An inventive puzzle of a novel by a writer of singular vision.
A teenager forges an impossible connection with a long-dead Swiss mathematician in Seurat’s debut novel.
Fifteen-year-old Ulrick Kennedy has been having nightmares. He’s a member of the paper airplane team at the elite Percival Lowell High School in New York, and he’s terrified that he’ll mess up in some way to prevent his team from making it to nationals. His father, Wall Street executive Harry Kennedy, is not pleased by his son’s slipping grades—nor by the fact that the boy cares so much about paper airplanes that he’s having stress nightmares. He’d much rather see Ulrick focus on his math studies and learn some skills that may one day serve him on the trading floor. When Ulrick and the rest of the paper airplane team lose a bet concerning the law of fluid dynamics to their eccentric math teacher, Professor Ross, they find themselves forced to take a makeup exam—one that Ulrick is willing to go to any length to pass, including buying and consuming a strange study aid called Altus Aerius Oculus (“High Altitude Eye”) from an apothecary in Chinatown. “The mixture is very selective in that it does not have the slightest effect on memory, but dramatically increases one’s analytical powers,” the woman at the shop tells him. “The active ingredient is a solution from an optic nerve of a Swiss mathematician, I forget his name.” At the same time, incautious traders at Harry’s firm find themselves targeted by the SEC over some blind bid trades that could potentially bring the whole business crashing down. Finally, back in 18th century Berlin, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler is desperate to solve the Great Theorem of Fermat at the behest of Frederick the Great. As time and space begin to converge, Ulrick finds he’s doing much more than studying the laws of physics—he’s accidentally defying them.
Seurat’s prose has a technical precision that complements the many physicists and mathematicians who populate the novel’s pages. He’s particularly adept at evoking the richness of Euler’s Berlin, a place and time in which astrology, science, and the caprices of philosopher kings exert their influences side by side. The author clearly enjoys exploring physical laws, logical paradoxes, and other reality puzzles—at times, the book can feel less like a novel and more like a giant word problem. There are three main narrative threads, all of which take a long time to get going and an even longer time to reveal how they are connected to one another. Fans of this type of cerebral storytelling will enjoy the book’s payoff, so long as they manage to stick with it over its nearly 400 pages. Along the way, they can look forward to unexpected plot twists, impressive evocations of setting and character, and a wry sense of humor—here, Frederick the Great practices the flute: “A shrill, squeaky sound cut through the State Room. It was a complete surprise; even the walls of silver and pink pattern refused to resonate the ugly shriek. His Majesty tried again; he lifted the flute slowly to his mouth, and with distrust blew into the mouthpiece.”
An inventive puzzle of a novel by a writer of singular vision.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2015
ISBN: 9780991323548
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Quadrature Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
