A fast-paced, engaging look at the natures of faith and science.
A sci-fi parable in which an artificial man searches for answers to some of life’s deepest mysteries.
Pinocchio, the protagonist of Bosze’s fiction debut, views himself as a kind of thinking automaton, a “contraption” with an “amazing onboard computer”—his brain, which comes to conceive of his own existence and then to ask a series of elemental questions about that existence. What’s the point of life? Why are living things here? What’s the nature of reality? What are the limits of identity? Bosze takes his naïve, questing character through a series of encounters with various figures who expound on one aspect of life or another. When, for example, Pinocchio meets Artificial Man, who calmly says he was intelligently assembled, Pinocchio tells him that, in his own case, current scientific ideas stipulate that the opposite is true: “[W]e were just a freaky combination of chemicals in a pool of water that got zapped by lightning,” Pinocchio says, “and voila, four billion years later, here we are, complex biological machines.” (Artificial Man doesn’t seem convinced, and readers clearly aren’t meant to be, either.) A character from the future, named simply 4000 AD, reminds Pinocchio that “it is a common mistake to assume that comprehending some of the ‘magic’ is akin to erasing its mystery. But we found that the more our knowledge grew, the deeper grew the mystery.” Pinocchio moves from one such conversation to another through the effects of something called a Life Simulator, and that all-encompassing reality-replicator brings Pinocchio to many such alternate realities, including a New Earth, where he’s toured around a radically altered world. Bosze skillfully uses all these encounters to frame a number of metaphysical conversations and arrive at some metaphysical answers. “Let’s face it,” he writes, “there is no room for false modesty here—we humans (as far as we know) are the conscious universe. As pathetic as we are, there is no one with anywhere near the ability to challenge our ‘lofty position.’ ” The age-old religious and philosophical questions Bosze rehearses in this way are endlessly fascinating, and his fictional gambit makes his approach palatable to readers at most points on the faith spectrum.
A fast-paced, engaging look at the natures of faith and science.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500572723
Page Count: 168
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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