Can a genius be raised? Where is the line between giftedness and mediocrity? How to find the strength in yourself and let your child go – into his, adult, separate life? All these themes make up the fine variety of this novel.
1. Dreams of parents. A well-known scientist, the author of important (but still not critical) articles on elementary particle physics, dreams that his son will break into genius – where scientific insights that change the world descend on a person. From infancy, a child is given a periodic table, instead of a movie theater and a zoo, they are taken to the tundra to watch a solar eclipse, and the Stanford linear accelerator is offered as Disneyland. But all in vain! Nathan dreams of being like everyone else: playing with classmates, going camping, kissing girls in the garage, and surreptitiously looking at porn magazines.
2. Children’s Talents. And yet genius comes to him – just not at all the one that his parents dreamed of. As a result of the trauma, Nathan opens up the ability to synesthesia – a special figurative perception – and to remember any information (the plot is inspired, according to Dominic Smith, by the works of the outstanding Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, who described a similar phenomenon). So here it is, finally, a gift in the literal sense of the word, sent from above – just what to do with it? It is necessary to somehow direct it to the benefit of science, Nathan’s father is sure. It is necessary to dispose of it in such a way as to put an end to one’s own isolation in the world, – Nathan believes.
3. Questions of life. Where is the line between talent and mediocrity? Can a genius be raised? In what “higher instance” is the question of human giftedness decided and does it make a person happier? All these themes – and others, about the love of father and son, about family and feelings of guilt before loved ones, about loneliness and being chosen, about faith and science – make up the wonderful variety of this capacious novel, where not a single thread is thrown or broken, everything they are woven, tied into a tight knot and stretched to the end.
Alphabet, 352 p.