A Working Theory of Love by  Scott Hutchins

This first time novelist chose to bring his readers into the world of modern day computers where there is a race to make the first computer that can actually think like a human being. There is actually something called the Turing Test  named after one of the first computer geniuses Alan Turing, who was a British mathematician who broke the German Enigma Code during WW II. Turing  committed suicide after being prosecuted by the British government for being a homosexual. The Turing Test which is a key part of this novel is where a human being and computer are blindly  evaluated  by a human judge as to whether he/she believes they are human. If the responses of the computer are judged to be the human being more than 30% of the time, the computer is deemed to have achieved thinking like a human.

The voice of the book is Neill Bassett Jr., a man in his 30s who is hired to work for a start up company that is buiding such a machine which they hope will win the Turing Test competition. Bassett’s main qualifications to be hired is that his father the late Dr. Neill Bassett kept an extensive dairy of  his personal thoughts for many years and that material is being fed into the computer to give it human experience. Dr. Bassett unfortunately ended his life by an unexpected suicide and one of the dilemmas that scientists building the computer face is whether to tell the computer about this event.

Obviously to  ultimately think like a human, there would have to be input about various human qualities including greed, jealousy and of course love. The people working on this project find materials to add this element to the computer program. This also includes understanding sexuality. The young Bassett who basically narrates this book goes into detail with his own struggles particularly about his short lived marriage, his sexual affairs and  a special relationship with a younger woman in her early 20s. During his work day part of his job is to have conversations with “ his father “ and he eventually tells Dr. Bassett (the computer) that he is his son. He also  invites his mother to his work place  one day  in order to have a conversation with her deceased husband.

It appeared to be the author’s purpose to examine the meaning of love and relationships which is quite a task even for an experienced novelist let alone a first time author. I am not quite sure he achieved some great insights but  he chose a unique premise to try to do so.

The Sense of an Ending  by Julian Barnes 

This very well written book  is the story of a man on the long  side of middle age who is looking back on his life. He is reflecting  from the perspective a a guy who is divorced has one child and achieved moderate success in his career. Most important are his memories of his childhood friends and of his first girl friend which in retrospect was his true special love but it didn’t work out. You get the feeling that he is comfortable with his memories although he understands that it is fair to say  they may not be completely accurate. Then circumstances have it that he is notified that his old girl friends’ mother died and left him the diary of his old high school buddy who committed suicide. It turns out that his friend  had a relationship with his old girl friend. The narrator  doesn’t get to see the diary but he does get to see a letter that he himself wrote a long time ago about their relationship. He also get a chance to have a few meetings with his old girl friend. There is a little more to the story than I have told  but the main value of the book would seem to be a reflection on how we remember things . It also raises the question of how we may inadvertently hurt people with what we say and what we write. A good book will stimulate your personal thinking and memories. The above scenario did that with this writer and brought back painful memories which allowed us to identify with the book’s narrator in a very real manner. This reflects the success of this book

Stoner by John Williams: The reader of this 1965 novel by John Williams is presented with a mostly unhappy life of a man who became a university professor teaching English literature. He lives through two world wars, not serving in either one but seeing one of his best friend die in World War I. He watches students come and go at his university. He has a loveless marriage to a women who is emotionally quite limited. His only child, a daughter, lives in another city as an adult and becomes an alcoholic. He doesn’t have much of a relationship with her or his only grandson. Due to a conflict with the Chairman of his department, his is relatively isolated and has superficial relationships with his colleagues. Except for a brief joyful affair with a junior faculty member he appears to have very little pleasure in his life. If anything, this affair only makes him appreciate what he has missed in regards to meaningful relationships. He lives into his sixties. The author goes into great deal what he imagines his dying thoughts are like. This sections and in fact the entire book is very well written. I suppose the take away message that the author had in mind without overtly stating it, is that we only come around once and should try to experience life and relationships in as full and meaningful a way as we can. As a therapist, one cannot help but wonder if a person such as Stoner would not be so well defended psychologically, he might suffer a bit more but might be inclined to reach out for help in the form of some type of psychotherapy. This might lead to different choices and decisions with perhaps a more for filling life. You never know.

