|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
Book Reviews Title Thinks Fiction-Net
Rating Buy It
From Amazon.co.uk - BUY
NOW! Cover
Story Ralph Messenger
is a man who knows what he wants and generally gets
it. Approaching his fiftieth birthday, he has good
reason to feel pleased with himself. As Director of
the prestigious Holt Belling Centre for Cognitive
Science at the University of Gloucester he is much
in demand as a pundit on developments in artificial
intelligence and the study of human consciousness -
'the last frontier of scientific enquiry'. He
enjoys an affluent lifestyle subsidised by the
wealth of his American wife, Carrie. Known to
colleagues on the conference circuit as a womaniser
and to Private Eye as a 'Media Dong', he has
reached a tacit understanding with Carrie to
refrain from philandering in his own back
yard. This resolution
is already weakening when he meets and is attracted
to Helen Reed, a distinguished novelist still
grieving for the sudden death of her husband more
than a year ago. She has rented out her London
house and taken up a post as writer-in-residence at
Gloucester University, partly to try and get over
her bereavement. Fascinated and
challenged by a personality and a world-view
radically at odds with her own, Helen is aroused by
Ralph's bold advances, but resists on moral
principal. The stand-off between them is shattered
by a series of events and discoveries that
dramatically confirm the truth of Ralph's dictum,
'We can never know for certain what another person
is thinking.' We
Say I wouldn't be
surprised if most readers were put off by the whole
premise of this book. The central characters are
approaching middle age, they drift around the banal
concrete world of a modern university and they talk
about the way people think. They discuss
experiments in human consciousness and what makes
us all different and totally unfathomable. One is a
philandering professor and the other is an insecure
writer (is there any other kind?). However, if you
do happen to be put off by these things - don't be.
David Lodge has the ability to make this an
intimate and fascinating story. Despite the
complexity of the overall theme, 'Thinks' is about
the reality of human behaviour rather than the
result of an experiment that might be found in one
of Ralph Messenger's Labs. Both he and Helen are
ultimately fragile beings, capable only of
responding to life in the way that instinct tells
them to. Their relationship is played out with such
sincerity that the surprises are heartbreaking,
funny and hopeless just as they would be in real
life. There are a few dramatic shocks along the way
and a couple of cliff-hangers towards the end.
The style is
brazenly skilful. Lodge mixes it up to give the
reader a view from every angle. There are long
monologues as Ralph narrates his feelings into a
Dictaphone, Helen keeps a journal and there are
e-mails between the two of them. Interspersed with
these are chapters in third person narration which
describe events from both characters point of view.
In the hands of a lesser writer, this variation may
have seemed forced and artificial but Lodge manages
to diligently weave the threads together without
any visible joins. 'Thinks' is a
rarity - an intelligent book with a great story and
convincing characters. Review by: Rachel
Taylor |
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
