child, but he has no social skills. He shows a flair for unique puppetry and that leads him to university and beyond into the world.
There are other young men whose stories we learn as we go through the Vietnam & Cambodian & Congolese conflicts. You will come to a new appreciation for the insidious way the quest for power takes over a population. Larsen's gift is in telling these stories in ways that raise them beyond the physical and makes us work mentally and spiritually to understand the people and the times.
The last chapters twist together the stories of these young men's journeys to make a whole. The novel includes a lot of performance art and it took me a while to understand that the book itself is also performance art. It exists to blow your mind. Well done, Reif Larsen, well done! Mind blown!
February 16, 2015
(ARC generously provided by Penguin Group The Penguin Press)
This quote (and many others) from the novel sums up what I took from this outstanding novel:
"Quite elegant, yes? The bird in the machine. For our purposes, it's really all we need. Our show relies on building a flock of puppets that all move in conversation, no matter where they are in the world. One is entangled with the next, who is also entangled with the next, who is entangled with the next and so on. It is a kind of collective consciousness. A bounded swarm if you will."
All of the players involved in this remarkable story split into parts are all entangled. What happens in one part of the story, ends up having an effect in an entirely different part. As you are reading each part, you slowly start to realize just how connected everyone truly is as the details slowly start to reveal themselves. It was quite a treat as you realize that a small detail that you could have easily glossed over near the beginning, makes an appearance once again later in a significant way. The novel itself is filled with maps, photographs, diagrams and references to events within our history that makes the story feel - well, real - strangely rooted in reality. It could be my biases and absolute intrigue with quantum mechanics but I love this novel and I believe it's well worth owning the physical copy when released. Definite re-read for me!
This quote (and many others) from the novel sums up what I took from this outstanding novel:
"Quite elegant, yes? The bird in the machine. For our purposes, it's really all we need. Our show relies on building a flock of puppets that all move in conversation, no matter where they are in the world. One is entangled with the next, who is also entangled with the next, who is entangled with the next and so on. It is a kind of collective consciousness. A bounded swarm if you will."
All of the players involved in this remarkable story split into parts are all entangled. What happens in one part of the story, ends up having an effect in an entirely different part. As you are reading each part, you slowly start to realize just how connected everyone truly is as the details slowly start to reveal themselves. It was quite a treat as you realize that a small detail that you could have easily glossed over near the beginning, makes an appearance once again later in a significant way. The novel itself is filled with maps, photographs, diagrams and references to events within our history that makes the story feel - well, real - strangely rooted in reality. It could be my biases and absolute intrigue with quantum mechanics but I love this novel and I believe it's well worth owning the physical copy when released. Definite re-read for me!
September 15, 2017
The pen of Reif Larsen produced some damn fine writing here; this is enviable craftsmanship.
Also, the good fairies of genre one by one visited this piece of literary fiction and bestowed it with their gifts - a kiss from science fiction, a light kiss from fantasy (or magical realism), a big smack from historical fiction. And the bad fairy who wasn't invited to the christening gave it the curse of a ...
SPOILER
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*
*
*
*
. . . truly "what-the-hell-just-happened" kind of ending. Where is the rest of the book? Mr. Larsen, you can't just end a book that way. But I guess you can, because you just did. Author's prerogative and all that. But I don't have to appreciate it.
I certainly don't hate this book (full disclosure though: I HAD to finish it, because it's my book club book, otherwise, I dunno), but I'm certainly not in love with book either. Still, I'd probably recommend it to Friends because hey - if I have to suffer that ending, I shouldn't have to suffer alone.
Also, the good fairies of genre one by one visited this piece of literary fiction and bestowed it with their gifts - a kiss from science fiction, a light kiss from fantasy (or magical realism), a big smack from historical fiction. And the bad fairy who wasn't invited to the christening gave it the curse of a ...
