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The Explanation for Everything
The Explanation for Everything explores humankind's insatiable search for meaning, the risks and rewards of faith, and the salvation that love can offer us all.
Lauren Grodstein's New York Times bestselling novel A Friend of the Family was hailed as "such an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals" (The Washington Post). Now, Grodstein has created another insightful and gripping morality tale about love, loss, and faith.
Biology professor Andy Waite is finally beginning to pick up the pieces years after a drunk driver killed his wife. Between finishing his research and taking care of his young daughters, he has reasons to get through the day, and most days he does without falling apart. That is, until a young female student enters his life and turns it upside down. Melissa Potter is a passionate evangelist hoping to write the definitive paper about Creationism. She makes Andy's Darwinian certainty - and his grief - a personal challenge. As she chips away at his fervent atheism, he begins to fully realize the emptiness that he's been living with for too long.
But when Andy's relationship with Melissa becomes romantic, the boundaries he's worked so hard to maintain - personally and professionally - blur. And soon it's unclear what kind of deliverance he needs.
The Explanation for Everything explores humankind's insatiable search for meaning, the risks and rewards of faith, and the salvation that love can offer us all.
Lauren Grodstein's New York Times bestselling novel A Friend of the Family was hailed as "such an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals" (The Washington Post). Now, Grodstein has created another insightful and gripping morality tale about love, loss, and faith.
Biology professor Andy Waite is finally beginning to pick up the pieces years after a drunk driver killed his wife. Between finishing his research and taking care of his young daughters, he has reasons to get through the day, and most days he does without falling apart. That is, until a young female student enters his life and turns it upside down. Melissa Potter is a passionate evangelist hoping to write the definitive paper about Creationism. She makes Andy's Darwinian certainty - and his grief - a personal challenge. As she chips away at his fervent atheism, he begins to fully realize the emptiness that he's been living with for too long.
But when Andy's relationship with Melissa becomes romantic, the boundaries he's worked so hard to maintain - personally and professionally - blur. And soon it's unclear what kind of deliverance he needs.
The Explanation for Everything explores humankind's insatiable search for meaning, the risks and rewards of faith, and the salvation that love can offer us all.
338 pages, Hardcover
First published September 3, 2013
81 people are currently reading
1532 people want to read
About the author
Lauren Grodstein
11 books408 followersLauren Grodstein is the author of the upcoming A Dog in Georgia, the Read with Jenna pick We Must Not Think of Ourselves and the New York Times bestselling A Friend of the Family.. She directs the MFA program at Rutgers University-Camden.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 193 reviews
November 25, 2015
UPDATE: 11/25/2015 .....
Lauren Grodstein is a terrific writer. You are missing out if you have not read her books.
A birdie just told me -Lauren has a new book coming out in 2017! So???
Why not consider reading "The Explanation for Everything" or "A Friend In the Family", first?
I can't wait for her new release!!!!! :)
Original!
Intellectually engaging!
Written with sensitivity!
Deeply felt!
Extraordinary study between believers of and non-believers!
Here is a sample dialogue between two characters in the book:
Melissa Potter: evangelical student
Dr. Andy Waite: (Biology Professor)
Melissa: "Its so scary how Darwinists refuse the simple answer when the complicated one will do."
Professor Waite: "Its even more crazy how intelligent designers refuse to use science when a magic wand will do."
.....For an instant they smiled at each other.
****There is a very touching story (within this story) about a Korean Family. My entire 'being' connected with the character Mrs. Lim (A Korean Mother).
Mrs. Lim says:
" I do not wish that Anita were at my Church by my side so she could walk with God. I wish she were here so that I could spend some time with my daughter."
I absolutely LOVED "A Friend of the Family"
and, I absolutely LOVED "The Explanation of Everything". (both very different types of stories) --Yet with 'both' books she writes with a 'slow-burning' brilliance!!!
I'm a ***HUGE FAN*** of Lauren Grodstein!!!!!
Lauren Grodstein is a terrific writer. You are missing out if you have not read her books.
A birdie just told me -Lauren has a new book coming out in 2017! So???
Why not consider reading "The Explanation for Everything" or "A Friend In the Family", first?
I can't wait for her new release!!!!! :)
Original!
Intellectually engaging!
Written with sensitivity!
Deeply felt!
Extraordinary study between believers of and non-believers!
Here is a sample dialogue between two characters in the book:
Melissa Potter: evangelical student
Dr. Andy Waite: (Biology Professor)
Melissa: "Its so scary how Darwinists refuse the simple answer when the complicated one will do."
Professor Waite: "Its even more crazy how intelligent designers refuse to use science when a magic wand will do."
.....For an instant they smiled at each other.
****There is a very touching story (within this story) about a Korean Family. My entire 'being' connected with the character Mrs. Lim (A Korean Mother).
Mrs. Lim says:
" I do not wish that Anita were at my Church by my side so she could walk with God. I wish she were here so that I could spend some time with my daughter."
I absolutely LOVED "A Friend of the Family"
and, I absolutely LOVED "The Explanation of Everything". (both very different types of stories) --Yet with 'both' books she writes with a 'slow-burning' brilliance!!!
I'm a ***HUGE FAN*** of Lauren Grodstein!!!!!
August 6, 2014
I really need to stop reading books because I like their covers (yeah, yeah, I know the "don’t judge" adage). I picked this up and almost immediately wished I had not done so. Not only are the characters superficial and stereotypical and rather silly, but the situations in which they find themselves are stupid and contrived.
I found every discussion that Andy had with Melissa to be implausible and ridiculous. Instead of refuting her preaching (which is just an excuse for Grodstein to evangelize at the reader), Andy blanks out and thinks about Rosenblum and forgets EVERYTHING HE KNOWS ABOUT DARWINISM. This is a PhD holding professor who is up for tenure and yet he is unable to articulate a single portion of his course “There is no God” when confronted with a pudgy, plain girl with whom he inexplicably wants to have sex.
Similarly, when Sheila questions his research, instead of explaining, Andy’s interior monologue is: “He wished he was better at explaining this, it was hard for laypeople to separate biology from sociology, he knew that, but he still wished Sheila had just a slightly more sophisticated understanding of the way animal research worked.” What? Really, he is a professor who does research at an undergraduate college. HIS JOB IS TO EXPLAIN THIS STUFF. Instead, he is just repeatedly inarticulate.
I found the Anita/Hank story to be beyond believable. Not only does this amazingly intelligent girl drop everything to be super religious, but once she does so her mother sees her as “demure, friendly, and most of all, smiling” instead of the dour studying girl she used to be (wow, just for a moment can we all think about the TERRIBLE anti-feminist subtext here: she is a mean, sad, driven bitch who falls in love and becomes a 1950s housewife who no longer has any ambition of her own but only wants to follow her preacher husband to far off Africa and do his bidding). And then, to top it off, when her mentor/professor follows up with her about the $200,000 grant she basically stole, he is accused of stalking her. Further, her conversion has been so swift and so complete that she doesn’t even tell her new fiance about her former life because SCIENTIFIC STUDY IS SO BAD that when Rosenblum leaks the info they have a catastrophic fight and she ends up committing suicide. What? Really? On which planet is this even remotely believable? Oh yeah, and then (of course), her parents sue Rosenblum and WIN. So not only is the whole thing a HUGE CROCK OF UNBELIEVABLE SHIT but it’s his fault to the tune of $13 million.
I was amazed at the biology department dinner party not only because all of the conversation was so stiff and forced, but also because they all gang up on Andy in a “we are atheists” chant (almost). This is sort of fine, except that later the line is that Hank starts ranting about evolution in his courses and “grad student after grad student slipped out of the classroom” presumably because they are all too religious to want to listen to him. Pick one or the other Grodstein, the world is either full of too many atheists or not enough, but you can’t have both.
There were also a few stupid editor notes.
1. When he gets the first letter from Rosenblum, he calls it a “large envelope”, but it turns out to only contain one (very short) note.
2. He has trouble figuring out his daughter’s acronyms in her messaging but these are omnipresent (so much so that Rosenblum even uses ‘yr’ in his note).
3. It takes him 2 WEEKS to read a short book about God. Yep, 2 WEEKS reading until the wee hours of the morning every night. Huh? How did he possibly get through grad school if he only reads about 3 pages an hour?
4. After the dinner party (which takes an hour to get to), Sheila and Andy have one seven line conversation and they arrive at her house. Clearly, he knew a short cut that made the drive home, much shorter.
5. And once home, he tells Melissa he has not been drinking (and she is naïve enough to believe him), but then he kisses her. Are you gonna tell me she couldn’t taste the booze on his breath?
6. We only ever meet 2 students in the whole fucking book. Yep, two.
7. Rosenblum’s death was not a surprise for me and it shouldn’t have been a surprise to Andy. Not only was he supposed to have been a big bestselling author and Princeton professor, but there was scandal. Andy would have stumbled upon an obit or someone, somewhere would have sent him an email when it had happened.
Overall, the only redeeming part of the book is that Andy is un-converted at the end. I was glad that he recognized that instead of finding God, he was going through a sort of mid-life crisis. I just wish Grodstein had the balls to call it this; instead she leaves the future vague to appeal to the sappy religious readers to whom this shit will appeal.
I found every discussion that Andy had with Melissa to be implausible and ridiculous. Instead of refuting her preaching (which is just an excuse for Grodstein to evangelize at the reader), Andy blanks out and thinks about Rosenblum and forgets EVERYTHING HE KNOWS ABOUT DARWINISM. This is a PhD holding professor who is up for tenure and yet he is unable to articulate a single portion of his course “There is no God” when confronted with a pudgy, plain girl with whom he inexplicably wants to have sex.
Similarly, when Sheila questions his research, instead of explaining, Andy’s interior monologue is: “He wished he was better at explaining this, it was hard for laypeople to separate biology from sociology, he knew that, but he still wished Sheila had just a slightly more sophisticated understanding of the way animal research worked.” What? Really, he is a professor who does research at an undergraduate college. HIS JOB IS TO EXPLAIN THIS STUFF. Instead, he is just repeatedly inarticulate.
