Love and Other Thought Experiments: Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020

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Thus, when I read this review, I kept thinking, “This sounds like something someone wrote in an MFA program to stand out. What follows is a uniquely im aginitive sequence of interlinked stories ranging across time, place and perspective to form a sparkling philosophical tale of love, lost and found across the universe. I'm not a fan of fantasy or far-fetched fiction and felt the author was feeling a bit too pleased with her plot to stop a good few paragraphs or chapter earlier. This book felt like literary fiction, but it had a science fiction overlay, and that bending of genre was very thought provoking. I read a lot, but not much of what I read are books that appear on Booker Prize Long Lists (or win Booker Prizes).

De hecho, el libro se vende de esta manera, aunque diría que este elemento es más bien accesorio y muy desvinculado de la trama, no existen tales experimentos en esta lectura. For me, the most powerful chapters are the fourth and fifth, which compose a kind of central diptych: the narrative from the ant’s viewpoint, followed by Rachel’s meditation, in extremity, on her “partnership” with the creature, which had “crawled in to her eye one night and changed her life”. You do not need to have known the thought experiment to follow the book – as each is concisely explained at the start of the chapter.Ward’s ingenious fiction debut stands in a tradition of philosophical fiction: Voltaire’s Candide, Sartre’s Nausea. Ward's ingenious fiction debut stands in a tradition of philosophical fiction: Voltaire's Candide , Sartre's Nausea . There is only one story in the whole bunch that incited any emotional impact for me at all, and it’s the second piece: a child swims out to sea to retrieve a drifting toy for a friend, and worries he won’t make it back to shore; in three mutually exclusive endings, we see him fight for survival. Regardless, this was a challenging and highly entertaining read, and no doubt would warrant a second, more careful, re-reading - which I might grant it should it make the shortlist - or indeed, win the Booker. It seems like readers are increasingly being asked - by publishers, marketers, and prize committees - to embrace new works that are, frankly, not very good.

Each chapter begins with the explanation of a particular thought experiment and then uses that experiment as the foundation of the fiction that follows.If I were a thought experiment,’ Rachel asked Eliza as they got into bed that night, ‘What one would I be? My Dark Vanessa is the one with the poet I mentioned; of course that book is about consent, but much of the story does revolve around the classes and teachers involved in the MC’s studies. Set in the future and firmly in the genre of Sci-fi, this is where all the previous chapters connect.

This is a special novel that reminds me that the form of the novel can still surprise and take us to unexpected places, to feel unexpected things and perhaps even to expand our capacity for feeling and understanding. As you discover all these little facts and intricacies about the book, you can become lost in the deeper meanings and the cleverness of the writing. The second Prisoner’s Dilemma chapter is far less about the mathematical/game theory logic of the dilemma itself, and far more about alternative pathways that stem from the co-operate/defect/defeat options, and the chapter explores three storylines about a Cypriot Turkish boy who decides to swim away from shore after his friend’s ball. I came close to giving it five stars but the last few chapters strayed too far into sci-fi for my taste.

The story eventually veers into speculative fiction territory, exploring ideas on consciousness, reality, and “the telescopic sensation of giant tiny moments”.