Well, that was annoying, heart breaking, and a bit fuzzily happy at the end. A reviewer hits the nail with a rather large hammer dead on with "...The Sound and the Fury crossed with The Catcher in the Rye..." For math/science/logic types, the little bits of trivia can get almost annoying: The main character of the book goes on dry rants about such diverse topics as the strong/weak anthropic theories, light-cones, and prime numbers. The effect is intended and probably works wonders for those who aren't familiar with these topics but having special relativity mentioned once again can make certain readers want to skip over parts. Part of this may be because the emotional content of the book is less evident near the beginning and so does not balance the factoid sections as well.

I must say I'm a science snob (I must be) because I found the first half of the book intriguing but, as I said, annoying for its incessant literal descriptions. I must also admit that when the main character is listing out squares and cubes, that I attempt to do the same thing, derailing me from the book. So basically, it's my fault.

A bit past a third of the book, I finally stopped struggling with the character's universe and just settled into it. This turns out to be one of the meta-points of the book, methinks. In any case, the story becomes rapidly more complex and absolutely heartbreaking until almost the very end, when a lieto fine (oooh! look at that! Musical terminology! Means happy ending. I'm so smart! S-M-R-T!) seems almost out of place. I didn't cry but I certainly felt like I wanted to. (Not bawl inducing but the heart is being wrenched, yes). The ending is happy but the story is still melancholy for me.

Great book. Amazing, even. At a scant double-spaced big font 220 or so pages, a fast read (if you don't stop to be annoyed at the fact that the coefficients of those quadratic equations are all prime numbers, making traditional factoring impossible). A scary two hours if you're Shryh and random points scattered over 5 days, mixed with the Idiot's Guide to Wine and Superstring Theory if you're me.

Go buy it and read it. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

And yet another novel curse I've learned from the brits: "Shitting Fuck!" I didn't even know such wonderously creative concatenations were allowed! Shitting Fuck!