SPOILER
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
. . . truly "what-the-hell-just-happened" kind of ending. Where is the rest of the book? Mr. Larsen, you can't just end a book that way. But I guess you can, because you just did. Author's prerogative and all that. But I don't have to appreciate it.
I certainly don't hate this book (full disclosure though: I HAD to finish it, because it's my book club book, otherwise, I dunno), but I'm certainly not in love with book either. Still, I'd probably recommend it to Friends because hey - if I have to suffer that ending, I shouldn't have to suffer alone.
February 25, 2015
Though beautifully written, I Am Radar became sluggish at times. I rather suspect it's more to do with my disconnection to the characters, I didn't feel any attachment throughout the story to keep me interested. There were many intriguing references to historically accurate events that had me Googling like a madwoman, so for that I'm thankful. I enjoyed reading something that transported me to another time, I just couldn't quite grasp why the author felt the need to go into so much detail as to detract from the narrative in the first place. 3/5 stars
March 31, 2018
For me parts were **** and other times **. I applaud the originality of the story. I might have liked it better as a bundle of short stories. The title doesn't cover the story in my opinion, just as SciFi is only part of it.
March 31, 2016
I read this book as an ARC digital copy and I cannot wait to purchase a print copy when it comes out!
Radar is a child born to a Serbian refugee and American woman in the 1970's. Although they are both "white," he is born coal black, which disturbs his mother and the community. Radar is a gifted child, and like his father is attracted to radio science and later, story telling through puppets. Because of his mother's obsession with "fixing" Radar, they travel to Scandinavia and meet with a rag tag group of scientist/puppeteers near the Arctic Circle, where Radar undergoes their treatment and the life of the family is forever changed.
Composed of several stories all gathering force like an inevitable hurricane, Radar's story is told alternating with the story of his father's escape from war torn Yugoslavia, the story of a French family in Cambodia and the puppeteers in Scandinavia, who are also refugees from Eastern Europe.
Although the story seems to lose steam slightly during the Cambodian sections, the final adventure brings together the disparate characters and Radar faces a challenge he feels less than prepared for. The action moves to a new venue with exciting action and new characters whose philosophies and words help Radar move toward the concluding acts of the story and his destiny.
The Selected Work of TS Spivet was the story of one boy's cross country travel within America, and Radar's story is similar in that this story, and Radar, moves all about the globe. Radar is the innocent, unformed character seeking the meaning of his life, absorbing and adapting all knowledge to his need to understand. Each character, and there are many, has its foibles and quirks and usually obsessed with just one idea that rules their life.
This is a marvelous book, well worth re reading, as I will do when the print version is available.
Radar is a child born to a Serbian refugee and American woman in the 1970's. Although they are both "white," he is born coal black, which disturbs his mother and the community. Radar is a gifted child, and like his father is attracted to radio science and later, story telling through puppets. Because of his mother's obsession with "fixing" Radar, they travel to Scandinavia and meet with a rag tag group of scientist/puppeteers near the Arctic Circle, where Radar undergoes their treatment and the life of the family is forever changed.
Composed of several stories all gathering force like an inevitable hurricane, Radar's story is told alternating with the story of his father's escape from war torn Yugoslavia, the story of a French family in Cambodia and the puppeteers in Scandinavia, who are also refugees from Eastern Europe.
Although the story seems to lose steam slightly during the Cambodian sections, the final adventure brings together the disparate characters and Radar faces a challenge he feels less than prepared for. The action moves to a new venue with exciting action and new characters whose philosophies and words help Radar move toward the concluding acts of the story and his destiny.
The Selected Work of TS Spivet was the story of one boy's cross country travel within America, and Radar's story is similar in that this story, and Radar, moves all about the globe. Radar is the innocent, unformed character seeking the meaning of his life, absorbing and adapting all knowledge to his need to understand. Each character, and there are many, has its foibles and quirks and usually obsessed with just one idea that rules their life.
This is a marvelous book, well worth re reading, as I will do when the print version is available.
