Remainder

What a weird cerebral novel that tickles one's brain. Imagine you're in that state where you'd have to learn to walk again. Instead of simply taking an intuitive step, you need to deconstruct all the individual movements into sequences of coordinated muscle contractions. That's how our protagonist seems to be experiencing life, when we meet him at the beginning of the story. He feels like he's faking it, something is off. To familiarise himself with life and living again, he takes an unconventional approach. He picks a place with a sequence of events of the past, and sets out to recreate them. He spends millions to reconstruct the scene and hires a large staff to orchestrate re-enactments. Wanting to get as close as possible to the real thing. Yet instead of having a goal in mind, he's stuck in these loops of reenactments. Unable to break them.

This is a very stylish concept novel, that's obviously not for everyone, but this spoke to me. Of artistic obsession and obsessive perfection, of a system thinking approach to life. Of simply setting out to execute a crazy idea, chasing those moments when your brain buzzes with the pleasure of perfection. Memorable.