From Publishers Weekly
Baricco struggles to regain the magic that made Silk an international bestseller in this disappointing follow-up set in the U.S. and starring a precocious 13-year-old named Gould, who finds himself losing his childhood amid the demands of life as a mathematical genius. Left alone in the wake of a family meltdown that cost his mother her sanity, Gould turns to flighty, 30-ish Shatzy Shell, who becomes the boy's governess. Their friendship starts as an exchange of innocent fantasy stories, with Gould's consisting of a series of imagined fights involving a heroic boxer, while Shell chips in with her lifelong desire to make a Western. Baricco spends the bulk of the book exploring the effects of Gould's baroque academic life on his development. The climax involves a fellowship award allowing Gould to go to Europe to perform advanced research, but he buckles at the prospect of leaving his cloistered, quaint life and disappears, allowing Baricco to explore the boy's upbringing when his father arrives for an emergency visit. Baricco writes a few engaging, entertaining scenes, but he can't get the sparks to fly with his two protagonists, and the fantasy subplots used to explore their ambitions remain murky and lifeless. The author never delves into Gould's mathematical world, either, making his protagonist seem more like a helpless savant than someone with the intellectual capacity to dominate a complex field. This book has some touching moments, but as a novel it never quite comes together.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Baricco, author of the international best seller Silk, is what's the cliche? a writer's writer. Or, more accurately perhaps, he's an experimentalist's experimentalist. His latest novel features Gould, a 13-year-old genius bound to win the Nobel prize whose mental life revolves around a boxing tableau created and shared with two imaginary friends, a giant and a mute. Also prominent is Schatzy Shell, his thirtysomething attendant (his mother is "ill" and his military father absent), who is similarly absorbed by an imaginary Western she developed as a six year old. As the core of the book, these fixations are fascinating, and there's even some writing about boxing that makes similar efforts by Joyce Carol Oates look pale. Two self-absorbed characters may not make for a lot of plot, but plot isn't really the point with this genre. Like the best experimental novel of the 1990s, Stephen Dobyns's Wrestler's Cruel Study, Baricco uses the boxing ring as a moral framework and the comic strip as a frame of reference. City lacks Dobyns's verbal pyrotechnics, but it's still brilliant. That said, it would also leave the average library reader who chanced on it frustrated and confused. For large collections and academic libraries, especially those that support writing programs. Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
