Review by Booklist Review
St. Aubyn, author of the semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels, takes on a dizzying novel of ideas in which intellectual and hyper-educated characters muse to themselves and each other about consciousness, free will, biological determinism, and the fate of the natural world at a series of parties and other gatherings. St. Aubyn's characters face a variety of challenges. Among these characters are dreamy naturalist Francis, determined biologist Olivia, ambitious venture capitalist Hunter, and Hunter's conflicted assistant Lucy, as well as Olivia's psychoanalyst parents and one of their patients, Sebastian (who may in fact be Olivia's twin brother), and a couple of clerics, one pure of heart and one not so much. One person accidentally gets pregnant, another gets a brain tumor, a third indulges in far too many drugs, and a fourth is tempted by the poolside seductions of a woman named Hope. Readers hoping for a typical ending, however, should look elsewhere: St. Aubyn appears to be more interested in exploring the philosophical implications of these dilemmas than resolving them.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
After some years apart, Olivia and Lucy, two old Oxford friends, are reunited at a turning point in both of their lives. Olivia has a new boyfriend and a book on genetics about to be published. Lucy is returning from the States to take up a job consulting for a wealthy venture capitalist; at the same time, Lucy is experiencing troubling medical symptoms. As science and technology wend their way through this multistranded story from the author of the "Patrick Melrose" novels, the perspective shifts from the two women to numerous other characters. Readers meet Olivia's beau, Francis, who manages an estate experimenting in "wilding," an attempt to return native species to their original environment; Hunter, Lucy's employer, a Bill Gates-like figure who wants Lucy's help to find "gold-plated" investment opportunities; Olivia's father, a psychotherapist doing groundbreaking work with patients with schizophrenia; and erratic Sebastian, one of the psychotherapist's patients. VERDICT St. Aubyn's impressive trove of knowledge of wide-ranging topics like artificial intelligence, epigenetics, climate science, and wilding takes nothing away from an entertaining story about love and friendship.--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
St. Aubyn moves on from a troubled King Lear type (Dunbar, 2017) to characters with greater problems still concerning life, death, and figuring out how much caviar and cocaine are enough. This is a novel of ideas--more specifically, the idea that somehow the world can be saved, whether through rewilding a patch of English forest or employing virtual reality to battle schizophrenia. Everyone involved represents an aspect of mind, from Sebastian, a young man battling mental illness, to Lucy, a principal player who has a frightening encounter with a tumor. Her sympathetic surgeon is of help: When Lucy, brilliant at both science and business, asks if she should avoid any kind of activity, given her condition, he replies, "My only advice is not to drink a case of champagne and go swimming at night in shark-infested waters." That's good advice under any circumstances. Lucy swims in the sharky waters of venture capital, working for a man suggestively named Hunter Sterling, who uses his brain and infinite fortune both to execute forward-looking mergers and acquisitions and to explore just about every narcotic there is, a habit that opens the way for moments of bad personal judgment and vulnerability, as when a greedy associate, urged by his wife and sensing the boss's addictive behavior, tries to engineer a financial coup: "Money had turned his nervously cheerful, basically shy, nerd of a wife into Lady Macbeth." Even the pure-hearted, ecological character called Francis--think Assisi, which figures in St. Aubyn's elegant, carefully plotted tale--isn't above the human fray; he's ostensibly the faithful lover of Olivia, Lucy's best friend, but he gets tangled up with a rich investor, which gives the story a bit of erotic frisson and some attention to our vile bodies just at a time when the characters are exploring the higher mysteries of the mind. More humorous but just as intellectually inclined as Richard Powers and David Mitchell, among other contemporaries, St. Aubyn explores human foibles even as he brilliantly takes up headier issues of the human brain in sickness and in health. A thought-provoking, smartly told story that brings philosophy, medicine, and neuroscience into boardroom and bedroom. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