I found the Anita/Hank story to be beyond believable. Not only does this amazingly intelligent girl drop everything to be super religious, but once she does so her mother sees her as “demure, friendly, and most of all, smiling” instead of the dour studying girl she used to be (wow, just for a moment can we all think about the TERRIBLE anti-feminist subtext here: she is a mean, sad, driven bitch who falls in love and becomes a 1950s housewife who no longer has any ambition of her own but only wants to follow her preacher husband to far off Africa and do his bidding). And then, to top it off, when her mentor/professor follows up with her about the $200,000 grant she basically stole, he is accused of stalking her. Further, her conversion has been so swift and so complete that she doesn’t even tell her new fiance about her former life because SCIENTIFIC STUDY IS SO BAD that when Rosenblum leaks the info they have a catastrophic fight and she ends up committing suicide. What? Really? On which planet is this even remotely believable? Oh yeah, and then (of course), her parents sue Rosenblum and WIN. So not only is the whole thing a HUGE CROCK OF UNBELIEVABLE SHIT but it’s his fault to the tune of $13 million.
I was amazed at the biology department dinner party not only because all of the conversation was so stiff and forced, but also because they all gang up on Andy in a “we are atheists” chant (almost). This is sort of fine, except that later the line is that Hank starts ranting about evolution in his courses and “grad student after grad student slipped out of the classroom” presumably because they are all too religious to want to listen to him. Pick one or the other Grodstein, the world is either full of too many atheists or not enough, but you can’t have both.
There were also a few stupid editor notes.
1. When he gets the first letter from Rosenblum, he calls it a “large envelope”, but it turns out to only contain one (very short) note.
2. He has trouble figuring out his daughter’s acronyms in her messaging but these are omnipresent (so much so that Rosenblum even uses ‘yr’ in his note).
3. It takes him 2 WEEKS to read a short book about God. Yep, 2 WEEKS reading until the wee hours of the morning every night. Huh? How did he possibly get through grad school if he only reads about 3 pages an hour?
4. After the dinner party (which takes an hour to get to), Sheila and Andy have one seven line conversation and they arrive at her house. Clearly, he knew a short cut that made the drive home, much shorter.
5. And once home, he tells Melissa he has not been drinking (and she is naïve enough to believe him), but then he kisses her. Are you gonna tell me she couldn’t taste the booze on his breath?
6. We only ever meet 2 students in the whole fucking book. Yep, two.
7. Rosenblum’s death was not a surprise for me and it shouldn’t have been a surprise to Andy. Not only was he supposed to have been a big bestselling author and Princeton professor, but there was scandal. Andy would have stumbled upon an obit or someone, somewhere would have sent him an email when it had happened.
Overall, the only redeeming part of the book is that Andy is un-converted at the end. I was glad that he recognized that instead of finding God, he was going through a sort of mid-life crisis. I just wish Grodstein had the balls to call it this; instead she leaves the future vague to appeal to the sappy religious readers to whom this shit will appeal.
September 7, 2013
I've often remarked that at times I just want to enjoy a book or movie simply for what it is without thinking about heavier issues, or dissecting how plausible the plot may actually be. Sometimes I just want to laugh, or cry, or be transported into some fantastical place or time, without considering deeper meaning. The converse, however, is also true—sometimes I enjoy books or movies that make me think, that stretch my mind beyond simply appreciating the talent that went into the work's creation, and perhaps force me to consider different perspectives or ideas.
Lauren Grodstein's new novel, The Explanation for Everything, definitely falls into the latter category. Andy Waite is a biologist at a small New Jersey college. He is a diehard evolutionist, having learned from one of the foremost experts on the topic while he was a graduate student at Princeton. But Andy's life hasn't gone the way he planned—he's raising his two young daughters on his own following the sudden death of his wife several years ago, he's worried about getting tenure, and he's trying to make the results of his years of research make enough sense to be worthy of a major scientific grant.
Andy teaches a biology course called "There is No God." While rarely students try to challenge what he teaches, every so often he has a student express dissent about the Darwinian and other scientific theories he introduces them to. One day he is approached by Melissa Potter, a transfer student, who asks Andy to direct her independent study. But it isn't any theory Melissa is interested in pursuing—her independent study will focus on intelligent design, the idea that the creation of the universe and science must have been the work of an intelligent designer, or God. Melissa's course of study is in direct contrast to everything Andy has taught and believed for years.
As Andy struggles with the everyday challenges of raising two daughters on his own, trying to further his career, and dealing with the memories of his wife, he begins to wonder if everything that he has put his belief in might not be as black and white as he has thought. Is there a God? Should we put our faith in a creator, instead of in science? This book explores both sides of the debate, and wonders if a little faith is truly what we need to survive.
I was tremendously intrigued by this book and think Lauren Grodstein is a tremendously talented storyteller. I liked the fact that she explored the ideas of evolutionism and intelligent design without ultimately saying whether one is right and one is wrong, instead allowing you to make your own conclusions. While Andy at times was a little bit passive (understandably), I thought the struggles his character went through were moving and truly human. And when the book dealt with his own questions of faith and trust, the story really resonated with me.
Although there were a few subplots in the book, one involving Andy's neighbor and one involving an outspoken student, that I didn't feel were fleshed out as much as the rest of the story, I found this book very compelling without being heavy handed. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Grodstein's previous novel, A Friend of the Family, one which also raised questions for me while drawing me into the plot, I am a definite fan of her storytelling ability, and I look forward to continuing to watch her career progress.
Lauren Grodstein's new novel, The Explanation for Everything, definitely falls into the latter category. Andy Waite is a biologist at a small New Jersey college. He is a diehard evolutionist, having learned from one of the foremost experts on the topic while he was a graduate student at Princeton. But Andy's life hasn't gone the way he planned—he's raising his two young daughters on his own following the sudden death of his wife several years ago, he's worried about getting tenure, and he's trying to make the results of his years of research make enough sense to be worthy of a major scientific grant.
Andy teaches a biology course called "There is No God." While rarely students try to challenge what he teaches, every so often he has a student express dissent about the Darwinian and other scientific theories he introduces them to. One day he is approached by Melissa Potter, a transfer student, who asks Andy to direct her independent study. But it isn't any theory Melissa is interested in pursuing—her independent study will focus on intelligent design, the idea that the creation of the universe and science must have been the work of an intelligent designer, or God. Melissa's course of study is in direct contrast to everything Andy has taught and believed for years.
As Andy struggles with the everyday challenges of raising two daughters on his own, trying to further his career, and dealing with the memories of his wife, he begins to wonder if everything that he has put his belief in might not be as black and white as he has thought. Is there a God? Should we put our faith in a creator, instead of in science? This book explores both sides of the debate, and wonders if a little faith is truly what we need to survive.
I was tremendously intrigued by this book and think Lauren Grodstein is a tremendously talented storyteller. I liked the fact that she explored the ideas of evolutionism and intelligent design without ultimately saying whether one is right and one is wrong, instead allowing you to make your own conclusions. While Andy at times was a little bit passive (understandably), I thought the struggles his character went through were moving and truly human. And when the book dealt with his own questions of faith and trust, the story really resonated with me.
Although there were a few subplots in the book, one involving Andy's neighbor and one involving an outspoken student, that I didn't feel were fleshed out as much as the rest of the story, I found this book very compelling without being heavy handed. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Grodstein's previous novel, A Friend of the Family, one which also raised questions for me while drawing me into the plot, I am a definite fan of her storytelling ability, and I look forward to continuing to watch her career progress.
March 10, 2014
I was drawn to the premise of the book. I was looking forward to the debate between Andy and Melissa between God and Darwin. The irony here is the book offers no real explanation of anything. Andy's religous conversion felt forced and artificial. His infatuaion or love of Melissa is equally inexplicable. His conversation with her about God was unintelligent and well just plain silly. I think that there are Lionels and Andys in the world ... Atheists who find God and the faithful who lose their faith. This novel, does not address, let alone explain either phenomenon. I don't think that a biologist who teaches a class commonly referred to as There is No God, would be swept into religous beliefs by a young, pudgy student and a sugary, sentmental, rainbow covered book about God. It really came down to death. His religous tansformation does not ring true. He allows his daughter to use baptism as a means to have a
special day. His newly found faith does not quiet the discontent he struggles with in his life. Andy Waite the atheist, opines that religion is a crutch people use to deal with death. In the end it is not God he turns to, it is not faith that he finds. he really just bends down and picks up the death-crutch in the hopes he will unite with his wife in the after life.
special day. His newly found faith does not quiet the discontent he struggles with in his life. Andy Waite the atheist, opines that religion is a crutch people use to deal with death. In the end it is not God he turns to, it is not faith that he finds. he really just bends down and picks up the death-crutch in the hopes he will unite with his wife in the after life.
November 15, 2013
This week I read another book club selection: The Explanation for Everything by Lauren Grodstein.
I truly had high hopes for this book because it explores one of the most polarizing debates: evolution v. intelligent design. Professor Andy Waite, a biology professor and diehard evolutionist at a liberal arts college in New Jersey, is challenged to sponsor an independent study for Melissa Potter. Melissa's goal is to write the definitive paper on intelligent design {and save Andy's soul}. Melissa is dared to make the request by Simon, a fellow member of Campus Crusade for Christ and one of Andy's 400 level students in his There Is No God class.
Andy has issues. He still grieves over his wife Louisa's tragic death caused by a drunk driver. The tragedy impacts his scholarship years later as he's attempting to prove a genetic element to alcoholism which would label it an incurable disease. Andy's application for a grant from the NSF and possibly his tenure depends upon the success of proving his theory in the lab. At this point he doesn't want to lose his job and uproot his tween daughters.
