I found this a brilliant book, employing carefully-crafted prose to embody the concepts of elementary particle physics in the intersecting lives of the three major and eight minor characters. Along the way, there is the suggestion of a fundamental unity of quantum mechanics and tantric sex. I almost put it down before reading it; the book is marred by one of the worst, over-the-top jacket-flap book descriptions I’ve read in a long time. On the other hand, I enjoyed the unusual layout of the first page of each chapter. ( )

I disagree strongly with the hyperbolic accolades on the back cover: "magnificent, marvelous, brilliant." Although the book may have been about intellectual subjects, the writing was pretentious and boring. It was interesting to watch Goldstein choose to use the most complicated sentence structure every time - perhaps that's what the cover describes as "dazzling intelligence." But to me, one of the things that makes a good writer, is the ability s/he has to explain complex subjects in an accessible manner. The best bits of writing were the short passages where there was some action taking place in the character's lives, as opposed to the long sections of passive narrative about things that had happened in the past, or about the pervasive and persistent angst that enveloped everyone in the book. Maybe I'm just not dazzlingly intelligent enough to appreciate a ghost/love story intertwined with the conundrum of reconciling quantum mechanics and relativity theory. While I like the true story this novel is based upon, it took me a long time to get through the book, because I never looked forward to picking it up again. ( )

Haunting. ( )

This is the third book I have read of Rebecca Goldstein (the others were "The Mind-Body Problem, which I enjoyed immensely, and The Late Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind", which was also enjoyable, but far from the level of the former).
I did like aspects of this book as well, but overall it somewhat dissapointed me.

It is written in a much more mysterious tone than the other two books; however, it seemed rather forced... The language is also often quite complex (and not just due to the subject matter - quantum mechanics), but it has been a long time since I had to look up so many words. Not that liguistic complexity in writing is necessarily bad, but when there are perfectly useable simpler synonyms for everyday words, it seems a bit artificial to use dictionary-only words...

Overall, I found the descriptions of the physics department dynamics the most fascinating and focused part of this book, the characters and their mysterious interactions less so. And the Love Story - well, frankly it seemed too forced and too convenient for the story. Furthermore, it does not help that the language describing their love making sessions is a bit Danielle Steele-like...A great contrast to the bitter-sweet love stories of her other two books.

I did like some of the quantum mechanics descriptions - I mean, what a hard subject to tackle for a fiction novel! I remember being fascinated with the Measurement Problem when I took courses in physics years ago, and I must give Goldstein credit for incorporating highly readable extracts of such conundrums (even though I sort of doubt I would have been able to follow if I had never taken a physics class in my life).
Finally, I doubt I would recommend this book to people who has had no background in the hard sciences, and if they did - I would be worried about recommending such a cheesy love story, no matter how mysteriously the language flows... If you are reading Goldstein for the first time, pick up a copy of the delightfully clever Mind-Body Problem ( )