If Minds Had Toes
A Novel
-
-
2.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
Fifteen-year-old Ben Warner is dizzy with boredom working at his local fish and chips shop. One evening, a young woman saunters in and, between mouthfuls of chips, invites him to visit her in the World of Ideas. Ben is excited, but suspicious. The World of Ideas is the philosopher's quarter of the afterlife, and adorable Lila has been residing there for thirty years, but being dead is just the start of her problems. Lila's boss, Socrates, President of the World of Ideas for the last 2,109 years, has made a bet with his rival, Wittgenstein, that philosophy can improve your life. If Socrates loses he cedes the presidency to his crabby nemesis. For the wager, they choose Ben as their unwitting guinea pig, and Lila's mission is to prove to him that his life-annoying sisters, adolescent blues, smarmy boss and all-can be changed fundamentally for the better through philosophy. So begins a mind-bending guided tour through the big questions in life. When is orange not orange? Do we have free will? Does time speed up when your heart beats faster? Charming and full of wit and humor, Lucy Eyre's If Minds Had Toes warmly shows that few other questions-how we live and whether our lives have meaning-are more important.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the World of Ideas, the bizarre netherworld Eyre creates in her debut, dead philosophers engage in daily debates, everything tastes like cheese and Socrates reigns as president and believes philosophy is a life-enriching pastime. So when curmudgeonly Ludwig Wittgenstein argues that philosophy isn't beneficial to the common man, Socrates wagers his presidency that he can prove Wittgenstein wrong. Lila Frost, Socrates's secretary, is entrusted to locate a candidate from "Over There," the world of the living; the only requirement is that the chosen one must be young enough not to be jaded. Lila pops into U.K. fish and chips shop Cod Almighty where 15-year-old Ben Warner works, and after a t te- -t te and a handful of chips, Ben travels (via a portal located in his bathroom) to the World of Ideas, where he's immersed in discussions about whether the senses are reliable, if mind can triumph over matter and what makes an individual, well, individual. The forays into the magical world are littered with sly bits of humor, though the narrative gets bogged down in lengthy philosophical discourses. Still, the novel succeeds in making the case that philosophy isn't just for beard-strokers.