I couldn't believe how easily Andy is influenced by Melissa. She lacks beauty, grace, and sophistication (I include this because he is attracted to her and she's described as being very unattractive). Yet her arguments are much stronger than Andy's, and Andy stammers and cannot seem to defend his argument around her. If most of the dialogue had been a Lincoln-Douglas value debate, Melissa would have won easily. Plus, he doesn't seem to notice very much in his environment aside from women's hair. How can he not notice that his daughters are outgrowing their clothes and that the oldest one needs a training bra? He seems easily influenced: one minute he begins to believe in God through Melissa's arguments, and the next minute he waffles as he reads a transcript from his former graduate school mentor at Princeton. I must admit that I also can't get past his attraction to Melissa and an alcoholic neighbor (especially given his wife's tragic death), but then again maybe it's his obsession with hair. The limited omniscient narrator doesn't help the reader understand what's truly going on with him.
Some of the lesser themes like appropriate student-teacher relationships (there is a very unrealistic subplot concerning Andy's mentor and a tragedy with one of his female graduate students that ended his academic career), questions about God's nature (mercy v. justice), and forgiveness are better written than the book's central theme. I found Andy's character unbelievable for most of the book as well as unlikable. His ability to forgive at the end of the book helps redeem him a little in my eyes.
DISCLOSURE:
This book is definitely polarizing and many of the issues in the book are either/or. I'm a Christian and I do believe in intelligent design, and I also believe the viability of some of Darwin's theories. I believe that science is a gift from God that allows us to better understand His creation like math explains how His creation is organized. I also believe that God is just and merciful. However I did not let my beliefs influence how I reviewed this book.
I truly had high hopes for this book because it explores one of the most polarizing debates: evolution v. intelligent design. Professor Andy Waite, a biology professor and diehard evolutionist at a liberal arts college in New Jersey, is challenged to sponsor an independent study for Melissa Potter. Melissa's goal is to write the definitive paper on intelligent design {and save Andy's soul}. Melissa is dared to make the request by Simon, a fellow member of Campus Crusade for Christ and one of Andy's 400 level students in his There Is No God class.
Andy has issues. He still grieves over his wife Louisa's tragic death caused by a drunk driver. The tragedy impacts his scholarship years later as he's attempting to prove a genetic element to alcoholism which would label it an incurable disease. Andy's application for a grant from the NSF and possibly his tenure depends upon the success of proving his theory in the lab. At this point he doesn't want to lose his job and uproot his tween daughters.
I couldn't believe how easily Andy is influenced by Melissa. She lacks beauty, grace, and sophistication (I include this because he is attracted to her and she's described as being very unattractive). Yet her arguments are much stronger than Andy's, and Andy stammers and cannot seem to defend his argument around her. If most of the dialogue had been a Lincoln-Douglas value debate, Melissa would have won easily. Plus, he doesn't seem to notice very much in his environment aside from women's hair. How can he not notice that his daughters are outgrowing their clothes and that the oldest one needs a training bra? He seems easily influenced: one minute he begins to believe in God through Melissa's arguments, and the next minute he waffles as he reads a transcript from his former graduate school mentor at Princeton. I must admit that I also can't get past his attraction to Melissa and an alcoholic neighbor (especially given his wife's tragic death), but then again maybe it's his obsession with hair. The limited omniscient narrator doesn't help the reader understand what's truly going on with him.
Some of the lesser themes like appropriate student-teacher relationships (there is a very unrealistic subplot concerning Andy's mentor and a tragedy with one of his female graduate students that ended his academic career), questions about God's nature (mercy v. justice), and forgiveness are better written than the book's central theme. I found Andy's character unbelievable for most of the book as well as unlikable. His ability to forgive at the end of the book helps redeem him a little in my eyes.
DISCLOSURE:
This book is definitely polarizing and many of the issues in the book are either/or. I'm a Christian and I do believe in intelligent design, and I also believe the viability of some of Darwin's theories. I believe that science is a gift from God that allows us to better understand His creation like math explains how His creation is organized. I also believe that God is just and merciful. However I did not let my beliefs influence how I reviewed this book.
September 12, 2013
I was very excited to see a new book from Lauren Grodstein. I was a huge fan of her last book, A Friend of the Family and her short story collection. All of her work has an amazing capacity to move me emotionally. And this book was certainly an emotional read. It was also a quick read, and I enjoyed exploring the topics of faith and science through a fictional narrative.
I found the protagonist, Andy, a bit frustrating and often didn't see where he was coming from. In A Friend of the Family, the protagonist spun out of control and made tragically bad decisions, but there was a clear method to his madness. There seemed to be something missing in Andy, a devout atheist biology professor still grieving for his wife who was killed by a drunk driver almost a decade ago, who is swept away by a bulky religious undergraduate who makes the case for intelligent design. Everyone in this book seems to go through rapid transformations in thought about God that seem unearned and too quick. It seemed very unrealistic that such strong beliefs could be altered by so little. Maybe that's how faith works, it can you sweep you up in an instant. In this case, faith is often tied to characters falling in love and experiencing something supernatural. The book held my interest, but I'm not sure that its characters and their motives were totally fleshed out.
I found the protagonist, Andy, a bit frustrating and often didn't see where he was coming from. In A Friend of the Family, the protagonist spun out of control and made tragically bad decisions, but there was a clear method to his madness. There seemed to be something missing in Andy, a devout atheist biology professor still grieving for his wife who was killed by a drunk driver almost a decade ago, who is swept away by a bulky religious undergraduate who makes the case for intelligent design. Everyone in this book seems to go through rapid transformations in thought about God that seem unearned and too quick. It seemed very unrealistic that such strong beliefs could be altered by so little. Maybe that's how faith works, it can you sweep you up in an instant. In this case, faith is often tied to characters falling in love and experiencing something supernatural. The book held my interest, but I'm not sure that its characters and their motives were totally fleshed out.
June 9, 2014
I won this book from Librarything, and I was glad I did. I was not familiar with Grodstein and don't think I would have chosen to buy this book based on the description of the story. I would have assumed that it was meant to be didactic. However, it was beautifully written and deceptively complex. Characters struggling with faith, science and how to make sense of life. There is no clean resolution, but a suggestion that extremism in any form is dangerous, and that meaning can come from small and big connections between people. None of which is conveyed in a didactic manner, but rather through lovely complex characters. It make me feel like reading other books by Grodstein.
July 10, 2013
I am a huge fan of Grodstein's work--it's provocative, smart, gorgeously written, and I couldn't wait to read this one. She pits a young evangelist against an evolutionist to quickly engross you in a story about what faith really means, what faith can do--and what it can't and shouldn't do. The characters breathe on the page (and long after the last page is turned, I might add), the storyline is compelling and startlingly and the book has such impact, I still am thinking about it. Thought-provoking for bookstores, Godiva for book critics, a gift for readers. Brilliant. I mean it. Brilliant.
September 21, 2013
I liked this book - it explored some interesting things about religion that I enjoyed reading about but this one didn't wow me or offer any life changing insight. I enjoyed the concepts explored considerably more than the story itself.
September 14, 2013
This book is hard to rate & review because while I think the writing was quite good, I spent a lot of the book frustrated with the characters, so the experience was a bit unpleasant. I also had that icky feeling in my stomach the whole time, anticipating that Andy was going to screw things up.
I just wanted to wring Andy's neck for most of the book. His inner thought on p 163 expressed my main difficulty with him: "All his life he'd been like that, forgoing the small good decision in favor of entropy, letting the chips fall where they may." People like this drive me crazy. Just take a stand, dude! Especially when you're a parent and a professor and are responsible for other lives!
His relationship with Lionel was the only one where I felt he made a real effort to reach outside of his own comfort zone and actually deal with another's needs. The others: his girls, Sheila, Melissa especially, he just hid behind his grief and played possum emotionally. And Sheila and Melissa had their own insufferable issues.
So, obviously, strong emotional reaction to the main character from me indicates button-pushing writing, which is a good thing, right? Just not a lot of fun. Intellectually, I appreciated the exploration of faith and evolution, always a good set of ideas to wrestle with. In this vein, I thought Anita Lim's story was intriguingly tragic. Such a brilliant mind that could not get itself out of its own puzzling.
Overall, I'd recommend this book if it's subject matter is of interest.
I just wanted to wring Andy's neck for most of the book. His inner thought on p 163 expressed my main difficulty with him: "All his life he'd been like that, forgoing the small good decision in favor of entropy, letting the chips fall where they may." People like this drive me crazy. Just take a stand, dude! Especially when you're a parent and a professor and are responsible for other lives!
His relationship with Lionel was the only one where I felt he made a real effort to reach outside of his own comfort zone and actually deal with another's needs. The others: his girls, Sheila, Melissa especially, he just hid behind his grief and played possum emotionally. And Sheila and Melissa had their own insufferable issues.
So, obviously, strong emotional reaction to the main character from me indicates button-pushing writing, which is a good thing, right? Just not a lot of fun. Intellectually, I appreciated the exploration of faith and evolution, always a good set of ideas to wrestle with. In this vein, I thought Anita Lim's story was intriguingly tragic. Such a brilliant mind that could not get itself out of its own puzzling.
Overall, I'd recommend this book if it's subject matter is of interest.
July 21, 2015
Andy Waite is a biology professor at a small college in rural New Jersey, where he landed after the sudden, tragic death of his wife. His research in evolutionary biology is designed to show a genetic basis for alcohol addiction, but the result aren’t quite what he was expecting. His daughters are growing up, with few memories of their mother, and with tenure seemingly assured, Andy’s life seems to have found a comfortable, but unexciting stasis.
But when he begins another semester teaching his course on evolution, where he tries to show his students why there is no need to believe in a Creator God, he finds himself challenged by students who insist that God is real. Through his interactions with these students, Andy finds himself questioning his own assumptions and conclusions, and in the process, unsettling many aspects of his life.
This novel explores the questions about the role of religion, belief, and science in our lives, and the impacts that challenging our fundamental beliefs can have on our lives. It also suggests that holding onto extreme, all or nothing, beliefs can have troubling consequences for ourselves and those around us.