August 7, 2015
In the description of "I Am Radar", it says the book is somewhat about a group of performers who stage amazing and elaborate performances in the middle of nowhere and witnessed by no one. Apparently, these performances are organized by some of the world's most talented individuals and cover a variety of topics so deep (such as quantum physics, philosophical questions on the nature of reality, etc.) that, even if seen by an audience, it would completely go over the heads of the common man.
In my opinion, this is a great summary of the book itself. After all, no matter how revolutionary or insightful a performance is, you have to wonder what's the meaning if no one ever sees it. I thought the book itself was very professionally written and all the correct literary techniques are used to draw us into the heads and the lives of the various characters in the story. Yet, after only a few chapters into the book, I started to wonder what the purpose of it all was. You read about someone's coming of age story and yet it seems to serves no purpose at all in the grand scheme of the book. In one of the book's supposedly revolutionary performances, puppets with TV for heads are wondrously made to dance without strings and there are mathematical equations of some universal truth that flashes on the stage in the background. Interesting, yes. But I don't get it.
One of the troup's leaders defends against this very skepticism by saying that even if no one sees the performance or knows that it even existed, the universe itself sees it and this can change the world. So perhaps this book is indeed a masterpiece that only the universe and maybe even a few individuals can truly appreciate. But for most readers, I would say you can safely live your lives happily not reading it or even ever knowing it has existed.
In my opinion, this is a great summary of the book itself. After all, no matter how revolutionary or insightful a performance is, you have to wonder what's the meaning if no one ever sees it. I thought the book itself was very professionally written and all the correct literary techniques are used to draw us into the heads and the lives of the various characters in the story. Yet, after only a few chapters into the book, I started to wonder what the purpose of it all was. You read about someone's coming of age story and yet it seems to serves no purpose at all in the grand scheme of the book. In one of the book's supposedly revolutionary performances, puppets with TV for heads are wondrously made to dance without strings and there are mathematical equations of some universal truth that flashes on the stage in the background. Interesting, yes. But I don't get it.
One of the troup's leaders defends against this very skepticism by saying that even if no one sees the performance or knows that it even existed, the universe itself sees it and this can change the world. So perhaps this book is indeed a masterpiece that only the universe and maybe even a few individuals can truly appreciate. But for most readers, I would say you can safely live your lives happily not reading it or even ever knowing it has existed.
October 12, 2015
I Am Radar by Reif Larsen is a tome of a book. There's no denying this, I don't care who you are. It's a huge bloody book. This is why it took me so long to get through it, I suppose. Partly. Personally, I don't like wading through a character's whole backstory in order to get to the current story, unless ... no, I hate doing that. Period. But, although I found parts of it to be a bit over-descriptive, the writing was superb. The characters were well-written, and the relationships crafted by the author was quite complex. The story-line, also, had a lot going for it, which is why I didn't just DNF the book. I mean, it's a genre in itself, consisting of various genres. That alone made it rather marvelous.
However, I'm sure you're dying to know whether I Am Radar is worth investing so much time in.
Well, I think so, yes.
You see, it's always so much fun to see writers experiment, and actually succeed in their experiments. Apart from that, though, this is not the thickest book I've ever read and the fact that it kept me reading (although it took me months and months) says a lot. Under the Dome by Stephen King (another mother of a book), didn't enthrall me like I Am Radar. I know, I know, it's a bad comparison, but you get where I'm going with this, right? If not, let me spell it out for you: I Am Radar might have its flaws, but it's still a good read, filled with science and anthropological questions, and adventures.
I really wouldn't mind picking up another book by Reif Larsen, and I'm quite proud to have I Am Radar on my bookshelf. Give it a shot if you're up to the challenge!
Review originally posted on:
However, I'm sure you're dying to know whether I Am Radar is worth investing so much time in.
Well, I think so, yes.
