To The Last Page

At the very least, the title and author’s curious name should attract attention, but The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder also has a rather good hook. Max Ponder is dead and he has left behind one thousand and six hundred or so volumes of his Catalogue, in which he has meticulously documented the experiences of his life. More than an autobiography, and covering only the first 20 years of his life (he has gone to considerable effort to ensure that he has experienced nothing new in the thirty years it has taken to compile the work), the Catalogue is an attempt to fully document the content of all the combined experience and knowledge contained within one human brain. As if that’s not a strange enough hook to keep you reading, his close friend Adam Last is about to rather messily remove Max’s head from his body, before informing the authorities of his death. The hook is good enough then to grab you right from the start and, fortunately, the rest of the novel lives up to this intriguing...