“Seldom has history been so inextricably intertwined with the history of science,” comments Guedj. And seldom have such...
After his fine romp-cum-history-of-mathematics (The Parrot’s Theorem, p. 889), Guedj brings us another science-novel, this one set during the French Revolution and telling how the metric system came to be.
Based on reason (and wild excesses of same), the Revolution occurred in an age that craved the universal, ideal, and absolute. Little wonder, then—when “seven or eight hundred different units of measurement” were in use—that the revolutionists set out not just to end the monarchy but to unify weights and measures once and for all. Nor is it surprising, either, that they based their thinking not on something artificial or made up, but that “they chose the earth itself as the standard—the earth, shared by all men, invariable, and universal.” In short, they would measure the earth’s quarter meridian, divide by ten million, and—presto!—the meter would exist. With scrupulous detail and passionate attentiveness, Guedj follows the two scientists appointed to the huge task of measurement—Pierre Méchain and Jean-Baptiste Delembre—as they go on their individual six-year odysseys, one starting in Barcelona and measuring north, the other in Dunkirk and measuring south. These real-life scientists will indefatigably climb mountains and bell towers to take endless sightings with the newly invented and incredibly accurate “repeating circle”; will be imprisoned, threatened by mobs, struck by injury—and even persecuted by the Terror itself during their 1792–98 labors, all the while discoursing with the likes of Lavoisier, Condorcet, Borda, d’Alembert, and Laplace. Patience can be helpful as the increments of narrative tick by, but rewards are plentiful, too, in seeing the Revolution, for example, from these scientists’ unusual vantage, or in living through the nightmarish possibility that the entire great project might crumble due to a single mismeasurement back at the very beginning.
“Seldom has history been so inextricably intertwined with the history of science,” comments Guedj. And seldom have such interesting books as his come from that union.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-226-31030-2
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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