You see, it's always so much fun to see writers experiment, and actually succeed in their experiments. Apart from that, though, this is not the thickest book I've ever read and the fact that it kept me reading (although it took me months and months) says a lot. Under the Dome by Stephen King (another mother of a book), didn't enthrall me like I Am Radar. I know, I know, it's a bad comparison, but you get where I'm going with this, right? If not, let me spell it out for you: I Am Radar might have its flaws, but it's still a good read, filled with science and anthropological questions, and adventures.
I really wouldn't mind picking up another book by Reif Larsen, and I'm quite proud to have I Am Radar on my bookshelf. Give it a shot if you're up to the challenge!
Review originally posted on:
November 1, 2015
I was excited to read this book since it has one of the best blurbs I've read in my life. It raised a lot of questions, which is always a good thing. I started out strong and flew through the first hundred or so pages. At first my interest was confirmed. The story about a special and weird black boy born from white parents and the mother's obsession in trying to "fix" him made for a very interesting read. I enjoyed the writer's style, which was detailed but not over-the-top. The story had a lengthy buildup, yes, but I was sure it would lead to great things.
Larsen lost me when he started the story of the Serbian Danilovic family and the puppeteer. I couldn't understand what one had to do with the other and since it went on for ages, I lost my patience. I rushed through it in the hopes of getting back to the 'real story' about Radar but when I did, it could no longer hold my interest.
About 350-400 pages in I simply could not bring myself to read any further. Though I enjoyed Radar's personality and his relationship with his mother and Anna Christina, I didn't care enough about the true story (not the fluff, i.e. character building, which I enjoyed the most) to go on.
Above all, I think the point of the story was lost on me. I've read great reviews of this book and its "celestial ambition" according to the NY Times but I found that I simply did not care about any of it.
Larsen lost me when he started the story of the Serbian Danilovic family and the puppeteer. I couldn't understand what one had to do with the other and since it went on for ages, I lost my patience. I rushed through it in the hopes of getting back to the 'real story' about Radar but when I did, it could no longer hold my interest.
About 350-400 pages in I simply could not bring myself to read any further. Though I enjoyed Radar's personality and his relationship with his mother and Anna Christina, I didn't care enough about the true story (not the fluff, i.e. character building, which I enjoyed the most) to go on.
Above all, I think the point of the story was lost on me. I've read great reviews of this book and its "celestial ambition" according to the NY Times but I found that I simply did not care about any of it.
March 23, 2015
This one would probably get a 2.5. I absolutely adored parts of this book. Other parts could easily have been condensed or even removed. It would have been a better 300 page book vs. a 600+ page book.
The theme of this story would have to be "entanglement": family, technology, etc. A pretty major theme of books and learning also runs through the narrative. Race is also an important theme. Choices and their consequences also play heavily.
I thought I knew what was going on until the last chapter; now I am not sure what to think.
On the whole, the book has more to do with the Kirkenesferda (an avant-garde performance group) than with Radar.
Since this is such a long book, I would recommend to anyone who wants to read it to read reviews first before jumping into it. The parts that are a delight make it worth the read. It definitely has some great things to say about art.
------
"That's one of the essential questions I'm getting at," Larsen said. "What is the role of art in our lives? Is it essential or is it a sort of luxury?"
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/03/...
The theme of this story would have to be "entanglement": family, technology, etc. A pretty major theme of books and learning also runs through the narrative. Race is also an important theme. Choices and their consequences also play heavily.
I thought I knew what was going on until the last chapter; now I am not sure what to think.
On the whole, the book has more to do with the Kirkenesferda (an avant-garde performance group) than with Radar.
Since this is such a long book, I would recommend to anyone who wants to read it to read reviews first before jumping into it. The parts that are a delight make it worth the read. It definitely has some great things to say about art.
------
"That's one of the essential questions I'm getting at," Larsen said. "What is the role of art in our lives? Is it essential or is it a sort of luxury?"
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/03/...
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