THE MIND GAME

Imagine The Magus written by Michael Crichton during a busy week when he was paying even less attention than usual to the niceties of logic and motivation: that’s the essence of Macdonald’s ambitious but ultimately unconvincing debut—a thriller based on the potential uses and abuses of the emerging science of emotions.

At the request of his brilliant and charismatic neuroscience tutor Fieldhead, naive Oxford student Ben agrees to participate in an experiment to map the brain waves of specific emotions via a small sensor attached to the back of his skull. The experiment is to be conducted over a week’s time at a beach resort on the coast of Kenya, all expenses paid, and Ben is encouraged to bring his mysterious, sexy, and oddly mercurial new girlfriend Cara. The first half of the story deals with the experiment itself, as Ben enjoys and then endures a series of unforeseen and increasingly dramatic events that put him through an intense emotional gamut ranging from ecstasy to sheer animal terror. This much of the narrative is straightforward and engaging, if somewhat predictable. The second half deals with the aftermath of the experiment: angry and increasingly paranoid, Ben sets out to discover who’s behind the development of the sensor and what their true purposes are. The plot twists become convoluted, contradictory, and illogical, as if the author were desperately seeking to produce one surprise after another, however implausible. Ultimately, the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief is exhausted. Still, the science that pops up now and again throughout—game theory, neurobiology, evolutionary psychology—is interesting stuff, well presented for lay readers.

A strong concept spoiled by overly complex plotting that strains commonsense and credibility.