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Oceane, successful computer graphics designer and former erotic dancer, likes to travel, but doesn't like to go out; in fact, she never leaves home. She satisfies her wanderlust by bringing the world to her South London flat, using courier, satellite, radio, the Internet, and accommodating globetrotters making virtual visits to Panama, Istanbul, and Tokyo. Her meticulously constructed lifestyle suits her until she receives a letter from an ex-an ex who died ten years ago. She is forced into action and seeks out the help of Audley-failed mercenary, former personal trainer, and proprietor of the Dun Waitin Debt Collection Agency. When the first letter is followed by a string of missives, Oceane has to start searching the world to understand her past.Tibor Fischer's new novel is Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island updated for the 21st century, weaving from the sex clubs of Barcelona, to the battlefields of Yugoslavia, to the deadly diving of Chuuk Lagoon. Combining his trademark sardonic wit and offbeat imaginative flair, Voyage to the End of the Room is Tibor Fischer in top form: a compelling page-turner that is at once a brilliant and darkly hilarious meditation on a random world; on what you can know, what evil looks like, why ketchup may be among a soldier's most important equipment, and how bubble gum can be used to collect on old debts.
Critiques (4)
Critique du Publishers Weekly
A freelance designer's effort to collect a work debt turns into an unusual series of international adventures in Fischer's latest, a meandering, deadpan anti-epic with a fascinating female protagonist. Oceane is a former sex show performer turned designer, a brilliant, beautiful but reclusive woman who interacts with the world via an array of high-tech toys from her modern London apartment. As the novel begins, her comfortable existence is disturbed by a client who stiffs her on a bill and a letter from an old boyfriend named Walter who supposedly died a decade ago. To assist her in her quest to be paid and to find Walter, Oceane turns to Audley, the cheerfully sinister head of the Dun Waitin Debt Collection Agency. Audley, energetic and eager for unusual assignments, becomes Oceane's eyes and ears, toting devices that allow her to travel vicariously through him. As they set up this system, Oceane recalls life on the job at a sex club in Barcelona where she first met Walter, and Audley describes his failed attempt to sell his services as a mercenary in Zagreb. Finally, Audley travels to Micronesia to track down a missing letter from Walter. Fischer's episodic plotting will frustrate some readers, but his talents as a raconteur and a cynical observer of the absurd are considerable. Oceane's stoic eccentricity and her flair for the dramatic make her a worthy match for the fascinating cast of mostly male supporting characters, and her final realization-"the battle is always with yourself, but that doesn't preclude having an ally"-is curiously moving. 4-city author tour. (Jan.) Forecast: Fischer has yet to match his Booker-shortlisted debut, Under the Frog (1994), but this is a big step up from his most recent story collection (Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid, 2001) and should do much to boost his reputation. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Critique de Kirkus
An agoraphobe in London muses and reminisces. She has much to remember and ponder, most of it very funny indeed. The latest excuse for a plot for Fischer (I Like Being Killed, 2000, etc.) to work his wit on is the morbid houseboundness of Oceane, a young dancer who found opportunity and support in Barcelona's sex industry but who has since moved on to software, where she has made enough in licensing to live pleasantly in her own flat in a marginal but not life-threatening neighborhood. She doesn't leave her building because she doesn't have to and because it's really repulsive in the streets these days. Oceane does do a bit of virtual traveling, and she makes trips to what she calls the "beach," the common area downstairs where the mail sent to long-departed residents of the building sloshes around on the floor like so much flotsam. On one trip to the beach she meets Audley, a bill collector whose target left years ago. Oceane engages him to collect wages owed but unpaid by a business client, and then, when a letter from a ten-year-dead lover arrives, she sends Audley to Barcelona and farther to check that out. The dead letter trips memories of her days as a sex object that fill half the book, and effectively, since live sex is a funny subject and Fischer, when he's on a roll, is about as funny as anyone writing today. Oceane's colleagues are a mostly amiable lot. There are athletic lesbians from Dallas, a breathtakingly gorgeous and epically potent but totally self-involved bodybuilder (her partner in the show), and Heidi, who seems to be, well, a sexual black hole, a woman of spectacular gravity. Audley has his own story to tell involving the Bosnian war and, eventually, Oceane. Nonsense, largely, crafted to frame Fischer's dead-on social observations and murderous wit, and if you're in the mood, it's pretty wonderful. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Critique de Booklist
Fischer has balls; there's no other way to say it. Not only did he rip Martin Amis' Yellow Dog in the Daily Telegraph, he fired away just as his own thoroughly weird new novel was published in England. There's nothing like a little Maileresque growling to fuel literary controversy, so expect the U.S. publication of Fischer's novel to prompt more sniping. The book has a premise to die for: computer designer Oceane never leaves her room in London, preferring to experience the world via the Internet and by inviting tourists over to re-create daily life in her apartment. Then she receives a cable from a dead man and is thrown back into her old world as a sex-show performer in Barcelona. Still she doesn't leave home, thanks to the intrepid work of one Audley of the Dun Waitin Debt Collection Agency. Fischer uses the premise as an excuse to unleash a torrent of often outrageously funny social observations and grumblings about modern life. Unlike his first novel, the superb Under the Frog (1995), in which his raucous wit was used in service of a story, this time he pretty much shoots from the hip. It's a tour de force of a kind, to be sure, and it will be embraced by those of similar mind; others with a fondness for traditional narrative, however, may feel like Fischer felt about Amis: It's like your favorite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating. --Bill Ott Copyright 2004 Booklist
Critique du Library Journal
In his latest work, Fischer (Under the Frog) tells the story of Oceane, an affluent and independent young woman who suffers from an extreme case of Oblomovism. Unlike Ivan Goncharov's master of indolence, however, she's not compelling. Oceane does everything she can to avoid leaving her apartment in London, instead choosing to travel through other people's experiences. What little story there is consists of Oceane's efforts to track down a former lover she had presumed dead. The long middle section is a backward glance at a time when Oceane performed "wet work" at a sex club in Barcelona (if readers can believe that). Amazingly, this section is totally uninteresting. To find the lover, Oceane hires the only noteworthy character, Audley, an oddball professional strong-arm with all the best lines. "Yugo" is the one section worth reading, but readers have to wade through a somnambulistic nightmare to get there, and then the novel drags its way to an unsatisfying ending. Oceane says that "outside is just disappointing," and despite occasional humorous moments, so is this book. Not recommended.-David Hellman, San Francisco State Univ. Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.