A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Are we free to create our own destinies or are we just part of a system beyond our control?
A joyful family saga about free will, forgiveness, and how we are all interconnected.
In October 1989, a set of triplets is born, and it is this moment their father chooses to reveal his affair. Pandemonium ensues.
Over two decades later, Sebastian is recruited to join a mysterious organisation, the London Institute of Cognitive Science, where he meets Laura Kadinsky, a patient whose inability to see the world in three dimensions is not the only thing about her that intrigues him. Meanwhile, Clara has travelled to Easter Island to join a doomsday cult, and the third triplet, Matilda, is in Sweden, trying to escape from the colour blue.
Then something happens that forces the triplets to reunite. Their mother calls with worrying news: their father has gone missing and she has something to tell them, a twenty-five-year secret that will change all their lives …
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chaos and the search for order duel in Svensson's intelligent debut. At 25, the Izaksson triplets—Sebastian, Matilda, and Clara—learn from their mother that one of them might have been switched in the hospital after their birth, but they don't know which. The family dynamic is already uneasy, each sibling having gone their separate way after the death of Sebastian's girlfriend, Violetta, a year earlier. Sebastian, a neuroscientist, doesn't know why he's been recruited by the shadowy London Institute of Cognitive Science. Matilda lives in Berlin with her boyfriend, Billy, and his synesthete daughter. Meanwhile, Clara has gone to Easter Island to interview an environmentalist who believes the world is about to end. Everything that happens may have meaning, or may not (at one point, Sebastian wonders if people are nothing but "pawns in a strange game of indeterminate purpose and an as yet unclear ending"). As the triplets attempt to solve the mystery at the heart of their family, Svensson unpacks the details of Violetta's death and its implications. Even if the lack of resolution is intentional, the length starts to feel wearing. Still, wacky details at Sebastian's lab—a monkey with a moral compass, a patient who can only see in two dimensions—and the provocative intrigue keep this afloat. It's fun if exhausting.