This was a pleasant book to read, with characters who are generally sympathetically portrayed. It may challenge the worldviews of some readers, but mostly it will probably serve to shore up the beliefs the reader brings to it. Perhaps if the conflict between religion and science hadn’t been portrayed in such black and white terms, it might have provided a vehicle for a deeper exploration of those places where both can manage to exist.
But when he begins another semester teaching his course on evolution, where he tries to show his students why there is no need to believe in a Creator God, he finds himself challenged by students who insist that God is real. Through his interactions with these students, Andy finds himself questioning his own assumptions and conclusions, and in the process, unsettling many aspects of his life.
This novel explores the questions about the role of religion, belief, and science in our lives, and the impacts that challenging our fundamental beliefs can have on our lives. It also suggests that holding onto extreme, all or nothing, beliefs can have troubling consequences for ourselves and those around us.
This was a pleasant book to read, with characters who are generally sympathetically portrayed. It may challenge the worldviews of some readers, but mostly it will probably serve to shore up the beliefs the reader brings to it. Perhaps if the conflict between religion and science hadn’t been portrayed in such black and white terms, it might have provided a vehicle for a deeper exploration of those places where both can manage to exist.
January 15, 2014
I should say up front that I know Lauren personally, so I'm not exactly unbiased here, but I've seen a few reviews of The Explanation for Everything that are such head-scratchers, and I believe that this is a novel that has a great deal to offer. It's a marvelously accessible story about science and faith that refuses to ever let the reader get comfortable. I was also hugely impressed by the dexterity of the telling: there are multiple voices plugged into the narrative, and each one is perfectly distinct. I really hope more people check this one out.
June 27, 2013
I received a free ARC of this title at BEA (Book Expo America) and was really excited to read as I LOVED A Friend of the Family. Unfortunately, I found this book just didn't measure up and was a bit of a disappointment. I was looking for the drama and suspense that I found in the amazing A Friend of the Family, a book I literally couldn't put down. The Explanation for Everything was a much slower, sleepier book, and I found myself not really caring about the characters. An average read.
February 3, 2021
I’m pushing it by calling this a “Jewish novel,” but eh, why not. :P I’ve included others under this classification with even less of a tie to my religion.
Though religion—specifically Christianity—does play an outsized role in this novel. It takes place on a college campus, when an Evangelical student approaches an atheist biology professor wanting to do an independent study on intelligent design.
The professor, and our protagonist Andy Waite, starts out skeptical, to say the least. But he grew into the idea of God. I dunno, the God belief part is pretty shaky to me. Seems like what he really found was the idea of comfort and mercy. There is a little bit of the supernatural tinged into that, the idea of someone looking after you, but Andy still doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would call that “God.” He’s still a scientist, interested in the variables, and “God” is still that long-haired dude sitting in the sky, right?
Speaking as a Jew, there’s a lot in this book that feels a little…foreign to me. Or I dunno, maybe that’s speaking as a 30-something. (Reminder, self—Grodstein is Jewish, too! :P) Back when I was 18, and coming back to my faith, I also got caught up in the religion vs science angst. Now I think to myself—good grief, is there really much of a difference? Evolution maps the mutations organisms took to survive, and survival is so beyond us, so all-encompassing. (Why survive, organisms?) Maybe I’m not learned enough in either religion or science, but they seem like two sides of the same coin.
But yeah, in this book we have dogmatics, like Andy and his student, Melissa. And other supporting characters, too, who find their faith or lose it. Some of it was a bit too exposition and backstory heavy, or merely anecdotal, but I appreciated the reasoning for both—that one dogma was too limiting, and the other provided wonder (science) or meaning (religion.) But at the end of the day, none of this was as fleshed out as I’d like.
What WAS fleshed out was Andy’s personal crisis and need for healing. Granted, it relied on a dead wife who wasn’t much of a character in her own right. (Grodstein did slightly better with giving Andy’s daughters some dimension, but alas, like most novelists, I don’t really think she gave enough weight to Andy’s relationships with his children. Or I dunno, maybe he was self-centered. Or maybe I was privileged by how much my parents centered me, as a person, in their lives. Anywho!) Andy’s problems, and their solution, weren’t too shocking, but they were very human.
As for the Jewish element, Andy’s old mentor, Rosenblum, was a yeshiva bocher turned Dawkins-like professor. He talked about the punitive God and the “fairytales” of his youth, though apparently he liked his rabbis. To me, a major difference between Judaism and Christianity is that we, the Jews, at least in tradition, aren’t looking for a close and personal relationship with God. We find that more in community, and how our religious texts debate and codify interpersonal relationships. Maybe that’s what makes this book the most Jewish. Melissa is never able to prove Intelligent Design is real, at least not from what we see. But her journey with Andy proves that humans are connected, emotionally, and we must grapple with who we are and who we want to be through all of the ups and downs of this little thing called life.
Though religion—specifically Christianity—does play an outsized role in this novel. It takes place on a college campus, when an Evangelical student approaches an atheist biology professor wanting to do an independent study on intelligent design.
The professor, and our protagonist Andy Waite, starts out skeptical, to say the least. But he grew into the idea of God. I dunno, the God belief part is pretty shaky to me. Seems like what he really found was the idea of comfort and mercy. There is a little bit of the supernatural tinged into that, the idea of someone looking after you, but Andy still doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would call that “God.” He’s still a scientist, interested in the variables, and “God” is still that long-haired dude sitting in the sky, right?
Speaking as a Jew, there’s a lot in this book that feels a little…foreign to me. Or I dunno, maybe that’s speaking as a 30-something. (Reminder, self—Grodstein is Jewish, too! :P) Back when I was 18, and coming back to my faith, I also got caught up in the religion vs science angst. Now I think to myself—good grief, is there really much of a difference? Evolution maps the mutations organisms took to survive, and survival is so beyond us, so all-encompassing. (Why survive, organisms?) Maybe I’m not learned enough in either religion or science, but they seem like two sides of the same coin.
But yeah, in this book we have dogmatics, like Andy and his student, Melissa. And other supporting characters, too, who find their faith or lose it. Some of it was a bit too exposition and backstory heavy, or merely anecdotal, but I appreciated the reasoning for both—that one dogma was too limiting, and the other provided wonder (science) or meaning (religion.) But at the end of the day, none of this was as fleshed out as I’d like.
What WAS fleshed out was Andy’s personal crisis and need for healing. Granted, it relied on a dead wife who wasn’t much of a character in her own right. (Grodstein did slightly better with giving Andy’s daughters some dimension, but alas, like most novelists, I don’t really think she gave enough weight to Andy’s relationships with his children. Or I dunno, maybe he was self-centered. Or maybe I was privileged by how much my parents centered me, as a person, in their lives. Anywho!) Andy’s problems, and their solution, weren’t too shocking, but they were very human.
As for the Jewish element, Andy’s old mentor, Rosenblum, was a yeshiva bocher turned Dawkins-like professor. He talked about the punitive God and the “fairytales” of his youth, though apparently he liked his rabbis. To me, a major difference between Judaism and Christianity is that we, the Jews, at least in tradition, aren’t looking for a close and personal relationship with God. We find that more in community, and how our religious texts debate and codify interpersonal relationships. Maybe that’s what makes this book the most Jewish. Melissa is never able to prove Intelligent Design is real, at least not from what we see. But her journey with Andy proves that humans are connected, emotionally, and we must grapple with who we are and who we want to be through all of the ups and downs of this little thing called life.
October 30, 2013
My review from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which you can find here: http://bit.ly/1itEcTS
--
Is it possible to explain the existence of Christianity, Christians, and bad Christian novels with the theory of Evolution? In a word, yes. In fact, it's easy. Darwinism is beautiful because it's so simple. Mutated traits that make reproduction more likely tend to be replicated over time. Over generations, the mutation becomes the norm. And that's really it. Simple enough for a child to understand.
So the question is, does Christianity make reproduction more likely? Christianity--at least in year zero or thereabouts--was a mechanism for organization, a belief system that allowed adherents to gather together in an easily defensible structure, which provided handy shelter against not only the weather, but also common enemies. So for the early Christian, Christianity equaled increased odds toward survival in a brutal world, and increased life expectancy equaled greater opportunity to breed. More recently, Christians who journeyed to America had the advantage of being resistant to smallpox--again, survival equals reproduction--but in the last century or so, Christians have had to make breeding doctrinal.
Anyone who doesn't think Christian leaders understand evolution only has to look at the issues of gay marriage, abortion, and birth control. These aren't moral or social issues. They're biological. The unstated thinking goes like this: Even if dad is a closeted homosexual living a miserable, miserable lie, who raises four miserable kids, then either offs himself or has a nervous breakdown at fifty, and even if dad's suicide or institutionalization leaves his whole family shaky, afraid and thinking that its really all their fault, well that situation is still preferable to dad admitting his sexual orientation before marriage and living a different kind of life with a higher opportunity for happiness but almost zero opportunity for reproduction, since what Christianity gets out of the doomed marriage is four new Christians who are more likely than not to cling to religion after everything else in their lives falls apart.
Sorry if I sound bitter there. And sorry if I've laid my cards on the table. As another example, take birth control: every prevented pregnancy equals one less Christian. Or take the website "Christian Mingle," whose ads pollute my fantasy football homepage every Sunday. What about abortion? It's probably best to not even step down that path. Suffice to say though, Christians have taken a long view in their battle with secularism, and their tactics point to a fairly sophisticated understanding of evolution. No gays, no abortion and no birth control add up to more Christians. All of these new Christians, unfortunately, need Christian novels. Give it a million generations or so and there's no hope for the rest of us.
You may have noticed, early on in the above rant, that I said Darwinism is simple enough for a child to understand. In Lauren Grodstein's new novelThe Explanation of Everything, however, evolution is the source of much confusion. Ms. Grodstein gives us as a protagonist one Andy Waite, a biology professor. The main conflict in the book is Andy's hand-wringing--is evolution really the explanation of everything, or is the explanation of everything perhaps something else, maybe even Jesus, Jesus, Jesus?
