This book is really going to bork my knowledge of the science history of Haber, Schwarzchild, Grothendieck, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger, but that’s ok. A dark fiction of nonfictions, it is a book of imagined tails of these giants on the edge of discovery and disaster.

Some will be offended by the male genius trope, but others might consider that these are not heroes, and that science on the edge is, by definition, madness. Most scientists never get to live on this boundary, spending their lives in the cold comfort of existing structures, and Labatut captures this terrifying boundary in dense dark prose. ( )

This book both is and is not like Helena Bonham Carter. Like HBC, it is kind of strange and darkly seductive and wonderfully entertaining. Unlike HBC, I’m not sure it entirely stands up to a great deal of scrutiny. As a reading (listening, actually) experience several months ago it was an easy 5 stars. Pondering after a later re-read with it as printed matter, I have a few qualms.

The identity of the book is first of all in Labatut’s idea that trying to grasp the hidden core of reality, what in his view we can’t in fact ever understand, tends to lead to suffering and madness, as demonstrated by the lives of a number of the most genius of scientists, and secondly in using fictional elements in an effort to illustrate this idea in a gradually increasing way through the book, starting from a 99.9% factual first section. This second element I think is largely responsible for winning the book its renown. However, despite being shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker, I would not classify this book as fiction; basically it’s another [b:The War of the Poor|54765614|The War of the Poor|Éric Vuillard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1596192583l/54765614._SY75_.jpg|67580285] situation and again, for me: not fiction. Rather, it’s using a bit of fiction to try to strengthen its point-of-view in recounting and interpreting actual events - like, you know, history books.

The book does some things quite well, such as pulling the reader along a swiftly moving stream of interesting facts and ideas from science and, particularly, quantum physics. That said, it does so at a superficial level, a good bit away from something like a more standard non-fiction work on quantum physics for the general reader. But that’s fair enough really, because that is not its concern - and perhaps a relief to many a reader. The book doesn’t need the reader to have the foggiest notion of how Heisenberg’s matrices actually work, just know they’re something he created while trying to comprehend the deepest nature of reality. And while going a bit mad.

Characterization is another thing the book generally does very well, quickly giving a sense of the different scientists in its focus. But then here’s where the fictional elements come into play. Labatut makes up scenes to emphasize his view that their scientific efforts were leading them into suffering and madness. How well do these scenes work? Does reading that Heisenberg went on walks during which:

He would shit squatting down as if he were a dog marking its territory, and then root around for stones to cover his filth, imagining that at any moment someone might surprise him with his trousers around his ankles.

add to its persuasive picture?

If Labatut’s thesis is persuasive, why include these made up scenes? If for literary reasons, I don’t think they work that well on further reflection, or at least they aren’t for me. If they’re necessary for convincing readers of his thesis, then maybe his thesis isn’t actually all that persuasive.

In a review of the book, Maria Dahvana Headley writes that, “The men profiled in this volume are certainly geniuses, but they’ve been curated to reflect catastrophe.” That they have. And it’s a darkly seductive curation, to Labatut’s credit. But is it a fair view of the history of humankind in reaching for new and deep understandings? Well.

The book certainly does much to praise. The prose, translated from the Spanish, is terrific. As for my complaint that inserting some imagined scenes does not in itself make a work fiction, perhaps a misleadingly curated book of non-fiction could be said to get there in the end. ( )

Obsessions with science and mathematics leads to discoveries - and at times madness. I would have preferred if this book weren't such a blend of fact - and some fiction. Would it really have been less of a great read if it were all non-fiction? ( )

Benjamin Labatut's short collection of stories about troubled or troubling scientists and mathematicians, and the ways in which the edges of our intellectual grasp of this universe can disturb us profoundly, is an odd probability cloud of fact and fiction. Using clear language and vivid anecdote to make compelling portraits, Labatut both reports and imagines the tortured thinking and sometimes tragic consequences involved in discovering the chemistry of ammonia and cyanide production, the all-consuming singularity threshold of black holes, the hidden mysteries of number theory, and the ambiguity of sub-atomic particles. Death and suicide circle around these lives and ideas, whether by poison, hanging, disease, genocide, armed combat or nuclear holocaust.

Along the way, Labatut intersperses an encyclopaedic account of these men (and they are all men) and their ideas with his own imaginative and often mystical or erotic threads of plot and dialogue, providing a kind of intimacy you won't find in the history books. In that sense, it's unclear if his writing is - to borrow some of his protagonists' metaphors - a wave or a particle. Like Werner Heisenberg, as observers we can't know both the veracity and insight of Labatut's writing at the same time.

However, we do know that he fails to solve the obscure equations entwining imagination and reality in our minds. By the end of this slim volume, it is only clear that we have yet to understand the world and our fellow humans and may never do so. Without being able to know exactly where we are ontologically, his implication is that we can never predict the outcomes of our knowledge, or the horrors that may result. He may also be hinting that - like stars falling past the point of no return - 'when we cease to understand' we're already too far into a black hole to escape the effects of our ignorance.

Having been whisked through the lives and misadventures of Fritz Haber, Erwin Schrodinger, Karl Schwarzschild, Alexander Grothendieck and others, we are really none the wiser to explain - in a final chapter closer to home for Labatut himself - why dogs are poisoned or lemon trees die with a final upsurge of fecundity. Like the author, perhaps all we can do is hug those closest to us as hard as we can. ( )

I wasn’t impressed with the way Labatut mixed the facts with the fiction. Otherwise, could have been an interesting overview of 20th century science, its successes and its faults. ( )