Entertaining, femalecentric, escapist reading for poolside.
In this sci-fi novel, a revolutionary new technology has unforeseen consequences as a young scientist creates a “quantum” computer that endows her with unusually good luck.
To earn her master’s degree, youthful Ella Hote, a researcher in the U.S. heartland, has built a suitcase-sized quantum computer. This heavy-duty calculating machine features microchips that, at the subatomic level, can occupy exponential states of being, not just the usual ones or zeroes. But there seems to be a macrocosmic side effect to the quantum components of the computer. When it is switched on and made to calculate, incidents befall Ella that seem especially well-timed and fortuitous—fluky hookups with handsome guys, a job offer, a casino jackpot, and a rainstorm ending a drought. But Ella notices that with each windfall for her comes bad fortune for somebody else—even injury and death at the casino (At one point, she reflects: “I might have been sort of lucky. It seems like people near me might be sort of unlucky”). Ella eventually theorizes that “luck” in the universe must be balanced out like any other force and that a q-computer in the wrong hands could spell disaster. And straightaway, hers gets stolen. If you use Carl Sagan as the benchmark of a scientist-turned–sci-fi author, then real-life physicist Smith (Reality Alternatives, 2016, etc.) might rate somewhat at the light-element end of the periodic table. Still, her novels and series that riff on quantum mechanics and Erwin Schrödinger strangeness are fun little mind tricks and thought experiments, part George Gamow at his more fanciful crossed with chick lit. Smith’s latest offering might be compared to a Rod Serling teleplay except it isn’t even that edgy. A good chunk of the seriocomic narrative takes place in gambling and card-playing milieus (there is only one passage of scientific jargon, plus a short nonfiction essay on principles of quantum computing at the end). But the material is more on the easygoing side of the spectrum rather than a thriller. The wrap-up suggests a variation on It’s a Wonderful Life with quantum mechanics replacing Clarence the angel.
Entertaining, femalecentric, escapist reading for poolside.Pub Date: June 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9973131-4-7
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Quarky Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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