The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Douglas Adams)

Note:

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is the second novel in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. If you'd like to read my review for the original guide, click here. Enjoy!

     In my mind, there are four essential elements to a good novel. First, an engaging plot line to keep you wondering. Second, great characters to keep you invested. Third, a thought-provoking message or theme, and finally pure entertainment value. Frankly, both The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe fell miserably flat on three of those points- and aced the fourth.
      Let's get the worst bits over with first. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe has a plot which is at best patchy and at worst utterly meaningless. It's rather tough for me to sum up, in fact. You could say that we follow Zaphod Beeblebrox, ex-president of the galaxy, in his attempts to evade the intergalactic police while searching for information about his past. Even that vague plot line, however, is flawed. In truth Zaphod doesn't seem to care much about what happened before part of his brain was locked off, and nobody seems to give much thought to the police. Anticlimax follows anticlimax, and you begin to understand that the author wasn't too focused on making a legible plot. In truth, it's nothing but a farce designed to bring you from one joke to the next.
Even that seems like giving the plot too much credit. I'll tell you now, once you get into this book and realize that everything that happens will end up underwhelming and inconsequential you begin to wonder why you even care. As a result, you don't. 
      Another recurring problem from the last book is the flat, two-dimensional characters. Most of the comedy in The Restaurant at the end of the Universe stems from the characters being oblivious/stupid/repetitive, or simply not caring about anything that goes on around them. This works well for comedy, but it's infuriating for the reader looking for relatable or indeed likeable characters. There's no character development. No lessons are learned. Everyone in the book is so incredibly predictable that the reader doesn't care  about them, either.
     I believe that I said in my review of Will Grayson Will Grayson that the ultimate goal of fiction should be to somehow make the reader think more deeply about their own lives. One way that an author can do this is by inserting themes or morals into their story. Again, Douglas Adams fell tragically short in this regard. If there is a theme, which I somehow doubt, it's that "The world has gone mad." I didn't walk away from this book thinking any deep philosophical thoughts, let me tell you.
      As if that's not enough, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe committed two more heinous crimes to make me even more ticked at it. First, they introduced time travel. Second, they murdered my favourite character. 
      I don’t know about you, but I just can’t accept time travel in any universe. I simply cannot comprehend how anything can function with people zipping in and out of centuries and mucking about in them. In this case, time travel damaged a plot that was already about to keel over and die. 
      Worse, my favourite character died. As previously noted no characters in the book were particularly likeable, but the one who I did somewhat sympathize with died in a blazing explosion and shows no sign of coming back. To add insult to injury, the other characters continued their theme of never caring about anything and didn't even mention him/her after (s)he died. That really ticked me off, to say the least.
     Clearly, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe has some major issues. Shaky plot, shaky characters, no lesson learned. Three of my hastily made benchmarks for a good novel thrown down the drain.
Still, the fourth benchmark entertainment, and that's where The Restaurant at the End of the Universe found it's stride. It's a hilarious read, and while there were some slower moments, it kept me engaged almost throughout.
The best way to understand why would be to read the book. In light of the fact that your shaking your fist at me now because that's a cheap response, I'll save myself the trouble of trying to explain and instead bring some of the book to you.
Let me set the scene. Dim the lights, and transport yourself a couple billion years into the future and a couple million light years away. You're at an extremely fancy restaurant, filled with people. Above you there's a glass roof, showing you the universe in all its glory. You've come through time and space to be here at this moment; the moment when the universe finally, completely, and literally ends.
There's a stage in the centre of the restaurant, where a humanoid entertainer named Max is at this moment listing some of the distinguished guests to the restaurant that night.
“And thirdly,” he said, “thirdly a party of Young Conservatives from Sirius B, are they here?”
A party of smartly dressed dogs stopped throwing rolls at each other and started throwing rolls at the stage. They yapped and barked unintelligibly.
“Yes,” said Max, “well, this is all your fault, you realize that?"
Isn't that gold? In four sentences that bit conveys the tone of the novel. I feel as though there are dozens of satirical references in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe that go right over my head. That one I caught, and appreciated greatly.
In conclusion, the entire Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series has been a rather interesting journey thus far. It’s certainly not for everyone; I had to cast aside my views as to what makes a good book in order to not hate this one from the outset. You'll have to consciously swallow your doubts about the novel in order to keep it an enjoyable read. If you can lose yourself in the humour of it all, however, you'll find that it'll be worth your while.
7.5/10 stars.

