Name: A Doubter's Almanac
ISBN: 9780812980264

Ethan Canin

"Milo Andret, the genius who solved the Malosz Conjecture and won the Fields Medal for mathematics, had an unusual, even eerie mind from birth, but not until he moves to Berkeley in the 1970s to pursue a Ph.D. does he realize the extent of his singular talents. From the drug-soaked enclaves of beatnik California to the verdant lawns of Princeton University, from turbo-charged Wall Street to the quiet woods of Michigan, his reputation as one of the century's most brilliant thinkers forms the backbone of a ... story about family, love, passion, and Milo's fraught relationship with his son"--

A Doubter's Almanac

"Milo Andret, the genius who solved the Malosz Conjecture and won the Fields Medal for mathematics, had an unusual, even eerie mind from birth, but not until he moves to Berkeley in the 1970s to pursue a ph.D. does he realize the extent of his singular talents. From the drug-soaked enclaves of beatnik California to the verdant lawns of Princeton University, from turbo-charged Wall Street to the quiet woods of Michigan, his reputation as one of the century's most brilliant thinkers forms the backbone of asweeping, epic story about family, love, passion, and Milo's fraught relationship with his son. With magnificent prose and enormous storytelling magic, Ethan Canin gives us a suspenseful, original novel about the nature of genius, and a son's quest to understand the mystery of his father's life, and its legacy in his own"--

A Novel

Jessica 

"Are there not a thousand forms of sorrow? Is the sorrow of death the same as the sorrow of knowing the pain in a child's future? What about the melancholy of music? Is it the same as the melancholy of a summer dusk? Is the loss I was feeling for my father the same I would have felt for a man better-fit to the world, a man who might have thrown a baseball with me or taken me out in the mornings to fish? Both we call grief. I don't think we have words for our feelings any more than we have words for our thoughts."

 
As a note, a printed galley of this novel was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not effect my opinions in any way. Originally posted a year ago.

There are a lot of reasons why I loved and loathed A Doubter's Almanac. I loved it exclusively because the writing is beyond superb. I loathed it because it was full of something I'd read before and I didn't actually love the story. Which makes approximately no sense, I know. But here's the thing: Ethan Canin has a voice to be reckoned with in literature. No one's going to argue me on that one. He has a place in it and there's no doubt about it.

More incoherent babble of a review can be found here. I'M SORRY. I suck.

A Doubter's Almanac

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