What a journey that was. I was enamored on page 1... I like solitude, quirky people, apparently shabby old buildings, and I wanted to be a statue when I was a small child. Then things got bleak and a little grotesque, and I loved the story in a different way. Compellingly honest investigation of memory and grief and engagement. ( )

Bizarre and awesome. ( )

Wow, what a book. A pleasure to read, the delivery is very absorbing. The writer has created a strange but magnificent microcosm where objects are important and time suspended for protagonists, residents of an old mansion.

There's a house with many apartments, a house that has seen years of history, that was once a rich house but then transformed into a tenement. In it live several characters whose fates are interconnected in strange ways. Time is suspended for them, they lead a sort of enchanted life in denial from their past.

At the heart of it is Francis. Francis wears white gloves, steals various objects for a personal collection and is an ex-employee of a wax figure museum, priding himself on the art of inner and outer stillness. The writer has drawn on his experiences and the fascinating story of Madame Tussauds.

The residents lead this half-dead life until a new resident threatens their status quo. With Anna, time is once again set in motion and characters woken from their stagnation, a breath of humanity pushes them out of their doll-like existence. They are forced to face their past and time returns to its normal flow. Their pasts are intrinsically connected and conveyed by objects- objects that Francis collects.

At the heart of it is the mansion and Francis' parents, they are central to revealing the full picture. The characters, whose stories unfold little by little, are all very troubled with deep scars, pathological almost. They have built barriers around themselves. As their stories and stories of the objects unfold,we discover how everything is related and intertwined, and it leads us to the deepest, secret corner of the mansion and the saddest corner of Francis' own heart. Why does he wear gloves? Why is there a woman pretending to be a dog? What happened to Francis' dad? Who is the porter?

This is a wonderful, bizarre, grotesque tale of pain and loss, with a touch of mystery, a fascinating microcosm of stories. It's delightfully whimsical and surreal and mesmerises you into its world from the start. And it has a heart in the end..and hope, a ray of sunshine. I really love how it was written, the strangeness of it all but in the end warmth shines through barriers. But...Opening up requires courage, it means taking off gloves and getting dirty, leaving the heart fragile. I like it. Very unique. ( )

un libro come questo non mi capiterà mai più di leggerlo.
un libro come questo è difficile da commentare.
si può solo provare a rendere l'idea di un libro come questo.
questo libro parla di guanti bianchi come simbolismo di un distaccarsi volontariamente dal mondo.
in questo libro si parla di solitudine collettiva e di immobilità interiore.
questo libro parla di collezioni: di oggetti, e dell'amore racchiuso negli oggetti.
questo libro è fatto di ricordi.
e un libro come questo non si dimentica.
non mi capiterà mai più di leggere un libro come questo. ( )

Intriguing setting and story concept: a building full of misanthropes and cranky lonely hearts gets their predictable, comfortable world turned upside down when a new tenant arrives. Observatory Mansions has a lot going for it: atmospheric, neoveau-gothic backdrop and a cast of quirky, twisted characters who live hiding behind the heavy drapes of regret and longing. Edward Carey tenderly reveals their stories to us in a meandering fashion, as if to ease us into this uncomfortable, mold-ridden world. So I had high expectations; I expected a kind of parallel, grotty magical universe akin to Alice in Wonderland or something written by Shirley Jackson.

Our reluctant hero and narrator is Francis Orme. Francis lives with and cares for his parents and is by profession a "stillness" artist, first working in a wax museum and then as one of those freelance human statues for tourists. When the interloper, Anna Tap, arrives, Francis rallies a few other OM residents, conniving through wonder, fear, and curiosity, to discover who this stranger is. As they investigate her, something happens. They remember things. A kind of fumbling in the dark happens to these sad misfits who have turned their backs to the world, a kind of breaking of the frozen sea inside.

Could totally be profound and deep right? Against this setup, Carey weaves a strange world that is dominated by objects. Francis Orme et al. are the things they carry, the things they own. Francis himself collects objects he finds significant; the last few pages of the novel are devoted to an encyclopedic inventory, a cherished listing of everything in Francis's collection. In essence, his life. One of the more discomfiting things about the new arrival Anna is that she doesn't own very many things (they break into her apartment to snoop around), mostly items of clothing. It baffles Francis. One of the more disturbing characters is Twenty, named so because that's the apartment number she lives in. Twenty owns a dog collar, which in a twisted rendering, defines her identity and behavior. (Yes, a feral dog-woman character lives at Observatory Mansions.)

Where the book failed for me was in the writing style. I couldn't get into it, even though I thoroughly acknowledge the literary necessity of it. Francis Orme likes objects. People seem to be subsumed by the objects around them. So Carey writes in this repetitive, droning style, which reflects the mental state of the narrator and his sense of order and things-in-their-place-ness. You'll get lists and lists of things, which in their own way is the only way our emotionally stunted narrator can tell his story. In that way, the book almost feels like an inventory of human frailties. It's got a very visual and tactile feel to it, which makes me think this might have worked better as a graphic novel. (Do we need all the text and narration?)

Ironically the book's clipped, declarative style is what others found so captivating. Really?! I'm flummoxed. I'm a fan of the postmodern sleight of hand or two, but only when the trickery is filled with a little more intrigue than what we get in this book. You can't carry a story by just throwing a bunch of grotesque characters together, no matter how charming they are. Something needs to happen.

Sadly, I was largely immune to the charms of this oddball, but I admire its ambitions. ( )