Take two examples from the novel. In the first, Andy is having a conversation with a student named Melissa, a young creationist who has convinced him to mentor her in an independent study geared toward proving intelligent design...
'Well,' she said, leaning forward, her breasts straining heavily against her turtleneck[...], 'DNA is a code, right? [...] Codes aren't designed by chaos.[...] The only real rational explanation for coding is an intelligent designer who planned it all out.'
It's ironic that Andy is staring at Melissa's breasts in the scene, because up until that point he hasn't yet remembered the vital role that sex plays in evolution. As Andy and Melissa's conversation goes on, Andy can't find his footing. He can't figure out how to disprove Melissa's opinions. To me, this idea doesn't seem believable. Full disclosure, I'm not a biologist. At all. I had pretty much headed in the direction of reading and writing before I finished high school. That said, I don't think Melissa's argument for a designer based on DNA would be difficult at all for a biologist to shoot down. My own very, very limited understanding is that mutations cause DNA to change over time from generation to generation, and that evolution is the product of those mutations that make successful breeding more likely, and so carry on from generation to generation. Since DNA is fluid, molded over time due to the environment, its "design" is just an adaptation to the natural world. But such an explanation is lost on Andy.
Even more unbelievably, after their first meeting Andy takes home a book that Melissa gives him entitled God is a Rainbow, and he finds himself swayed by a particular passage. "Have you ever spoken to a small, guilty child who's trying to get out of telling the truth?" the author asks. "When the child starts spinning his story, it becomes more and more fanciful. He would need a mere sentence to tell the truth; his elaborate tale requires paragraphs." With that, Andy's foundational beliefs begin to crumble.
And that's also where The Explanation for Everything begins to show its true colors. Soon Andy is "allowing for the possibility of God." Soon after that he's taking his young daughter to be baptized, and he's viewing his life's problems in a Christian light. I personally find the idea that an apparently sophisticated scientist could be swayed in this way ridiculous. The thought that's troubling Andy is that evolution requires such a detailed explanation? What about the sentence I used at the beginning of this review: "Those traits or mutations that make reproduction more likely tend to be replicated over time." Sounds pretty simple to me.
So am I saying that Andy, as written, is stupider than your average child? No, there's something else at work here. What about Lauren Grodstein? Her prose is too breezy, her plot too propulsive and readable for her to be called stupid. I'm afraid Ms. Grodstein's offense is far worse. At its heart, The Explanation for Everything is a disingenuous book. Sex and reproduction--the simple explanation, and the heart of the theory--is never once mentioned in connection with evolution. The goal of this omission seems to be to manufacture confusion--and an opening for faith--where there should be none.
For that, The Explanation for Everything is just as offensive as a Southern preacher standing in front of his megachurch and expounding on the evils of gay marriage, abortion and the like. This is true whether or not Grodstein herself is a Christian, because the uncertainty at the book's heart doesn't come from an intellectually honest place. The "gray area" Andy finds himself in at the end of the story is calculated for the dirty purpose of driving sales, which may be its own kind of honesty but is the subject for another day.
--
Is it possible to explain the existence of Christianity, Christians, and bad Christian novels with the theory of Evolution? In a word, yes. In fact, it's easy. Darwinism is beautiful because it's so simple. Mutated traits that make reproduction more likely tend to be replicated over time. Over generations, the mutation becomes the norm. And that's really it. Simple enough for a child to understand.
So the question is, does Christianity make reproduction more likely? Christianity--at least in year zero or thereabouts--was a mechanism for organization, a belief system that allowed adherents to gather together in an easily defensible structure, which provided handy shelter against not only the weather, but also common enemies. So for the early Christian, Christianity equaled increased odds toward survival in a brutal world, and increased life expectancy equaled greater opportunity to breed. More recently, Christians who journeyed to America had the advantage of being resistant to smallpox--again, survival equals reproduction--but in the last century or so, Christians have had to make breeding doctrinal.
Anyone who doesn't think Christian leaders understand evolution only has to look at the issues of gay marriage, abortion, and birth control. These aren't moral or social issues. They're biological. The unstated thinking goes like this: Even if dad is a closeted homosexual living a miserable, miserable lie, who raises four miserable kids, then either offs himself or has a nervous breakdown at fifty, and even if dad's suicide or institutionalization leaves his whole family shaky, afraid and thinking that its really all their fault, well that situation is still preferable to dad admitting his sexual orientation before marriage and living a different kind of life with a higher opportunity for happiness but almost zero opportunity for reproduction, since what Christianity gets out of the doomed marriage is four new Christians who are more likely than not to cling to religion after everything else in their lives falls apart.
Sorry if I sound bitter there. And sorry if I've laid my cards on the table. As another example, take birth control: every prevented pregnancy equals one less Christian. Or take the website "Christian Mingle," whose ads pollute my fantasy football homepage every Sunday. What about abortion? It's probably best to not even step down that path. Suffice to say though, Christians have taken a long view in their battle with secularism, and their tactics point to a fairly sophisticated understanding of evolution. No gays, no abortion and no birth control add up to more Christians. All of these new Christians, unfortunately, need Christian novels. Give it a million generations or so and there's no hope for the rest of us.
You may have noticed, early on in the above rant, that I said Darwinism is simple enough for a child to understand. In Lauren Grodstein's new novelThe Explanation of Everything, however, evolution is the source of much confusion. Ms. Grodstein gives us as a protagonist one Andy Waite, a biology professor. The main conflict in the book is Andy's hand-wringing--is evolution really the explanation of everything, or is the explanation of everything perhaps something else, maybe even Jesus, Jesus, Jesus?
Take two examples from the novel. In the first, Andy is having a conversation with a student named Melissa, a young creationist who has convinced him to mentor her in an independent study geared toward proving intelligent design...
'Well,' she said, leaning forward, her breasts straining heavily against her turtleneck[...], 'DNA is a code, right? [...] Codes aren't designed by chaos.[...] The only real rational explanation for coding is an intelligent designer who planned it all out.'
It's ironic that Andy is staring at Melissa's breasts in the scene, because up until that point he hasn't yet remembered the vital role that sex plays in evolution. As Andy and Melissa's conversation goes on, Andy can't find his footing. He can't figure out how to disprove Melissa's opinions. To me, this idea doesn't seem believable. Full disclosure, I'm not a biologist. At all. I had pretty much headed in the direction of reading and writing before I finished high school. That said, I don't think Melissa's argument for a designer based on DNA would be difficult at all for a biologist to shoot down. My own very, very limited understanding is that mutations cause DNA to change over time from generation to generation, and that evolution is the product of those mutations that make successful breeding more likely, and so carry on from generation to generation. Since DNA is fluid, molded over time due to the environment, its "design" is just an adaptation to the natural world. But such an explanation is lost on Andy.
Even more unbelievably, after their first meeting Andy takes home a book that Melissa gives him entitled God is a Rainbow, and he finds himself swayed by a particular passage. "Have you ever spoken to a small, guilty child who's trying to get out of telling the truth?" the author asks. "When the child starts spinning his story, it becomes more and more fanciful. He would need a mere sentence to tell the truth; his elaborate tale requires paragraphs." With that, Andy's foundational beliefs begin to crumble.
And that's also where The Explanation for Everything begins to show its true colors. Soon Andy is "allowing for the possibility of God." Soon after that he's taking his young daughter to be baptized, and he's viewing his life's problems in a Christian light. I personally find the idea that an apparently sophisticated scientist could be swayed in this way ridiculous. The thought that's troubling Andy is that evolution requires such a detailed explanation? What about the sentence I used at the beginning of this review: "Those traits or mutations that make reproduction more likely tend to be replicated over time." Sounds pretty simple to me.
So am I saying that Andy, as written, is stupider than your average child? No, there's something else at work here. What about Lauren Grodstein? Her prose is too breezy, her plot too propulsive and readable for her to be called stupid. I'm afraid Ms. Grodstein's offense is far worse. At its heart, The Explanation for Everything is a disingenuous book. Sex and reproduction--the simple explanation, and the heart of the theory--is never once mentioned in connection with evolution. The goal of this omission seems to be to manufacture confusion--and an opening for faith--where there should be none.
For that, The Explanation for Everything is just as offensive as a Southern preacher standing in front of his megachurch and expounding on the evils of gay marriage, abortion and the like. This is true whether or not Grodstein herself is a Christian, because the uncertainty at the book's heart doesn't come from an intellectually honest place. The "gray area" Andy finds himself in at the end of the story is calculated for the dirty purpose of driving sales, which may be its own kind of honesty but is the subject for another day.
June 9, 2018
I finished reading this book only because I wanted to see if Grodstein could bring the idiotic premise of the plot back to normalcy. Unfortunately, she could not. Those who believe in Darwin and evolution must be atheists is an idea that pervades the book; so does the idea that Christians must be guided by so-called intelligent design.
Science and religion can co-exist, and in my world they do so rather nicely. Without getting into a theological discussion, kindness and acceptance and Jesus...
Science and religion can co-exist, and in my world they do so rather nicely. Without getting into a theological discussion, kindness and acceptance and Jesus...
July 31, 2015
This is a very readable book about a subject that's very dear to my heart -- I'm actually researching and writing an essay (nothing grand) about Darwin at the moment -- so really I should have liked it far more than I did.
Evolutionary biologist Andy Waite, stuck teaching in a backwoods college and hoping he's on track for tenure, is still grieving for the wife he lost to a drunken driver a few years back. He thinks he's coping reasonably well in holding down his academic post while raising his two kids -- the latter task with the help of middle-aged neighbor Sheila, who clearly has something of a crush on him.
One day Andy is approached by dumpy fundamentalist Melissa: would he be her supervisor while she writes a treatise supporting the "theory" of intelligent design? Knowing it's a stupid thing to do, he agrees to do it anyway . . . and finds himself in the quicksand of a midlife crisis in which he's lured by both Melissa's youthful body and her religious beliefs: faith is, after all, so much easier than science.
