You're Going To Hate 'TheMystery.doc,' And That's OK
Matthew McIntosh's fractured and fracturing 1,600-page tale of a writer with amnesia and a missing manuscript isn't fun, and it probably isn't supposed to be. But it is magnificently weird.
In the press materials for Matthew McIntosh's new 1,660-page brick of a very literary novel, TheMystery.doc, the publisher says not to be fooled by the book's length. Sure, it weighs 4 1/2 pounds, but they cheerfully insist that "it reads as quickly as a novel of a more conventional length."
That is a lie. It doesn't read like a traditional novel — not as quickly, not as smoothly, not as satisfyingly, none of it. McIntosh's second book reads shattered. It reads fragmentary. It reads like trying
