What to make of this book? It is quixotic - a story that starts as non-fiction and progressively delves into fiction, and myth. Labatut does to the history of science what genre history novels do to… history. I haven’t read anything like it, and as someone trained as a physicist it’s nerve-wracking and alluring to see science retold with a hint of spirituality and a search for a common thread running through it all.
Labatut’s novel largely deals with the most exciting time in science, a few decades where students were suggested not to study physics, because everything that was to be discovered had been, to a complete overhaul of our understanding of reality as quantum mechanics was etched out.
I kept trying to anticipate his story, perhaps see it misstep, but it’s told at such a lightning pace that I couldn’t possibly keep up. We jump from one story to the next, and it totally fits how fantastical the true events are.
Above all, Labatut never forgets the persons behind the ideas. There is as much sexual desire, longing, ill health inspired delirium, envy, and despair as there are world shaking ideas. Easy to look past when examining a group of people that are so beyond us.