I hate writing book reviews, but this one may prove to be useful, and perhaps important, in the future.
The last time I read The Minäverse, I compared it favorably to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This was a mistake, not because neither were favorable, but because it bears little to Hitchhiker’s except for the humor. And Domschot’s humor isn’t the same as Adams’ labyrinthine, dry British wit, although nearly as satirical and Stygian. Domschot nudges the reader to chuckle at Current Year Social Issues and their Proper, Solemn Responses. The approved responses, in reality, are rarely proper nor solemn, but we are often told to think that they are. That’s bollocks. Domschot will text you as such.
No; instead of Hitchiker’s, The Minäverse shares more space with the likes of A Confederacy of Dunces, literarily (?), more than anything else. The cast of oddballs is more fitting there, though The Minäverse, aside from the speculative android technology, is more down-to-earth than Confederacy because the former lacks the latter’s series of outrageous coincidences. Events that occur in The Minäverse are reasonable to a real-life continuum of events in that it’s ordered but not too ordered. Though the chronology jumps back and forth, due to character flashbacks as they give descriptions of life events of book-within-the-book being written, the narrative arc has legibility. This is not unusual for us normies in the real world.
Now that I brought up normies, I have to admit to periods of discomfort at reading how badly the hapless, but hard-working protagonist was treated by her father and his friend and associate, Gilly. The reason for such poor attitudes was unclear, although since the narrative reaches back in the cantankerous duo’s childhood, where they were in fact, just as mean–the reason is…there isn’t any reason. That’s just their personality. Though their attitudes were nowhere near as bad as Collie’s utterly pathological family in Apologize, Apologize!, it was emphatic enough for me to notice. This may have been Domschot’s intention. If it was, it worked. If it wasn’t, it still worked.
I feel that there’s some hidden meaning or code inside The Minäverse that I’m not picking up. I’m not terribly good at uncovering literary connections, so I assume there are some to be made when there may be none. I must do another re-read in the future, where this review, as I predicted in the opening sentence, may come in handy.