As a backdrop to this there's the tale of the downfall of Andy's old mentor, the leading evolutionary biologist and promoter of atheism Hank Rosenblum. Rosenblum was lucky enough to have as his student, after Andy's departure, the first-generation Korean American Anita Lim, who proved to be a genius of evolutionary biology. However, after Anita won an illustrious international biology prize, she fell in love with a fundamentalist preacher and abandoned science. No matter how much Rosenblum railed at her to come back and continue her research, she was obdurate -- until finally she committed suicide. The parents sued over their daughter's death and Rosenblum lost to the tune of millions.
There's a big hole in the plot of this background story, of course. If the research Anita had done in his lab into the origins of life was so goddam close to the Big Breakthrough, why didn't Rosenblum just complete it? Come to that, since she'd published papers on her results and conclusions, why weren't other scientists by now working on this?
To be honest, there's a sort of fabulatory feel to the novel -- it's one of the reasons why the book's so very easy to read -- and I could happily accept this and all sorts of other implausibilities. What I found intolerable, though, was that evolutionary biologist Andy gets his evolutionary biology wrong. Here are the points he presents to his "There Is No God" class:
1. Evolution is the explanation for everything
2. Darwin is right
3. And people who don't believe Darwin are wrong
My jaw dropped when I read this -- and it was only page 19 when I did -- because there's not an evolutionary biologist in the world, I don't think, who'd claim that "Evolution is the explanation for everything": it so very obviously isn't. And everyone knows that, while Darwin hit upon the core principle of natural selection, he wasn't "right" because there were mechanisms he got wrong and which he couldn't have understood because science (e.g., genetics) hadn't yet advanced that far.
But our Andy isn't satisfied with that. Just a few pages later (p23) he's telling his students that "Darwinian evolution [is] the fundamental explanation for everything in the universe, from the way life expanded to fill every niche of habitable space on the planet to perhaps, as physicists are now proving, the universe itself."
What bunkum! Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that evolutionary biology is concerned only with how life developed and diversified after it originated. Evolutionary biology offers no explanation for the origin of life and nor does it seek to do so (although it'd be kinda nice to know), and it certainly has nothing whatsoever to say about, for example, the Big Bang, stellar evolution, relativity or who just won the Third Ashes Test. It is inconceivable that Andy wouldn't be far more aware of this than (say) I am. Grodstein seems to be making him a sort of caricature of an evolutionary biologist -- a straw man with whom Melissa can argue.
Except that Melissa doesn't really put up any coherent argument in favor of her beloved ID. There's a very good reason why she can't, of course, but again I'd have expected Grodstein to have made some effort at verisimilitude. Melissa is supposedly a fairly intelligent woman. She must have some justifications to put forward for the "theory" she so admires. Surely?
Despite all of these objections, I did enjoy the actual reading of The Explanation for Everything. Grodstein is a very lucid tale-teller, and I never lost interest in events . . . even though, far too often, my brows were raised in incredulity at what she was telling me. And I'd have thought it was pretty elementary that, if you're writing a novel about scientists, you should aim to get the science right.
Evolutionary biologist Andy Waite, stuck teaching in a backwoods college and hoping he's on track for tenure, is still grieving for the wife he lost to a drunken driver a few years back. He thinks he's coping reasonably well in holding down his academic post while raising his two kids -- the latter task with the help of middle-aged neighbor Sheila, who clearly has something of a crush on him.
One day Andy is approached by dumpy fundamentalist Melissa: would he be her supervisor while she writes a treatise supporting the "theory" of intelligent design? Knowing it's a stupid thing to do, he agrees to do it anyway . . . and finds himself in the quicksand of a midlife crisis in which he's lured by both Melissa's youthful body and her religious beliefs: faith is, after all, so much easier than science.
As a backdrop to this there's the tale of the downfall of Andy's old mentor, the leading evolutionary biologist and promoter of atheism Hank Rosenblum. Rosenblum was lucky enough to have as his student, after Andy's departure, the first-generation Korean American Anita Lim, who proved to be a genius of evolutionary biology. However, after Anita won an illustrious international biology prize, she fell in love with a fundamentalist preacher and abandoned science. No matter how much Rosenblum railed at her to come back and continue her research, she was obdurate -- until finally she committed suicide. The parents sued over their daughter's death and Rosenblum lost to the tune of millions.
There's a big hole in the plot of this background story, of course. If the research Anita had done in his lab into the origins of life was so goddam close to the Big Breakthrough, why didn't Rosenblum just complete it? Come to that, since she'd published papers on her results and conclusions, why weren't other scientists by now working on this?
To be honest, there's a sort of fabulatory feel to the novel -- it's one of the reasons why the book's so very easy to read -- and I could happily accept this and all sorts of other implausibilities. What I found intolerable, though, was that evolutionary biologist Andy gets his evolutionary biology wrong. Here are the points he presents to his "There Is No God" class:
1. Evolution is the explanation for everything
2. Darwin is right
3. And people who don't believe Darwin are wrong
My jaw dropped when I read this -- and it was only page 19 when I did -- because there's not an evolutionary biologist in the world, I don't think, who'd claim that "Evolution is the explanation for everything": it so very obviously isn't. And everyone knows that, while Darwin hit upon the core principle of natural selection, he wasn't "right" because there were mechanisms he got wrong and which he couldn't have understood because science (e.g., genetics) hadn't yet advanced that far.
But our Andy isn't satisfied with that. Just a few pages later (p23) he's telling his students that "Darwinian evolution [is] the fundamental explanation for everything in the universe, from the way life expanded to fill every niche of habitable space on the planet to perhaps, as physicists are now proving, the universe itself."
What bunkum! Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that evolutionary biology is concerned only with how life developed and diversified after it originated. Evolutionary biology offers no explanation for the origin of life and nor does it seek to do so (although it'd be kinda nice to know), and it certainly has nothing whatsoever to say about, for example, the Big Bang, stellar evolution, relativity or who just won the Third Ashes Test. It is inconceivable that Andy wouldn't be far more aware of this than (say) I am. Grodstein seems to be making him a sort of caricature of an evolutionary biologist -- a straw man with whom Melissa can argue.
Except that Melissa doesn't really put up any coherent argument in favor of her beloved ID. There's a very good reason why she can't, of course, but again I'd have expected Grodstein to have made some effort at verisimilitude. Melissa is supposedly a fairly intelligent woman. She must have some justifications to put forward for the "theory" she so admires. Surely?
Despite all of these objections, I did enjoy the actual reading of The Explanation for Everything. Grodstein is a very lucid tale-teller, and I never lost interest in events . . . even though, far too often, my brows were raised in incredulity at what she was telling me. And I'd have thought it was pretty elementary that, if you're writing a novel about scientists, you should aim to get the science right.
June 4, 2015
I felt bad giving this book only two stars, because it had some great moments. I think I would have given it three at least if it had wrapped things up a little more clearly. I was enjoying the book, but when I finished I found myself thinking, "What was the point?"
I liked that it was from Andy's point of view, rather than Melissa's. However, Melissa's character didn't make sense. This is from a Christian who attended a community college for 2 years and then transferred to a 4-year university, and who argued with an atheistic professor and wrote a paper specifically targeting some of the points he'd made in class. I get that Melissa is an in-your-face type of person, taking a challenge to do an independent study in order to convert the atheist, but it still seemed weird to me when she offered to babysit his kids right away, without any prompting from him. This would have made sense if she needed money (which most students do, especially those from low-income backgrounds like hers), but she kept telling him that she would do it for free. This was just odd.
But the thing that most bothered me about Melissa was the contradiction of her super-evangelistic tendencies with how she "seemed to know what she was doing" when she put her hands in his pants, or splayed her legs in the chair like she was posing for a men's magazine. She didn't seem to give a second thought to starting a relationship with him, nor did she seem to have any qualms about progressing physically. None of my Bible-banging college girlfriends would have been OK with going so far physically with their BOYFRIENDS, let alone their professors. Her game plan seems to be to seduce him into believing in God (which is pretty bold for someone who is fat and slumps). I understand that she might have fallen for him during the course of their relationship, but it would have been more believable if she had been at least a little conflicted about it.
Also, this might seem a minor detail but I found Melissa's church confusing. The fact that it was taking over a strip mall indicates a growing church, but I haven't seen any sprinkling-baptism churches that fit this description; most of tthem (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist) are struggling to survive. I also found it odd that such an outspoken proponent of intelligent design and God would believe in salvation baptism, although I suppose it's possible.
Regarding Anita, I had two major issues. One was that she gave up her research because, apparently, she didn't want to disprove God. This is ridiculous. If she really thought her research was going to prove that God didn't create life, how could she possibly have believed in him? Why not continue the research and use her brilliant brain to explain to people how science proves, rather than disproves, God? And second, her suicide note said she believed her purpose in life was over, so she was basically sending herself to heaven. I don't believe that committing suicide means you can't go to heaven, but I found it arrogant on her part to decide when her life over, not to mention cruel to the people who loved her. Also, the tone of the note was from someone totally at peace, not someone who had just had a big fight with her fiance. This was an interesting subplot, but a lot of it just didn't make sense.
Most disappointing was that the book didn't offer a better discussion of intelligent design. There was a lot of promise for some really good debate, but instead in the end Andy remembers Melissa was doing an independent study and notes that he never interrogated her. I thought the independent study was going to be the main focus of the book, but instead it was completely glossed over. I understand the author chose to focus on Andy's emotional conflicts instead, but it felt like false advertising.
Originally I had assumed, from some of the comments and the book's premise, that the author was writing from a subtle Christian perspective. However, given the fact that Andy never fully converted, Melissa refused to submit to interrogation on her paper and instead threatened to tattle on Andy, Lionel became an atheist, and Anita committed suicide, I'm wondering if I had it backwards. Rather than bring together the emotional aspects of belief with the scientific explanations of intelligent design, the hidden message seemed to be, "Believing in God makes you feel happy, even though you have to not think too hard about science." What intelligent person would want to believe in God after reading that?
