Allen Kurzweil: The Grand Complication

By MICHAEL LARSON

Books about books can often be smug, self-referential and littered with in-jokes only the most erudite reader will find amusing.

The success of this, Kurzweil's second novel, is that while it revolves around an obsessed bibliophile and his knowledgeable mentor, it laughs at its characters and itself so much that it comes across as unfailingly charming first and literary second.

Alexander Short is a frustrated librarian who is so consumed by his love of lists that he carries a girdle - a book attached to his waist - so he can make notes on all he sees in his day.

He attracts the attention of the improbably titled Henry James Jesson III, a collector of antiques, who sees that Alexander has the right inquisitiveness for all things able to be catalogued, and hires him to track down the last item missing from a cabinet of curiosities.

The search for the Breuget-made Marie Antoinette watch forms the basis of the narrative, but it is really just a loose frame into which Kurzweil can put all his minutiae. You will pick up a good deal of historical knowledge along the way, but mostly this is a literary game of cat and mouse, double crossings and double entendres, set within Jesson's cluttered museum-piece of a home, or amid the dusty shelves of the New York library.

There are plenty of self-referential jokes, but they are amusing rather than intimidating, and with its bizarre tapestry of characters - from the cleaner who knows the Dewey system better than Alexander, to his temperamental French wife and her penchant for creating pop-up books - this fabulous novel always saves face when it borders on seriousness by wedging its tongue firmly in its cheek.

Kurzweil's vocabulary is vast - you'll need a dictionary at hand - and a great number of the words are medieval and religious in origin. This, along with the Jesson-Alexander mentor-student relationship reminded me a great deal of Eco's The Name of the Rose, a feeling that is heightened by the use of the library as the main setting for the action. There are also echoes of John Fowles' The Magus here, particularly once Alexander starts to entertain the notion that the whole thing may well be a scam.

Despite his growing suspicions, and the unforgiving nature of his wife, his curiosity and thirst for knowledge ensure that he follows the clues down to the very last.

A witty, engrossing, fascinating book that entertains and enlightens in equal measure.

Random House

$34.95

* Michael Larsen is an Auckland freelance writer.