Wanted to like it. Never hit the mark.

no spoilers.

I was hoping this would live up to the descriptions I read about this book, but it's not all that intriguing, it's not all that sexy, and it isn't all that smart. Perhaps being a librarian skewed things for me, but the main character seemed like a wuss that I wouldn't want to work with. And while there are some really interesting descriptions of rooms and objects, that wasn't enough to keep me going.
It's not a "bad" book, though. I can imagine someone finding the inventiveness and the "behind the scenes" at a library to be fascinating. Just not the book for me.

Just make sure you have a dictionary with you as you read this. I've never before encountered such vocabulary in a novel!

This is one strange book!

Interesting idea about a librarian employed to track down a beautiful watch, but the execution was lacking. Boring characters, contrived ending, and the whole thing with the 360 pages and little gears just seemed to support that the book was much more a concept than a realized story.

A clever (maybe too clever) tale of adventure involving the relationship between an experienced librarian and his wealthy dilettante employer. Marred, as many novels often are, by a less than satisfactory conclusion... a bit too far-fetched in my opinion.

The basic plot seems simple enough: a rich older gentleman hires a research librarian to help him track down an object that once resided in a compartmentalized case (in fact, the case is the eponymous Case of Curiosities from Kurzweil’s first novel). The search, its results, and its aftermath form the framework of the book. But hidden within this seemingly bland framework is a story as wonderfully complex as an Escher print: characters are not who they seem to be; motivations are called into question; and vital bits of information dance just out of our reach.

Kurzweil is a powerfully evocative writer. His scenes in the research library make you feel like you can reach out and touch the books (and oh! such books: Secret Compartments in Eighteenth-Century Furniture, The Universal Penman, Hints on Husband Catching, or A Manual for Marriageable Misses—and that’s just from the first 30 pages). Jesson’s home is described in all of its opulent splendor, with special attention given to yards of books and the shelving thereof (are you sensing a pattern?). Thankfully, even non-book-oriented places are described well.
When an author is this attentive to setting, character can sometimes be lost. But Kurzweil sidesteps this trap neatly, giving us a cast of exuberantly eccentric characters who nonetheless manage to ring true. Everyone from the petty research library bureaucrats to the narrator’s tempestuous girlfriend is limned with just enough detail to make their various eccentricities believable.

The Grand Complication is a Chinese treasure-box of a novel—just when you’re certain you know what’s going on, you find another hidden compartment with new information in it. The writing is beautiful, the plot is compelling, and the characters are a joy to spend time with. Stop listening to me natter on about it and pick it up for yourself. I think you’ll enjoy the read.

boring, and on, and on, and on, and on......

This is a book that most of the world will not find engaging. Perhaps because it employs the use of Library Science in addition to 19th century history. I quite enjoyed it as a secondary read-having a first edition from when it came out. I would suggest that if you think The Book of Theseus is a good read, that you try this. It may inform you about life before/as it became a bit more distracting.

Poorly written, not much character development, did not care about the story line.

It’s weird when someone gives me a book they think I might like. First of all, how obligated am I to read it right away- or at all? I mean, I have my own reading list to go through. There’s also the issue of what if I don’t end up liking it?

The book in question was “The Grand Complication” by Allen Kurzweil. Someone recommended it to me because the main character was a librarian and had all these inside jokes about libraries and working in one. Luckily, I enjoyed reading it because of those things. It did become too much after awhile and the novelty wore off.

“The Grand Complication” was a mystery, another reason I liked it. But it was the kind of mystery where the characters weren’t really described in depth and the ending was sort of dissatisfactory. So, on one hand, I did enjoy it but would I recommend it? Probably not.

I found this to be a slightly strange book. The dust jacket blurb intrigued me, but the book didn't really go where I thought it was going to from the blurb. The sful characters grew on me until I was curious about how the story would play out. This is a mystery, of a sort, where the search for clues is done in the library catalogs and on the shelves. A rare watch was stolen (decades ago), and now the narrator, a research librarian, has been hired to try to figure out who might have stolen it and where the watch might now be. Or at least that what the story initially appears to be. But after a series of twists, the story turns out to be something quite different (and highly "meta". It was an entertaining story, although I wouldn't put it on my short list for favorite books I've read this year.