A very low 3 stars, bordering on 2.5...

The problem for me is that I just didn't get the point of this book.

The words themselves flowed well enough, and they didn't get in the way of the story as I often fear in a literary novel. The story was coherent, and worked well enough in that sense.

I simply didn't get insight into the life of Steve Jobs (or if I did, I just didn't care), and the story didn't have enough strength to stand alone.

This was true of the plot, but even more so of the characters. Tom Owens didn't intrigue me as Steve Jobs, largely because I never saw the charisma the character was described as having. Simply seen as a fictional character, he was both unbelievable and uninteresting, which is pretty sad if you think about it.

At the beginning of the book, I had some hope for Jane (Owens' daughter) and her mother, Mary. Jane simply faded into the story (and that may have actually been the point-- if so, I feel terrible for the real life model of Jane, and wonder what her relationship with her aunt the writer must be like.) Mary turned into a whiny caricature as the woman who sent her 10 year old daughter driving solo cross country to live with her father becomes resentful as that daughter chooses to spend time with her father.

The one character I found interesting was Noah, a scientist that chose to continue to follow his own path rather than work with Owens and his company. He was an intriguing secondary character, and I find it telling that I have no idea if he had a real life counterpart.

I admit, I was relieved that the rest of my book club had a similar reaction, whether they were all to familiar with the details of Jobs and his life, or relatively uninformed, at least about this chapter. Whatever the point was, it was well hidden.