quantum mediocrity

{brief: novel; 300-ish pages}

Standing around at Jason Christie’s incredibly, mind-blowingly, well-attended book launch, Rhianna, Jonathan and I all agreed: Mobius Dick = Worth Reading (but just barely).

rating: If someone offers to lend it to you for the weekend, go ahead. If you go out and buy a copy for yourself? Well, I was not the one who sent you.


It started off in a way that reminded me of that abominable piece of spiritual lit. (yes, I’ve read it, embarrassingly enough…) The Celestine Prophecy. Stress and suspense are placed on coincidence after coincidence, though the narrator keeps reminding us: all is chaos and random and random again. Between the narrator’s own deluge of coincidences, we’re witness to a historical, chatty, whorish, mish-mosh of scientists, musicians, writers, etc and another contemporary storyline involving a man who has no memory (or no stable memory to speak of), locked up in a hospital for people who suffer from a particular “disease”, wherein they create and re-create their own memories. Time loops around, merges at points, and occasionally knocks the characters into one another.


I enjoyed:
a) quantum mechanic bits, because I am a highschool dropout and those things make me feel a little more secure around highly learned company.
b) if you know me, you know I enjoy interesting time frames, done right.
c) some of the characters were pleasant…
d) the cover art.

However:
a) ….sure, there was some quantum mechanics, and I learned. I just didn’t feel like I learned nearly enough.
b) …the interesting time splices were a little clumsy and predictable- gimmicky?
c) …in a watered-down, Catch-22 sort of way.
d) no, I stand firm in my position on the cover art. It’s totally nice cover art.

For similar-but-better, a slightly mis-guided but pretty neat-o blogger { Grumpy Old Bookman} recommends:
Alfred Bester’s Tiger, Tiger (aka: The Stars My Destination).

For a more “gushing review” of this book {and wow, do I mean “gushing”- ANDREW CRUMEY WRITES LIKE A dream and dreams like a writer inspired to make mischief about the difference between writing and dreaming.} I turn you over to:
The Scotsman