Buy now on Amazon: Cutting for Stone

This book  is a fictional story narrated in the first person by  someone who  spends most of his life in a setting that most of us would not expect to identify with or relate to. That is growing up on the grounds of a hospital in Eithopia with one’s identical twin and loving adoptive Indian parents who are physicians along with the dedicated servant staff including the daughter of one them who is your age. You only know that your biological mother was a nun who died in childbirth and your biological father was a brilliant surgeon at the hospital who fled the country  after an abortive effort of crushing the skull of your identical twin in order to try to  extract him in a stalled delivery prior to you and your brother ultimately being saved through a Caesarian section performed by your soon to be adoptive father who was internist. Shortly thereafter your adoptive fathers would marry your adoptive mother who was the Ob-Gyn physician at the hospital who happened to be out of the country at the time of the tragic circumstances of the beginning of you and your brother’s life. As unique as all these circumstances seem to be, the subsequent issues in the life of the narrator while unusual are things that do happen in the course of human events and become powerful determinants of one’s life story.  Despite being identical twins, the narrator’s brother seems to be on the “autism spectrum”, talking at a late age and usually saying very little, having minimal capacity for experiencing and expressing interpersonal emotions, although being objective to the point of ultimately developing an interest and a single minded obsession in women’s fistulas which leads him to wide recognition for his knowledge and advocacy in this arena . His directness as a young man leads him to a sexual experience with the daughter of the household servant which sets off a crescendo of events that go on through a lifetime of the characters in this book. As is so often the case of lives and events, each intersection makes a change which will be so important in another significant event  which will change another one. One misunderstanding or missed opportunity has set up a future event, which will forever change one’s life.  Because the author has chosen to follow his characters for significant portions of their life cycle we come to know them in great depth so we empathize with most of them in a very meaningful way. We do pay a price for this depth of knowledge and understanding of the characters as the author has intertwined his narrative with endless detail about external events of climate, vegetation and seemingly unrelated incidental thoughts of the characters.  I had to fight my obsessive style of not skipping sentences or paragraphs in a book as I usually deplore the style, which skims ahead for dialog or events in a wordy book although at times I lost this battle.  The final reward for reading this book is an insight into one family and a glimpse of life in Ethiopia during the regime of Halle Sal isse as well as a little bit of the feel of the revolution which disposed him . The author being a physician also writes in great detail (sometimes more than you need) about the medical issues of the people who come to the hospital and as well those of some of the characters whom you have come to care bout.  He also blends in some ethical dilemmas which not only challenged the characters but will most likely fascinate the reader. In the end the reader has taken a meaningful journey  with the narrator and the people close to him and you cannot help but feel you are the richer for it.

On the same day as I started writing this review, I heard a report on NPR of a group of Saudi women who are protesting the law in their country that women can’t drive a car and must be driven around by men or take a taxi. The subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia and other Moslem countries was the underlying theme of this novel Finding Nouf. It is a mystery of the disappearance and death of a young wealthy women and the efforts of mainly two people who are trying figure out what happened to her. It is through their eyes that we appreciate how the everyday life of women must be hidden behind the berka where her ankles should never show in public and the vail so no man but her husband or immediate family should look at her face. At the same time we see how the rules are neglected at times despite the fact that there are actually religious police who patrol the streets demanding proof of marriage between a man and women who are together in public. As the mystery of what happened to Nouf unfolds, we also appreciate the yearning of this woman and so many others of this culture to be freed from their oppression. We know about CSI NY and CSI Miami but do we have a CSI Saudi ? We do have a death, an autopsy, fingerprints, DNA, footprints (this time in the dessert aided by a expert footprint tracker) as well as some unexpected twists and turns. If the subtext of the Moslem culture were well known to us, I don’t think I would have been fascinated enough to stay turned in.

Buy now on Amazon: The Alchemist

I don’t quite get it. This 1993 book has sold 65 million copies, it has been best seller in 74 countries, originally in Portuguese , translated into many languages apparently not French or Spanish but to me it is just a simple fable. This may be a very early social media phenomenon as the author spreads his books on file sharing networks, which facilitates the sales of them. Could it be because it is relatively brief, people take a chance on the book and many people buy it because it is a short popular book. Also perhaps it is popular in the Arab world ( where there are multimillions of people in many countries ) because the underlying theme includes a return to Mecca which is embedded in their religion. Maybe it is a popular gift in this world of readers.

For me I like books with characters I can relate to or at least fantasize about . I don’t mind a plot that says if you work hard and keep trying, you will succeed but I like the story that is interesting and not be so naïve, bland and repetitive even if it is short.