Thanks for reading,

-Mark

Will Grayson, Will Grayson (John Green and David Levithan)

It's the same spiel every time I read a John Green book. I get onto this blog, tell you how amazing John Green and his books are, and then I tell you how great the last book of his I read was. Today, it's a little different; I'll be raving not only about John and his book, but about John's co-author David Levithan, as well.
For John, I've nearly run out of words to praise him with. If you want to learn about him, click here and here and here and here and here and even here or here. I'll let previous me and a few other sources do the talking about John Green, which lets me get onto David Levithan.
I don't know too much about Levithan, besides the fact that he's a popular writer among the teen folk. He's written at a prolific pace since 2003, producing twenty novels by my count in twelve years. Many of his books involve gay characters, and he's been credited for changing the stereotype of gay novels from focusing relentlessly on the trials of homosexual characters to viewing them as regular kids with who just so happen to be gay. I'll for sure try to pick up another of his books in the future, as if all of the novels he produces are similar to Will Grayson Will Grayson, then I'll have my reading cut out for me for months to come.
Will Grayson Will Grayson is interesting in that almost all aspects of physical plot are cut out. At it's heart, it's about people's relationships with one another. There is no grand road trip or search for someone à la Paper Towns, or struggle against disease as in The Fault In Our Stars, just people struggling to understand each other with the fat cut off. Sure, that fat is often used to convey a message more effectively or to make a book more entertaining, but for whatever reason I didn't feel it was needed in Will Grayson Will Grayson. There was little to go on but the characters, and this made the characters so much more interesting to the reader.
The two primary characters in the book are, wait for it, Will Grayson and Will Grayson. The first of those is a high school student who's two main rules in life are don't care too much and shut up. Most definitely a result of this, he has approximately two friends. The first is the possibly-gay Jane, for whom Will has... mixed feelings. The second is the extremely gay in both senses of the word Tiny, who provides the only real plot of the story by putting on a musical all about his life.
Will Grayson the second, on the other hand, is a depressed, angry, and scornful gay person. When it comes to friends, he has none who would stand by his side in the real world. He does, however, have Isaac. Isaac is a boy Will met online, and the only ray of light in Will's otherwise dark and gloomy life.
Of course, near the middle of the book, the two Will Grayson's meet, and they're lives start to change.
Did I say before that the lack of conventional plot allows for more focused exploration of the characters, which makes them much more interesting? I did? Well, I'm saying it again anyways. It cannot be stressed enough; Green and Levithan nailed their characters.
There's not a character in this book who doesn't have multiple sides of their personality revealed. Both Will's, of course, have opposite, more sensitive sides. Tiny is explored very deeply, just as much as the Will Graysons are. In exploring these characters, the reader starts to relate to them.
So much so in fact that I feel the entirety of myself is hidden in the characters. I'm a good part Tiny, with a fair helping of Will Grayson the first thrown in there. I'm a dash of Jane, and a sprinkle of the other Will Grayson.
With so many characters being so relatable, I could almost feel that I was learning the lessons they learned along with them. Through fiction, I thought more deeply about my own life, which I honestly think should be the objective of fictional writing. Rarely do I come across a book like this. 9/10 stars, easily.
The last thing I want to talk about before I go is the contrast between John Green on his own and David Levithan with John Green. I've read no other works by Levithan, but I did get a bit of a feel for him because of how he affected Green.
For one, the book gained a larger sense of realism then any of the other John Green books I've read. This is not only in the lack of an extraordinary event to set the ball rolling, but also in the characters. I've heard people say that John's characters speak too eloquently for their age, don't act quite how they should. A large amount of them, it's said, seem to be amateur philosophers. In Will Grayson Will Grayson there was still a bit of that, but it was noticeably toned down. You should note that I'm usually all for slightly unbelievable elements if it strengthens the story, but I did feel that the down-to-earth nature of Will Grayson Will Grayson was the best thing for it.
Also, the story was considerably darker then other Green novels. Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and An Abundance of Katherines are all generally cheery novels. Sure there are problems, sure the characters are often upset, but overall the story is one grand adventure. Even in The Fault in our Stars, it's a love story more then anything. They keep their chins up.
Not always so in Will Grayson Will Grayson. One of them, as I said, is depressed and angry. All of the characters are imperfect, while some are downright treacherous. It doesn't all work out in the end.
This, however, just leads to a more engaging plot which you can lose yourself in. This is a book that kept me up at night. This is a book that I forced myself to stop reading at times just so that I could savour it. This is a book that I recommend to everyone.
Let's see what John Green comes up with next.

Thanks for reading,

-Mark