Adam Felber

Start with the idea of Schroedinger's Cat, which is both dead and not-dead (or alive and not-alive) in its box, because no one's lifted the lid to observe the results of the experiment. Now apply that to a character in a novel. Weave in a second story line about a tax-evading governor who's declared his mansion to be a sovereign nation. Then toss in an occasional piece from a first-person plural narrator complaining about Dr. Schroedinger, who ought to be dead himself, making himself at home in 'our' house.

Then make it even weirder. And funnier.

I lent this book to my sister. She read it three times before offering, sadly, to return it.

She still has it. I still mean to replace it.… (mer)

One review blurb said that this book "made quantum physics funny and Cambridge, Massachusetts a place of strange magic." Well, I knew that both of these are quite likely true, but the book is also good, and hilarious. Features a bunch of twenty-somethings on a ordinary weekend, except that one of them might be dead (no-one has observed the body yet, so who knows?), The separatist President of Montana, a few wonderfully written Central Square homeless people, and Dr. Schroedinger himself, who keeps trying to explain physics to the narrator, and wishes that he'd never thought up the whole "cat" thing.… (mer)

One of our favorite weekend events is tuning into NPR's weekly news quiz show, "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" The wit and repartee of the rotating panel, host Peter Sagal and the ever amazing Carl Kasel (official scorekeeper, judge and announcer) is really good listening fun. Adam Felber is a frequent panelist, and so when I found this book, I was eager to read it, as he is very entertaining on the show.

The book was not at all what I expected. Quirky, witty, very funny in places, and extremely quirky, but it took me a while to grab hold of the different story arcs that twist and wind through this one. Still, in the end, I really did enjoy it. Can't exactly define what I expected it to be, at this point, but the fact the it was something totally different is not a bad thing, just a different thing. It's got (as one reviewer,
Harold Francis Jenkins Jr, over at Amazon, puts it) "absurdist humor, charming and delightful characters (at least one of whom spends most of the story being at once dead and not-dead), a healthy dose of quantum physics, a happy mix of first-, second-, and third-person narratives, and a writing style that easily slips into pseudo-Biblical and faux-Shakespearean and, at least once, breaks down completely."

All of which I concur, but I want to know what happened to the cat.… (mer)