I am not against dreams being important in a story( after all I am a psychiatrist ) but I like interpersonal relationships or personalities that I can understand using some theory or life experience that has some meaning.

I am not against reading fairy tales to kids but for my own reading, I want a story that could reflect life, or interesting characters even if I have to struggle to understand them or develop emotions positive or negative about them, none of which I found in this story.

But what do I know this book has  been one of the best selling books in history.

It is a well known fact that Australia was originally settled primarily by convicts who were shipped there by the Bristish government in the 18^th and early 19^th century. The Secret River puts a very personal face on what it might have meant to be one of the settlers who had his life reprieved from a hangman’s nose for stealing good to then be faced with a life sentence of exile in a barely inhabited land.

Even before we follow the protagonist of this novel William Thornhill and his wife and small child across the ocean to Australia, we are given insight in to the desperation which lead a hard working honest man to make stealing an everyday part of his life in order to prove a bare sustenance for his family. Particularly when your everyday life as  waterman boatman on the Thames River in London put you in contact with the gentleman gentry, we see how the dreams and aspirations of the poorest man can be seeds seed waiting to sprout if ever given the opportunity. Just as the Americans had its Indians who were here first, the Australians had its aborigines although the latter word was never used in this novel. They were usually referred with some variation of “ black”. They were usually a stealth group off in the woods. How the convict settlers tried to dehumanize them in order to justify to themselves their right to dominance over the land is a good part of psychological underpinning of this story.

Author Kate Krenville was apparently inspired to write this noel during her own exploration of studying the family journey of a distant relative. She appears to have mastered the history, the dialect as well as the interesting trials and tribulations, which her main character and his family might have experienced. The reader gets into their shoes and appreciates their struggle as they battle to hold on to their dreams and their values.

Buy now on Amazon: Let the Great World Spin

There are novels, which have a great plot, or story, which grabs the reader and takes them to a new place with new ideas. Then there are books which present fictional segments of life which may or may not flow together but give the reader a worthwhile journey . This work falls in the latter category and I haven’t yet made up my mind how glad I am that I took.this trip.  Mr. Mc Cann certainly provided a very insightful look at the meaning of the famous high wire walk between two world trade center towers which took place more than 30 years ago. The hundreds or perhaps thousands of New Yorkers who looked up in the sky that morning were united for a period of time just as New Yorkers would be united on 9/11 many years later. This time however people seemed to share a single focus on this distant figure on a wire  in their ultimate appreciation of one person’s determination to achieve something  which very few people on earth would even dream could be done. In contrast to this amazing feat we are exposed to the lives a series of people who had very little control over the defining moments of their lives. We meet a group of disparate women who are drawn together because their sons were killed in combat. A young man who was a kind of a Priest but really just wanted to help people but never got a chance to realize love once he found it. We follow the sad lives of New York City street hookers whose lives lead nowhere . Even the daughter of one who finds a way out of poverty which would have led her to the streets,  escapes it only  by a quirk of fate. If we needed to be reminded, we see how New York City is a melting pot of an untold number of untold stories. I recall riding the subway many years ago  in this enormous city and wondering how many of these anonymous people might somehow be connected by some degrees of separation. There is no special meaning to the causal connection which some of the characters in the book have to each other . There is no real reason why most of the people should be in the same book. The world spins and the author clipped a few people who were living in New York and told us about part of their lives. He did a good job but it might have been a great book  if there had been a well thought out story ( but that would have been a different book).

Buy now on Amazon: Olive Kitteridge

No doubt Elizabeth Strout is a talented insightful author who is able to use her main character, as well as well as those that are part of her  life or cross paths with her, to mine a potpourri of human emotions more often on the bitter side. In each of her 13 chapters she deals mostly with a retired school teacher’s trials and tribulations whether it be with Henry her husband and long time pharmacist of their small town in Maine, Christopher her only son who doesn’t deliver her expectations as far their mother-child adult relationships or others whom she has encountered. Each story dealt with an original slice of life with unflinchingly honest depiction of the inner thoughts of Olive and the other characters. However, I have to admit, I had no problem putting down ( or shutting off my Kindle ) and never was in a rush to fire it up. I must be in the minority here as this is a Pulitzer winning book. Perhaps I am looking for a more refreshing uplifting or challenging reading experience that offers a new twist on the usual conflicts of life. I could easily understand why her son while dutiful was not anxious to be steeped in his mother’s needy wish for payback. This even made me reflect of how I hope that I would not put that expectation on my own kids (although I suppose I could), which allowed me to give some credit and value to this reading assignment. The concluding experience of Olive in her older age which allowed her to appreciate her need to love and be loved was another well done literary accomplishment of this book. However when I weigh all, I still have to give a thumbs down to this book

