The Beautiful Miscellaneous
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
'This unusual, gorgeously written novel is filled with pleasures . . . [it is] an invitation to wonder--about the imponderables of life and death, the nature of intelligence and the ultimately inexplicable relationships of fathers and sons.' Booklist
A dazzling novel from the bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, winner of the 2017 Indie Prize for Literary Fiction.
Nathan Nelson is the average son of a genius. His father, a physicist of small renown, has prodded him toward greatness from an early age, but despite Samuel Nelson's efforts Nathan remains ordinary.
Then, in the summer of 1987, everything changes. Nathan is involved in a terrible accident and falls into a coma. When he awakens, he finds that everyday life is radically different. His perceptions of sight, sound and memory have been irrevocably changed. The doctors and his parents fear permanent brain damage, but the truth of his condition is more unexpected and leads to a renewed chance for Nathan to find his place in the world.
Thinking that his son's altered brain is worthy of serious inquiry, Samuel arranges for Nathan to attend a research centre where savants, prodigies and neurological misfits are studied and their specialties applied. Immersed in this strange atmosphere--where an autistic boy can tell you what day Christmas falls on in 3026 but can't tie his shoelaces--Nathan begins to unravel the mysteries of his new mind and finally makes peace with the crushing weight of his father's expectations.
A brilliant exploration of the fault lines that can cause a family to drift apart, the unexpected events that can pull them back together and a 'luminous addition to novels about fathers and sons' (Kirkus Reviews).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following a car crash, Nathan Nelson, 17, is recovering from a two-week-long coma in July 1987. His father, Samuel, a physics professor at a Wisconsin college, wanted a genius for a son. Nathan, who narrates, has always been uninspired at best, but finds that the accident has left him with heightened senses, and a prodigious memory. Cerebral Samuel, whom Nathan can't help revering, rejoices. Even when sent to a school for the gifted, however, Nathan mostly watches TV and smokes cigarettes with girlfriend Teresa, whose talent is a kind of X-ray vision. Teresa soon uses this talent to spot a tragedy looming in Nathan's immediate future, and his life afterward, for the reader, is all frustrating anticlimax. As the years pass, Nathan works at a dead-end library job, stalks townspeople and parties with former schoolmates. This narrative's strengths are its abundant humor, occasional lyrical patches and portrayal of the quirky but reliable Whit Shupak, a retired astronaut and family friend. But Smith (The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre) never allows the immature, lackadaisical Nathan to really develop or emerge from his father's shadow.
