A Doubter's Almanac
Ethan Canin, 2016
Random House
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400068265
Summary
In this mesmerizing novel, Ethan Canin, bestselling author of America America and The Palace Thief, explores the nature of genius, rivalry, ambition, and love among multiple generations of a gifted family.
Milo Andret is born with an unusual mind. A lonely child growing up in the woods of northern Michigan in the 1950s, he gives little thought to his own talent.
But with his acceptance at U.C. Berkeley he realizes the extent, and the risks, of his singular gifts.
California in the seventies is a seduction, opening Milo’s eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman he meets there—and the rival he meets alongside her—will haunt him for the rest of his life.
For Milo’s brilliance is entwined with a dark need that soon grows to threaten his work, his family, even his existence.
Spanning seven decades as it moves from California to Princeton to the Midwest to New York, A Doubter’s Almanac tells the story of a family as it explores the way ambition lives alongside destructiveness, obsession alongside torment, love alongside grief. It is a story of how the flame of genius both lights and scorches every generation it touches.
Graced by stunning prose and brilliant storytelling, A Doubter’s Almanac is a surprising, suspenseful, and deeply moving novel, a major work by a writer who has been hailed as "the most mature and accomplished novelist of his generation." (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 19, 1960
• Where—Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
• Raised—San Francisco, California
• Education—B.A., Stanford; M.F.A., University of Iowa; M.D., Harvard
• Currently—lives in Iowa City, Iowa, and San Francisco
Ethan Andrew Canin is an American author, educator, and physician. He is a member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Canin was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan while his parents were vacationing from Iowa City, where his father, Stuart Canin, taught violin at the University of Iowa. He and his family moved around the midwestern and northeastern United States, and eventually settled in San Francisco, California where he attended Town School and later graduated from San Francisco University High School. He attended Stanford University and earned an undergraduate degree in English. Returning to the University of Iowa, Canin entered the Iowa Writers' Workshop, receiving an MFA in 1984 and went on to attend Harvard Medical School where he earned an M.D. in 1991.
Beginning his medical practice with a residency at the University of California San Francisco, he pursued both medicine and writing for several years, leaving medicine in 1998 to join the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he still teaches. He is a co-founder of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/22/2016.)
Book Reviews
Mathematicians, like rich people, are different from you and me. Just how different is the subject of Ethan Canin’s remarkable novel.Milo Andret is a certified genius, a rare math talent in a field flush with talent. But his brilliance—a gift and a curse—becomes an obsession, alienating him from anyone who ventures near. Worse, it has a devastating impact on his wife and children. READ MORE.
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers
Math made beautiful.... Ethan Canin writes with such luxuriant beauty and tender sympathy that even victims of Algebra II will follow his calculations of the heart with rapt comprehension.
Washington Post
A blazingly intelligent novel.
Los Angeles Times
[Canin] is at the top of his form, fluent, immersive, confident. You might not know where he’s taking you, but the characters are so vivid, Hans’s voice rendered so precisely, that it’s impossible not to trust in the story.... "It was as though the numerals had been expressly fabricated, like more-perfect words, to elucidate the details of creation," Canin writes of Milo’s passion for math, though he might as well be referring to his novel, in which the delicate networks of emotion and connection that make up a family are illuminated, as if by magic, via his prose.
Slate
Canin’s hugely anticipated tale of male genius and its destructive power is a fine-grained portrait of a troubled mathematician and the emotional footprint he leaves behind.
Vogue
(Starred review.) [S]tunning assurance and elegant, resonant prose.... Fascinating in its character portrayal and psychological insights.... Canin’s accomplishments are many, not least of which is his...superb storytelling that makes this novel a tremendous literary achievement.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] compelling family saga that follows troubled math genius Milo Andret from birth to death.... Verdict: A moving, spiritual journey, this poetic novel clocks in at well over 500 pages but begs to be read in one sitting...it's tough to keep a dry eye through this one. —Kate Gray, Boston P.L.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Epic...thoroughly absorbing...a nuanced, heartbreaking portrait of a tortured mathematician.... Canin, in translucent prose, elucidates the way a mathematician sees the world and humanity’s own insignificance within it. A harrowing, poignant read about the blessing and curse of genius.
Booklist
This complex portrait of a troubled math genius and the effect his gift has on those close to him combines a strong narrative and bumper crop of themes.... Canin then switches to the voice of Milo's son, Hans.... Mean Dad was the motherlode, and it's not clear that Canin's easing of the darkness makes for a better novel.
Kirkus Reviews
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