[.ca] Salamander (ISBN 0771088337)

Amazon.ca:
Salamander, the second novel by Edmonton's Thomas Wharton, takes inspiration from the fictions of Calvino and Borges to tell a highly imaginative adventure yarn about the pleasures of reading, the sensual qualities of the book as object, and the very nature of storytelling. In Wharton's first novel, Icefields, which won the regional Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, a late-19th-century doctor falls into a glacial crevasse in the Canadian Rockies. Salamander, set a century earlier, begins its series of stories within stories with a colonel who comes across a destroyed bookshop during the siege of Quebec. There, he's surprised to encounter an educated young woman who tells him a tale of a Slovakian count whose son has died in battle. To console himself, the count constructs a labyrinthine castle full of ever-shifting mechanized rooms and robots. The count hires a London printer named Nicholas Flood to invent an infinite book, but the young printer's affair with the count's daughter threatens both the project and Flood's future. Wharton's narrative flounders at times by trying to float too many fictional devices and threads at once, but his central idea is delightfully challenging and will appeal to fans of postmodern fiction. The layered story he unveils is a modest model for the sought-after infinite book, one that could contain all possibilities by constantly shape-shifting itself beneath our very eyes. --Nigel Hunt

a story about a forever book:
I read this book while on exchange to Germany. Perhapse it was being in Eurrope that infused the story with magic. The story revolves around no central character but slides from person to person as their importance waxes and wanes. Central to the tale is the quest to print a book capable of describing the universe from the perspective of God. It is not the goal that is interesting in this book but the interplay between past present and future. The way the author mixes his layers of narrative to give the work depth. I recomend this book to anyone who loves books and their stories. I, personally, loved the way the author mixes a vast assortment of stories together so you almost think you've heard of that one before but never told quite that way. A great book.

Sala-meandering:
Ah the reviews...had to read this book. The beginning was interesting. Kind of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang crossed with, heck, I don't know. I guess that's the problem with this book. I read many books every month, however, when I began this one, I was unable to finish it, much less get past the middle. It's hard to describe this book and I dare say most readers will either love it, or toss it after a while. All in all, the plot meandered one way, while I crawled away in another.

The Story Drags Its Tail:
In the early 18th century, a printer named Nicholas Flood is drawn into an eccentric count's fantastical castle of mechanically revolving interiors, for the mission of inventing a special book - one without beginning or end. Flood becomes obsessed, not only with his experiments with magical typesets and pages and bindings, but also with the count's daughter. This leads to his years-long imprisonment in the castle's dungeon, and his deepening insanity. His eventual release co-incides with the discovery that he and his long-lost lover have a daughter. This daughter and he embark on an around-the-globe journey to search for her mother/his lover. Magical though the opening chapters are, the story soon begins to drag. There are too many characters too shallow to care much about, and their numerous frantic quests branch off in too many directions and become tiresome. I was glad to see the tail-end of this 372 page creature finally come into sight and slither away

A Gentle Suggestion...:
I would suggest "A Customer" finish a book before he or she reviews it. Claiming to read "many books every month" would suggest that they would be aware of that while not every book is immediately engaging, a tough start can often result in a better than average finish. Thomas Wharton is one of Canada's most gifted writers of fiction at work today.