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

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This description probably doesn't convey what an enjoyable experience reading the book is - the science and philosophy never distracts too much from the human stories. What an intriguing review – I am more interested now in this than before, curious to see where I stand with this book.

I suppose once the AI character comes into play an argument could be made for ‘zero emotion’ to make sense with the story, but even so it’s not an effective tactic to keep the reader engaged! Picture “Sophie’s World,” “Cloud Atlas” and some arbitrary science fiction novel about artificial intelligence put into a blender, except there are still huge chunks that weren’t blended properly and give you an unpleasant jolt when you accidentally bite into one.

At the heart of the book is a couple named Rachel and Eliza whose desire to have a child results in a multitude of unforeseen consequences. Finnegans Wake is a concatenation of puns committed in a dreamlike English that is difficult not to categorize as frustrated and incompetent.

It all makes a kind of sense at the end, but along the way you might find yourself wondering what is happening. Inspired by some of the best-known thought experiments in philosophy, particularly philosophy of mind, Love and Other Thought Experiments is a story of love lost and found across the universe.

However, it is not until the final chapter of the book that the significance of those alternatives will start to fall into place. Many elements of the basic storyline, as well as additional characters like Rachel’s parents or a Cypriot Turkish boy Ali, are retold in different versions as the author probes a number of “thought experiments” on her characters and their interconnected lives.

I love the author’s idea to use select thought experiments as thematic arcs for individual chapters to tell the story about one family with warmth and immediacy, weaving the threads of their lives nonlinearly, including alternative unfoldings. Photograph: Jonas Hafner/EyeEm/Getty Images View image in fullscreen One of Ward’s characters believes that an ant has separated itself from its colony to bore through her eye and penetrate her brain.She is diagnosed with cancer, but survives long enough have a child, Arthur, who grows up to become an astronaut.