One thing I will say is that it was well-written, although I found the omnipresent comma splices distracting.
I liked that it was from Andy's point of view, rather than Melissa's. However, Melissa's character didn't make sense. This is from a Christian who attended a community college for 2 years and then transferred to a 4-year university, and who argued with an atheistic professor and wrote a paper specifically targeting some of the points he'd made in class. I get that Melissa is an in-your-face type of person, taking a challenge to do an independent study in order to convert the atheist, but it still seemed weird to me when she offered to babysit his kids right away, without any prompting from him. This would have made sense if she needed money (which most students do, especially those from low-income backgrounds like hers), but she kept telling him that she would do it for free. This was just odd.
But the thing that most bothered me about Melissa was the contradiction of her super-evangelistic tendencies with how she "seemed to know what she was doing" when she put her hands in his pants, or splayed her legs in the chair like she was posing for a men's magazine. She didn't seem to give a second thought to starting a relationship with him, nor did she seem to have any qualms about progressing physically. None of my Bible-banging college girlfriends would have been OK with going so far physically with their BOYFRIENDS, let alone their professors. Her game plan seems to be to seduce him into believing in God (which is pretty bold for someone who is fat and slumps). I understand that she might have fallen for him during the course of their relationship, but it would have been more believable if she had been at least a little conflicted about it.
Also, this might seem a minor detail but I found Melissa's church confusing. The fact that it was taking over a strip mall indicates a growing church, but I haven't seen any sprinkling-baptism churches that fit this description; most of tthem (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist) are struggling to survive. I also found it odd that such an outspoken proponent of intelligent design and God would believe in salvation baptism, although I suppose it's possible.
Regarding Anita, I had two major issues. One was that she gave up her research because, apparently, she didn't want to disprove God. This is ridiculous. If she really thought her research was going to prove that God didn't create life, how could she possibly have believed in him? Why not continue the research and use her brilliant brain to explain to people how science proves, rather than disproves, God? And second, her suicide note said she believed her purpose in life was over, so she was basically sending herself to heaven. I don't believe that committing suicide means you can't go to heaven, but I found it arrogant on her part to decide when her life over, not to mention cruel to the people who loved her. Also, the tone of the note was from someone totally at peace, not someone who had just had a big fight with her fiance. This was an interesting subplot, but a lot of it just didn't make sense.
Most disappointing was that the book didn't offer a better discussion of intelligent design. There was a lot of promise for some really good debate, but instead in the end Andy remembers Melissa was doing an independent study and notes that he never interrogated her. I thought the independent study was going to be the main focus of the book, but instead it was completely glossed over. I understand the author chose to focus on Andy's emotional conflicts instead, but it felt like false advertising.
Originally I had assumed, from some of the comments and the book's premise, that the author was writing from a subtle Christian perspective. However, given the fact that Andy never fully converted, Melissa refused to submit to interrogation on her paper and instead threatened to tattle on Andy, Lionel became an atheist, and Anita committed suicide, I'm wondering if I had it backwards. Rather than bring together the emotional aspects of belief with the scientific explanations of intelligent design, the hidden message seemed to be, "Believing in God makes you feel happy, even though you have to not think too hard about science." What intelligent person would want to believe in God after reading that?
One thing I will say is that it was well-written, although I found the omnipresent comma splices distracting.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 8, 2016
Post-Fundamentalism
An author who writes about the conflict between strict Darwinism and Biblical fundamentalism risks plunging into her own Scopes trial all over again. Whatever course she takes, she is likely to be excoriated by either evangelicals or free-thinkers; there is no middle ground that satisfies everyone. But Lauren Grodstein comes out of this pretty well. The worst I can say (though it will be damning for some) is that you sometimes get the sense that she is constructing her story and designing her characters to demonstrate various sides of the argument. The best (and for me it is a big best) is that almost nobody holds unthinkingly to their original positions; there are a couple of absolute conversions (one in each direction), and more importantly a good number of cases in which thinking people end up with views a lot more nuanced than where they started. It says something, I think, that I ended the book with no idea whatsoever what the author herself believes, except that it too is probably nuanced rather than absolute.*
Andy Waite, a single father of two pre-teen girls and turning 40 himself, is a biologist at a small college in the New Jersey pine barrens. There he pursues studies in alcoholism using mice, assembles data for an NSF grant that he hopes will secure his tenure, and teaches a biannual course on evolutionary genetics popularly known as "There is no God." This is based upon the example of his mentor at Princeton, a giant in the field lately discredited on account of a scandal that the reader will discover only later. Indeed, Grodstein is so good at keeping the plot surprises coming that I do not want to say much more. Suffice it to say that Andy is approached by an undergraduate, Melissa Potter, who wants him to sponsor an independent study on Intelligent Design. While it is not entirely credible that he would take her on, he moves gradually from regarding her as a nuisance to seeing some value in her beliefs. Admittedly, many other factors play into this: Andy's loneliness, his lack of success with his research, and something from his past that poses an increasing moral dilemma, all of which are causing him to question his certainties and sense of purpose.
This may not be a totally organic book or an entirely original one; there is a distinct touch of David Mamet's Oleanna, for example. But Lauren Grodstein's characters do not always move in predictable directions, and most of them are quite likable. At any rate, I found myself reading with increasing sympathy and absorption, and always with an open mind.
======
*
A personal comment. Growing up as I did in Britain, I continue to be amazed at the polarization of this topic in America. I was raised in a Christian household by parents who later became full-time evangelists. I was accepted to Cambridge with a scholarship in Biology. [I am now an agnostic and in the arts.] But in neither my evangelical nor my scientific life did I encounter a single person who either believed in the literal truth of Genesis or thought that Darwinism explained everything. When we learned about the Scopes trial, it was in the context of a strange aberration in a rural backwater in a past age. Coming over here, I was astounded to discover that in many communities, and for many politicians, this is still an area of extreme polarization, and that Biblical literalism is answered by equally doctrinaire atheism. It is not, for me, a matter of taking sides; I am simply bewildered by the intensity of the fundamentalism in both camps.
An author who writes about the conflict between strict Darwinism and Biblical fundamentalism risks plunging into her own Scopes trial all over again. Whatever course she takes, she is likely to be excoriated by either evangelicals or free-thinkers; there is no middle ground that satisfies everyone. But Lauren Grodstein comes out of this pretty well. The worst I can say (though it will be damning for some) is that you sometimes get the sense that she is constructing her story and designing her characters to demonstrate various sides of the argument. The best (and for me it is a big best) is that almost nobody holds unthinkingly to their original positions; there are a couple of absolute conversions (one in each direction), and more importantly a good number of cases in which thinking people end up with views a lot more nuanced than where they started. It says something, I think, that I ended the book with no idea whatsoever what the author herself believes, except that it too is probably nuanced rather than absolute.*
Andy Waite, a single father of two pre-teen girls and turning 40 himself, is a biologist at a small college in the New Jersey pine barrens. There he pursues studies in alcoholism using mice, assembles data for an NSF grant that he hopes will secure his tenure, and teaches a biannual course on evolutionary genetics popularly known as "There is no God." This is based upon the example of his mentor at Princeton, a giant in the field lately discredited on account of a scandal that the reader will discover only later. Indeed, Grodstein is so good at keeping the plot surprises coming that I do not want to say much more. Suffice it to say that Andy is approached by an undergraduate, Melissa Potter, who wants him to sponsor an independent study on Intelligent Design. While it is not entirely credible that he would take her on, he moves gradually from regarding her as a nuisance to seeing some value in her beliefs. Admittedly, many other factors play into this: Andy's loneliness, his lack of success with his research, and something from his past that poses an increasing moral dilemma, all of which are causing him to question his certainties and sense of purpose.
This may not be a totally organic book or an entirely original one; there is a distinct touch of David Mamet's Oleanna, for example. But Lauren Grodstein's characters do not always move in predictable directions, and most of them are quite likable. At any rate, I found myself reading with increasing sympathy and absorption, and always with an open mind.
======
*
A personal comment. Growing up as I did in Britain, I continue to be amazed at the polarization of this topic in America. I was raised in a Christian household by parents who later became full-time evangelists. I was accepted to Cambridge with a scholarship in Biology. [I am now an agnostic and in the arts.] But in neither my evangelical nor my scientific life did I encounter a single person who either believed in the literal truth of Genesis or thought that Darwinism explained everything. When we learned about the Scopes trial, it was in the context of a strange aberration in a rural backwater in a past age. Coming over here, I was astounded to discover that in many communities, and for many politicians, this is still an area of extreme polarization, and that Biblical literalism is answered by equally doctrinaire atheism. It is not, for me, a matter of taking sides; I am simply bewildered by the intensity of the fundamentalism in both camps.
May 31, 2014
The story's wonderful premise falls apart during its own execution.
I very much enjoyed the set-up. I liked Andy Waite, the hardcore atheist biology professor who taught a class colloquially titled "There is No God." He reminded me of a few of my own more incisive professors during my philosophy studies. I liked the idea of That One Student who just wants to take the class to try and prove the professor wrong. I looked forward to the idea of the student who wanted to do an independent study about intelligent design.
At that point, I was very much looking forward to the rest of the book. I was imagining pages and pages of Andy and his Independent Study student, Melissa, engaging in a back-and-forth about the ideas they both represented. I predicted there would be a romance at some point, but I thought it would be against the backdrop of the ideas being shared.
Instead, Andy realizes he likes his student, defends her (mildly) at a dinner party of colleagues, engages in the student-teacher romance and then . . . starts believing in God? Just like that? With no discussion between student and teacher about the ideas?
The dust jacket had a quote that said this was a novel "not about ideas, but by about the people that have ideas." I accepted that because I assumed it meant the characters would talk about their own ideas. They'd discuss. They'd go on a journey together.
Instead, it's a semester of light fooling around, Andy's odd and unconvincing temporary conversion to theism before sliding back to some sort of agnosticism(ish) perspective.
It's not a bad book, but it wasn't what I was hoping for and I felt like it had the potential to be something truly excellent.
