Smart and humorous sci-fi about a mysterious sphere—a real ball.
An incredible, science-defying black sphere found in a California watermelon field sparks official paranoia, bizarre experiments, and an unlikely love match between a linguist-prodigy and an IT researcher.
In an arch tone and rich, dense, Nabokov-ian language, author Lakritz presents a meandering “report” on a mysterious Fortean find in a California watermelon patch in the extrapolated future Earth of 2024 and the absurdist reactions it provokes. “The Watermelon,” aka the Sphere, is soccer ball–sized, perfectly black (except when it isn’t) and nonreflective (except when it isn’t). Unknown in origin and intent, incapable of being precisely measured, analyzed or penetrated, and occasionally self-multiplying, teleporting and changing in appearance, seemingly just to frustrate observers, it quietly defies fundamental tenets of physics and reality. As two similar baffling artifacts—one rod-shaped, the other crystallike—turn up in unlikely environments in France and Russia, the Watermelon is judged to be a possible national security issue and locked in a secret underground complex in Virginia. There, a nervous U.S. government shanghais numerous eccentrics and experts—a chess grandmaster, a legendary physicist, professional magicians—to try and solve the enigma. The nameless narrator is one such misfit maven, a computer scientist who falls in love with a fellow investigator, a celebrated but emotionally fragile linguistic prodigy. The storyline is low on incident but bursting with erudition and commentaries about Alan Turing, artificial intelligence, quantum mechanics, encryption mathematics, relationships, Buddhism, the fine line between genius and madness—and a NOVA season’s worth of other deep-thought topics. It’s all relayed in language that straddles science and poetry: “It’s a really elegant design, a web of intricate feedback, of loops on loops on loops. And the control signals that run the loops are the cytokines—Interleukins, Tumor Necrosis, Bradykinin, etc.—a suite of small molecules.” Lakritz even writes a clever Watermelon-ish justification as to why the memoirist’s capacious mind is suddenly so full of esoterica and wonderment, although readers will judge for themselves how much that mitigates the novel’s ambiguous ending.
Smart and humorous sci-fi about a mysterious sphere—a real ball.Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484839546
Page Count: 496
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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