Gabriel Roth - The Unknowns

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An amusing, readable and thoughtful novel

I enjoyed this book. It is a very well written, readable novel which is both amusing and quite insightful in places. Gabriel Roth is a promising author and as a first novel this is impressive - not least because he doesn't pad it out but has the sense to produce a concise, neatly constructed 200-page book. Set in 2002, it is told in the first person by Eric Muller, a socially inept computer geek who has made a large fortune in the dot com boom. Using this device of the over-analytical outsider as narrator, Roth examines aspects of life including being the bullied outcast at school, the genuine pleasure that Eric derives from programming and, most significantly, human relationships.

For a good deal of the book I found this readably amusing in a sub-Woody Allen sort of way, but wasn't sure it added up to all that much. I also thought that a socially inept, un-literary character like Eric wouldn't be making this sort of penetrating observations in pithily constructed prose. However, the last quarter of the book took on a deeper tone in its examination of what we can know about ourselves and others, what we should expect to know and how that knowledge may affect us and our relationships. This lent the book an intellectual and emotional weight which took it well above the ordinary and made it well worth reading, I thought, and I suspect that this part will stay with me for some time.

I dithered over whether to give this four or five stars. Considered as a whole, I rounded it down to four, but it's a very good book and that may be a little harsh. I would certainly still recommend this warmly as a readable, enjoyable and ultimately very worthwhile novel.