Buy now on Amazon: The Last Town on Earth

I was bothered by the title of this book since it isn’t really accurate. Perhaps it is meant to imply that the people felt as if they were in the last town on earth but that wasn’t really the case either. I kept expecting the story to somehow be something that it wasn’t.

It was a novel set in the northwest US in about 1917-1918 during WWI and the outbreak of the devastating flu epidemic. The location is Commonwealth, which is a town, formed around a mill but which had a special commune or kibbutz flavor since the owner of this factory organized the town to be a cooperative, paying fair wages, with one general store and a quasi town government, which would meet if there were issues to discuss.

The big issue is the deadly flu epidemic. The town, which is out of the mainstream and main roads, decides to isolate or quarantine itself from any outsiders by setting armed guards at the entryway into the town. The story evolves as two young men confront some soldiers who have strayed their way and desperately need to enter the town. The only way to prevent them from entering the town and possibly contaminating everyone with this dangerous flu is that these young guards  might have to be to shoot them.

The author develops these characters as well as other town people so you know where they are coming from; you have a sense of their values and beliefs and appreciate their moral dilemmas when it comes life and death decisions, which they have to make. These were not everyday people as they each had their own journeys to this town but nevertheless you could put yourself in their shoes. This is the vehicle of the book.

Although the premise and unique qualities of the book did hold my interest, I did not find myself as invested in the characters and the stories as I frequently do with books that I immensely enjoy. I could put the book down and I can’t classify it as page turner (or a button pusher in the case of my Kindle.). The author did surprise me at times with twists in the plot and evoked emotions when people did not do well with disease that was descending upon them.

The book did get me to reflect on several issues.

One of them is the great fear that contagious diseases can instill in everyone including healthcare workers. Before we knew exactly how HIV was transmitted, I recall the fear in hospitals when patients with HIV were admitted and required procedures, which might spill blood. I published a study about the attitude of nurses in working with such patients. There was great fear and at time avoidance of patients by doctors and especially pregnant nurses. During my work in disaster psychiatry we had to think through the psychosocial problems we might encounter if an enemy might release a contagious agent or a harmful toxin somewhere in this country. What if a school were contaminated? Would we let the parents into the school or keep them out.? Would we not let family members visit contaminated people in the hospital if the illness was highly contagious. How close would we let staff get to the patients? We thought there should be lots of video communications. We also knew the fear and anxiety could be greater than the actual threat to life (although that could be problem also). During a saran gas attack by terrorists in the Tokyo subway a while back, 100 people were affected and a handful were killed but over 5000 people who were not affected appeared in panic state at local hospital overwhelming their ability to evaluate them.  The importance of presenting clear information to the public in what is called risk communication has been  studied by researchers. They have concluded that there needs to be a balance of truthful information put out through the media, but yet put out in a manner that would minimize tendency towards mass hysteria. The public has to trust the spokesperson i.e. Mayor Giuliani giving information about potential future terrorists during 9/11. There are special techniques which he used and experts in this field have studied.

The book also  made me redouble my efforts to try be sure that we personally get the swine flu vaccine having already received the regular flu vaccine.

Another issue that I thought about was how Conscientious Objectors were treated during WWI. Apparently it was true that a certain number were actually treated harshly and beaten as depicted in the book. I know that during WW II COs did serve as medics as was the case in the VN war where I was a psychiatrist and had opportunity to evaluate a number of them who were either discharged or who clearly were assigned to noncombatant duty. I did not hear of any cases of physical abuse to them. The book touched idea of the anti-war movement in the WWI as well as in other wars or in the VN was which I was most familiar. One of the characters Rebecca who was shown to be suffragette as well as antiwar activist was a recurrent voice in the book.

When an author can stimulate thinking and discussion in a number of areas around the theme of the book he or she has made a worthwhile literary accomplishment.

My final conclusion is that in my opinion this is a good first novel but not a great one.