[1] The plot revolves around an unnamed narrator who has received a large financial settlement after an accident, and his obsession with recreating half-remembered events from his life before the incident.

[2] Remainder tells the story of an unnamed narrator traumatized by an accident which "involved something falling from the sky".

Eight and a half million pounds richer due to a compensation settlement but hopelessly estranged from the world around him, the protagonist spends his time and money paying others to reconstruct and re-enact vaguely remembered scenes and situations from his past.

These re-enactments are driven by a need to inhabit the world "authentically" rather than in the "second-hand" manner that his traumatic situation has bequeathed him.

[9] Novelist and essayist Zadie Smith wrote a long appreciation of the novel in her 2009 collection Changing My Mind.