The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

by Tom Rachman

Enduring life in an isolated bookstore on the Welsh countryside, young American woman Tooly reflects on her childhood under the care of bandits before a long-lost boyfriend offers clues to help her with unanswered questions.

Taken from home as a girl, Tooly found herself spirited away by a group of seductive outsiders, implicated in capers from Asia to Europe to the United States. But who were her abductors? Why did they take her? What did they really want? Now the American owner of an isolated bookshop in the Welsh countryside, Tooly conducts a life full of reading, but with few human beings. Books are safer than people, who might ask awkward questions about her life. Then startling news arrives from a long-lost boyfriend in New York, raising old mysteries and propelling her on a quest around the world in search of answers.

• ISBN10: 0679643656
• ISBN13: 9780679643654
• Publish Date: 10 June 2014 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 20 April 2017
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Dial Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[Lianne]

I was approved of an ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. This review in its entirety was originally posted at caffeinatedlife.net: http://www.caffeinatedlife.net/blog/2014/06/02/review-the-rise-fall-of-great-powers/

The premise of this novel sounded promising but ultimately felt lacklustre. The first few chapters set up the mystery of Tooly’s life in an interesting manner but after a few more chapters, I felt like my confusion was not abating while not getting as much answers for the effort, which then made for an irritating reading experience. I don’t mind stories that bound back and forth between time periods but I couldn’t see much of the connection between one time line and another save for the fact that all of these fragments make up Tooly’s life.

Unfortunately I did not find the characters interesting either. Despite of the mystery surrounding Tooly’s very strange childhood, she did not resonate to me as a character, as though her personality was just as lost as her past. Other characters didn’t resonate much either, save for Humphrey. The only element of this novel that I enjoyed (and that saved it from a lower rating to be honest) was the Humphrey-Tooly relationship which was especially evident in the 2011 storyline. Amidst the fluctuations of almost all of the adults in Tooly’s life growing up, her relationship with Humphrey was the most solid; she learned from him and he was her companion.

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers ultimately was just a convoluted read. I never connected with the characters, the flashbacks and flashforwards were not always intriguing or added to the overarching story, and the final big revelation behind mystery was also a letdown; I was expecting a much more complex explanation behind the constant moving around, switching of hands, even a far more sinister explanation than the one readers got. Tooly’s bookshop was a nice setting amidst all of the globe-trotting, though I’m not entirely sure why the novel is considered really bookish; names and titles are dropped but they only serve to bind the characters of Humphrey and Tooly together.