Book Review | Book Chatter

The Technologists
By Matthew Pearl
(Random House, Hardcover, 9781400066575, February 21, 2012, 496pp.)

The Short of It:

Mysterious and thrilling. The Technologists is the best kind of historical thriller. Learn a little, enjoy a lot.

The Rest of It:

Boston, 1868. The story opens with a catastrophe that no one can explain. Ships, coming in from the harbor are suddenly unable to navigate with the instruments they have. As the instrumentation goes haywire, vessels of all shapes and sizes crash into the harbor one by one. A sight that is hard to imagine, but even worse to witness firsthand. What caused this? Who caused this? Will it happen again?

This mysterious event piques the curiosity of many. Including the students of The Institute who live and breathe science and know that there must be a scientific explanation for what’s occurred. Except, society as a whole has not accepted science as an answer and in fact, would do almost anything to discredit it. Especially the Harvard boys who believe it’s just a bunch of hooey.

This creates quite a challenge for the students of the Institute, led by Marcus Mansfield and the group called The Technologists. They band together, with the assistance of the Institute’s only female student, Ellen Swallow to solve the mystery of what happened in that harbor on that fateful day, and the other disasters that follow in its wake.

I have a tiny crush on Matthew Pearl. He doesn’t know it, but that’s okay. His name might be familiar to you. A few years back he released The Last Dickens which I reviewed here. I don’t know if it is his writing, the fact that he chooses Boston in the late 1800’s as a setting (love), or what, but whatever he is doing, I am liking. The other thing to note, is that his books tend to cross many genres and they never seem to bore me. That’s always a plus. For example, I love mysterious elements but I am not a fan of mystery as a genre. Somehow, he manages to present the mysterious elements within historical fact which is endlessly fascinating to me.

This book pulls you in quickly and has just the right amount of science to make it interesting. At times, I felt the book a tad too long. In between the excitement of the disasters themselves, there is a great deal of experimentation and let’s be honest here, I couldn’t wait for the next disaster to hit and got a little cranky in-between the events when things didn’t happen right away. However, the practice of science is not a speedy task. There are notes to be taken, results to be reviewed, etc. Had it been written any other way, I’m sure I would have found fault with it. So in the end, these experimental “asides” did not keep me from enjoying the novel.

Overall, the characters are realistically drawn and the events, thrilling. To think that science was at one time compared to black magic is almost too difficult to believe, but Pearl truly gives the reader a glimpse of how it was for that first graduating class at MIT and many of the characters are based on actual students.

If you like to learn something while being entertained, you will undoubtedly enjoy this one. And if you’re lucky, you could win a copy of your own (see details below).

Source: ARC and giveaway copy is provided by the publisher via TLC Book Tours.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Matthew’s website, Facebook page, and book trailer. To visit the the other blogs on the tour, click here.

Giveaway Information

The publisher has offered me one copy of The Technologists to giveaway! Giveaway is open to the US and Canada. The publisher will send the book to the winner and the winner will be notified by me. To enter, complete the form below. Giveaway ends on February 19, 2012.

The giveaway is now closed!

The Marriage Plot
By Jeffrey Eugenides
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Hardcover, 9780374203054, October 2011, 416pp.)

The Short of It:

Angst-ridden smart folks trying to figure it out.

The Rest of It:

The Marriage Plot is this big, bold forray into what it’s like to be young with options. Madeleine, Leonard and Mitchell are all graduating from Brown. It’s the early 80’s and their lives are just beginning to swing into the unknown. Madeleine, an English major, knows that grad school is in her future, but now that she’s fallen in love with Leonard, who has his own baggage in the form of manic-depression, she’s trying to fit it all in and find a balance.

Mitchell, who never truly connected with Madeleine, has it in his head that she’s the mate for him and is a tiny bit obsessed with her. He is always on the outside, looking in and can’t understand Madeleine’s desire to be with Leonard. As Madeleine follows Leonard to Cape Cod for an internship, Mitchell travels around the world to pursue his interest in religion, but more importantly, to get Maddie out of his head.

Although the story plods along at an incredibly slow pace, I couldn’t help but get swept up in the “bigness” of it. I was in college in the late 80’s and Eugenides nailed 80’s college life and I mean, NAILED it. You’ve got your academic life taking up most of your time but then… then there is this other half of you that is going out and meeting people. Often, one person turns out to be more than a friend and then all of sudden life shifts and you are thinking of marriage and the white picket fence. Maybe.

The Marriage Plot is all about that time. That time where you feel as if you have all these options, yet have no idea where you’ll really end up. It’s about figuring out what you really want and realizing that the decisions you make today, could affect you for the rest of your life. As Madeleine studies romances of the past, she realizes that history does not have to repeat itself.

I love angst and there is plenty of it contained within these pages to last you a lifetime. Did I love the characters? No. I often found myself frustrated by their inability to take things in, but were they real to me? Most definitely. Leonard, who suffers manic-depression throughout the novel was probably my favorite of the characters because he was so flawed yet there were times where he was completely lucid. During these times, I saw his brilliance and how a girl like Maddie could fall in love with him.

Overall, this is not a book that will wow you with its plot. It’s not a page-turner but instead a quiet, introspective look at relationships and if you are a book lover (who isn’t?) then you will love this book for the bookish references peppered throughout the story. I had an easy time picking this one up and putting it down. It’s the type of book you can easily dip in and out of but every time I put it down, I found myself thinking about my own college years.

Note from Ti: This book is very different from Middlesex so you really can’t compare the two. If you go into this one hoping for another Middlesex then you’ll be disappointed.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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