Meet the Deans
“The fact is, the whole of Australia despises my father more than any other man, just as they adore my uncle more than any other man. I might as well set the story straight about both of them . . .”
Heroes or Criminals?
Crackpots or Visionaries?
Families or Enemies?
“. . . Anyway, you know how it is. Every family has a story like this one.”
Most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn’t decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure.
As he recollects the events that led to his father’s demise, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries—about his infamous outlaw uncle Terry, his mysteriously absent European mother, and Martin’s constant losing battle to make a lasting mark on the world he so disdains. It’s a story that takes them from the Australian bush to the cafes of bohemian Paris, from the Thai jungle to strip clubs, asylums, labyrinths, and criminal lairs, and from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition. The result is a rollicking rollercoaster ride from obscurity to infamy, and the moving, memorable story of a father and son whose spiritual symmetry transcends all their many shortcomings.
A Fraction of the Whole is an uproarious indictment of the modern world and its mores and the epic debut of the blisteringly funny and talented Steve Toltz.
“Combines the hilarious high-low reference points of early Martin Amis with the annihilating punk inventiveness of Chuck Palahniuk.” —Best Life
“Wild…an odyssey that’s inspired, sorta stoned, tender, and very funny. Sometimes all at the same time. Toltz’s invention is as breathtaking as the speed of his narrative in a book that seems to have had all the boring parts snipped…There is wit on every page…While 544 pages can make for a long, exhausting ride, you climb out without begrudging Toltz a drop of the ink he’s so satisfyingly spilled.” —Chicago Sun-Times
“Rollicking…laugh-out-loud funny.” —Entertainment Weekly
“A Fraction of the Whole is that rarest of long books–utterly worth it…This book is witty and intellectual, a physical comedy and literary rant all at once. The year is two months old. But this is the book of a two-month-old year. It may well carry the whole thing. The story starts in a prison riot and ends on a plane, and there is not one forgettable episode in between…It reads like Mark Twain with access to an intercontinental Airbus. It’s an episodic story, kite-strung with mind-fucks. This book moves; it bucks and rocks in a world that feels more than a hemisphere away…All 544 pages are so comically dark and inviting that you have no choice but to step into its icy wake.” —Esquire
“A rich father-and-son story packed with incident, humor, and characters reminiscent of the styles of Charles Dickens and John Irving…Occasionally, a big, sprawling first novel fights its way into print with a flourish, at which point its ambition and the eccentricities of its ‘firstness’ can become its best marketing tools. Such is the case with A Fraction of the Whole, a book that is willfully misanthropic and very funny…like Irving, Toltz makes minor characters leap off the page…He’s a superb, disturbing phrasemaker…this long novel, which lives or dies in the brilliance of its writing, has a subtle, compelling structure…A Fraction of the Whole soars like a rocket.” —Los Angeles Times
“Madcap, exhausting, and true in the way the best lies always are.” —New York Observer
“Hold on tight because you are about to ride a juggernaut of words, where things will go by very quickly and you better pay attention…The real pleasure in reading this book is the pace and the language. What Toltz has done masterfully is have his way with every aspect of modern life. He racks ‘em up and knocks ‘em down with a laser wit, a fine turn of phrase and a devastatingly funny outlook on everything human.” —Seattle Times
“Sometimes, it’s the voice of a storyteller as much as the story he or she is telling that drives a novel or a memoir. That’s true for A Fraction of the Whole, Steve Toltz’s rousing and sprawling debut. It’s a novel disguised as a quirky family memoir. It’s a son’s account, written in an Australian prison, of trying to understand his father, who was as paranoid and crazy as he was brilliant: The son cites ‘One of Dad’s favorite ideas that I only truly understood much later: there’s freedom in looking crazy.’ It’s a philosophical and comic adventure set in Australia, Thailand, and Paris. Early on, the narrator observes: ‘Every family has a story like this one.’ Which, of course, is a whopping exaggeration, but that’s a big part of the fun.” —USA Today
“First novels these days too seldom dare to raise their voices above an elegant whisper or an ironic murmur. Not so A Fraction of the Whole, a riotously funny first novel that is harder to ignore than a crate of puppies, twice as playful and just about as messy. This is not a book to be read so much as an experience to be wallowed in. Mr. Toltz’s merry chaos–a mix of metaphysical inquiry, ribald jokes, freakish occurrences and verbal dynamite booming across the page–deserves a place next to A Confederacy of Dunces in a category that might be called the undergraduate ecstatic. A Fraction of the Whole is a sort of Voltaire-meets-Vonnegut tale….The pages teem with elaborate word pictures…This author’s throaty howl sounds more like music than despair.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A sprawling, dizzying debut…Comic drive and Steve Toltz’s far-out imagination carry the epic story . . . a nutty tour de force.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review
“What satirical fun is found on the madcap pages of this rough-and-tumble tale…This hilarious, sneaky smart first novel is as big and rangy as Australia . . . Toltz salts it all with uproarious ruminations on freedom, the soul, love, death, and the meaning of life. This is one rampaging and irresistible debut.” –Booklist, starred review
“Reads like the trajectory of a gleefully crazed Roman candle…a sprawling, entertaining, decidedly quirky, and at times laugh-out-loud funny romp reminiscent of John Irving’s family sagas.” —Library Journal
resides in Sydney, Australia. A Fraction of the Whole is his first novel.