I very much enjoyed the set-up. I liked Andy Waite, the hardcore atheist biology professor who taught a class colloquially titled "There is No God." He reminded me of a few of my own more incisive professors during my philosophy studies. I liked the idea of That One Student who just wants to take the class to try and prove the professor wrong. I looked forward to the idea of the student who wanted to do an independent study about intelligent design.
At that point, I was very much looking forward to the rest of the book. I was imagining pages and pages of Andy and his Independent Study student, Melissa, engaging in a back-and-forth about the ideas they both represented. I predicted there would be a romance at some point, but I thought it would be against the backdrop of the ideas being shared.
Instead, Andy realizes he likes his student, defends her (mildly) at a dinner party of colleagues, engages in the student-teacher romance and then . . . starts believing in God? Just like that? With no discussion between student and teacher about the ideas?
The dust jacket had a quote that said this was a novel "not about ideas, but by about the people that have ideas." I accepted that because I assumed it meant the characters would talk about their own ideas. They'd discuss. They'd go on a journey together.
Instead, it's a semester of light fooling around, Andy's odd and unconvincing temporary conversion to theism before sliding back to some sort of agnosticism(ish) perspective.
It's not a bad book, but it wasn't what I was hoping for and I felt like it had the potential to be something truly excellent.
July 17, 2014
This author is a good storyteller, and for the most part the book is well written. Andy is an evolutionary biologist and professor, teaching a course titled "There is No God". While teaching this course Andy agrees to become the academic advisor for a young woman who is working on an individual study to attempt to prove "intelligent design". Andy overlooks his objections to this as a research project, as there is no scientific proof for this theory. Melissa, the student, asks Andy to read some of her own books that support her theory. This is where the book lost it's momentum for me, as the author does not use any of the real and compelling arguments to support a belief in God. Instead, the book that Andy chooses to read, and that supposedly shakes his previous strongly held belief system, seemed like just a rambling text about the authors and what God has done in their lives. There is no attempt by Andy to mesh what he knows as a scientist with what he is reading, and no real meat given to anything that might truly be convincing.
The author does make Andy a likeable person, one who is trying to deal with grief over the death of his wife, while raising his two young daughters on his own. The concept of a scientist struggling with previously held strong atheism, and a desire to believe in something more, is an intriguing idea for a novel. And the story is good, but this could have been a book with much more depth if the author had fleshed out the things that challenge Andy's atheism, and given more credence to how other beliefs could be equally as convincing.
I received a free copy of this book from LibraryThing.
The author does make Andy a likeable person, one who is trying to deal with grief over the death of his wife, while raising his two young daughters on his own. The concept of a scientist struggling with previously held strong atheism, and a desire to believe in something more, is an intriguing idea for a novel. And the story is good, but this could have been a book with much more depth if the author had fleshed out the things that challenge Andy's atheism, and given more credence to how other beliefs could be equally as convincing.
I received a free copy of this book from LibraryThing.
September 12, 2013
The Explanation of Everything proves why Grodstein’s work is lauded by readers and critics alike. Her writing is lovely and well-considered. I loved the details that supported the intimate portrait of Andy’s relationships with his daughters, his neighbor, Sheila, and his place among the faculty and staff. Grodstein made it easy to see why Andy arrived at some of his conclusions, and how he could have wandered so far off track.
Still, there was something missing (a lack of urgency, too much apathy from the characters?), that was hard to pinpoint and bogged the story down. While I was happy enough while reading it, I didn’t find particularly compelling reasons to go back to it once I had set it aside. While Andy and his daughters were fully realized (and maybe even Lionel, whose character I really enjoyed), the revolving female characters would have benefited the novel had they been fleshed out a little more. I also would have liked to have more cohesion in the way certain story lines were linked. Halfway through, a story that was before only mentioned in passing, takes center stage in a way that is rather jarring, even though it’s also one of the more fascinating aspects of the book. As carefully paced as it is the ending is rather abrupt and vaguely unsatisfying.
Ultimately, The Explanation for Everything didn’t work for me as fully as I had hoped, but Grodstein is an author whose work I will continue to look forward to.
Still, there was something missing (a lack of urgency, too much apathy from the characters?), that was hard to pinpoint and bogged the story down. While I was happy enough while reading it, I didn’t find particularly compelling reasons to go back to it once I had set it aside. While Andy and his daughters were fully realized (and maybe even Lionel, whose character I really enjoyed), the revolving female characters would have benefited the novel had they been fleshed out a little more. I also would have liked to have more cohesion in the way certain story lines were linked. Halfway through, a story that was before only mentioned in passing, takes center stage in a way that is rather jarring, even though it’s also one of the more fascinating aspects of the book. As carefully paced as it is the ending is rather abrupt and vaguely unsatisfying.
Ultimately, The Explanation for Everything didn’t work for me as fully as I had hoped, but Grodstein is an author whose work I will continue to look forward to.
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July 8, 2025A dear friend recommended this book (in a way; she recommended it years ago in her former blog) and now having read it, I wish I could discuss it with her... but since the blog post, she has passed away. So we cannot discuss. I am sincerely sad to say I did not like this book. "Hate" would be too strong a word but I did not find much to like about it. It did keep me reading for about the first 2/3rds. After that I wanted to skim but kept at it.
Nothing about this felt realistic, emotionally or practically. Where is this supposedly terrible but also elite small college in southern New Jersey that has professors doing research with no graduate students? Hmm. Spoiler alert: well, no, I won't go the spoiler route. The male/female relationships here are not depicted in a realistic emotional way, I mean, nothing is realistic. The part of the book that is supposed to be more philosophical, shall we say, evolution vs. God, is just gobbledygook. The Rosenblum subplot is FROM MARS. I can see that in a wishful thinking kind of way you could find this book heartwarming, if it had actual characters. But it doesn't. Actually the more I think about this book the less I like it.
I see this book as being part of an unintentional thematic group with Blue Angel, Asymmetry, and The Hypocrite. Although in feel and incompetence it was the closest to Blue Angel.
Nothing about this felt realistic, emotionally or practically. Where is this supposedly terrible but also elite small college in southern New Jersey that has professors doing research with no graduate students? Hmm. Spoiler alert: well, no, I won't go the spoiler route. The male/female relationships here are not depicted in a realistic emotional way, I mean, nothing is realistic. The part of the book that is supposed to be more philosophical, shall we say, evolution vs. God, is just gobbledygook. The Rosenblum subplot is FROM MARS. I can see that in a wishful thinking kind of way you could find this book heartwarming, if it had actual characters. But it doesn't. Actually the more I think about this book the less I like it.
I see this book as being part of an unintentional thematic group with Blue Angel, Asymmetry, and The Hypocrite. Although in feel and incompetence it was the closest to Blue Angel.
January 7, 2015
This is one of these books for which I have real mixed feelings - and not for what some might think is the obvious reason (science versus faith). Rather, this is a quite well written book if one focuses only on the words, but as per the characters, I found pretty much all of them completely unbelievable and unconvincing. Almost each one is a trivial, one-dimensional representation of either belief or doubt, which almost renders the entire point of the novel flippant. If it weren't for the strength of the writing, I would have discarded the novel.
I'd be interested to read more from the author, but I think she'd do better sticking to lighter, less penetrative topics until she can give more depth and credibility to her characters.
I received a free book in exchange for an honest review.
I'd be interested to read more from the author, but I think she'd do better sticking to lighter, less penetrative topics until she can give more depth and credibility to her characters.
I received a free book in exchange for an honest review.
January 12, 2015
I had a hard time rating this book. Parts of it were quite appealing but other parts left me wondering what was really going on with the characters. Rather than providing an explanation for ANYthing, this book left me confused about what these characters were really thinking and how they could apparently change their long-held beliefs and philosophies so often. Andy was not a very likable main character, and although I sympathized with his grief and loneliness, I could not relate to some of his decisions and actions. I know a MC doesn't always have to be a "hero" but I like to at least be able to comprehend their struggles and choices, and possibly learn from them.
March 22, 2014
This was definitely a book that I was surprised by how engaged I was by it. The topic, creationism vs. Darwinism, is honestly not one I had given much thought. The main character is a widower who is raising his two girls along after his wife dies in a horrible accident. He teaches a course called "There is No God" but then a student comes in, wanting to do her independent study on creatism which causes our main character to question everything he believes in. This book had likable characters and didn't force the religion issue on the reader.
May 6, 2014
A thoughtful domestic drama about the main character's journey to find peace some years after his young wife's tragic death. After a career spent preaching Darwinian absolutes as a biology professor, he starts to wonder if God offers the simple answers after all. This is not a heavy theological novel. There are amusing moments of his day to day life raising young daughters, an awkward relationship with his divorced neighbor, and the ill-advised presence of the female student who attempts to change his atheist mind. Book groups should find a lot to discuss from a relatively short novel.
August 6, 2014
This book is well written but I really struggle with the premise. It is the tale of a college teaching who specializes in teaching a class that exalts evolution at the expense of religion. A creationist student asks if he might be her mentor for her thesis paper on creationism. Fine. He says yes. It is the amazingly quick change of heart that he has after all his years of training and teaching that boggles the imagination. I just can't buy that it would happen so fast with so little push back on his part.
September 6, 2013
Some books have a great story, (maybe) not written incredibly well. Some books have a "simple" story written incredibly well. This book has a great story written incredibly well. There are moments in this book-Roseblum's letter to Andy, the "Note From the Author" at the end-that defy logic. Lauren Grodstein can drive a grown man to tears and then have him blowing snot bubbles laughing in the next paragraph. I loved every second of it.
February 26, 2014
A compelling read, depicting the thin lines between love and loss, faith and doubt, believers and skeptics. There are no easy or pat answers, but an interesting and provocative exploration of humans' search for significance in this journey called
LIFE. It is a very thoughtful narrative with a quick yet intriguing plot line.
LIFE. It is a very thoughtful narrative with a quick yet intriguing plot line.
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