Insufficient Data [Paperback]

Fannie Peczenik (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 2000

A wry narrative of love, loss, deceit, and exile told by a woman who in mid-life discovers some previously unrecorded events in the history of the nuclear era. ...It was and it wasn't mine...Who the hell is K.K. Havlamaz?...Obelisk and elephant, granite and graying rock, beamed white in the sunshine...get on morning flight and by evening you're back at the Moon Palace...Guns, gangsters, and gamma rays...the trajectory is determined by resolving the velocity into vertical and horizontal components after the launch...time to revise and enlarge the relationship, move from sodality to sex...to know the parameters of our danger...that we might be a noisome glitch on someone's screen... What is the connection between a brooch shaped like a lily, the obelisks of Rome, and rare transuranium isotopes? What strange alliances were there between Cold War enemies? And what happens to the people who find out?

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Fannie Peczenik is a writer, translator, and independent scholar. Like her narrator, she is married to a physicist and has lived in many of the places described here. Insufficient Data is her first novel.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (November 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595099122
• ISBN-13: 978-0595099122
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,272,811 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Initial Effort, June 6, 2003

By 

Robert Jedrzejewski (Tarentum, PA (USA)) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Insufficient Data (Paperback)

While a little slow in getting to the mystery-action, the pace picks up considerably around page 85 or so and propels the reader forward with vivid locale descriptions and cryptic messages that gradually unfold the plot. For a first-time novelist, however, this is excusable, but I mention it so that would-be readers will give the novel a chance and not be too hasty in expecting James Bond -like explosions of blood, sex and mayhem from the gitgo.

The author's ability to vividly describe geographic and gastronomic delights is simply "delicious." Sadly, this does not correspond to her talent for describing her characters. I didn't seem to be able to fashion an image of any of the major characters, Pam, David, Tom. Karim (Galina, excepted) as clear and colorful as e.g her descriptions of Brooklyn, Rome, Frascatti and the tasty Italian repasts the characters enjoyed in the many venues they dined at.

Interweaving scientific principles and jargon (the book's narrator Pam is married to David, a Physicist) into the vivid travelogue of the couples' movements was difficult but worked more than reasonably well. But Peczenik's most discernible talent is her linguistic craftsmanship. She smoothly navigates between dialogue and narration in a manner more experienced and successful writers might envy (Grisham comes to mind).

I would encourage her efforts and hope that her action becomes faster-paced and her characters more easily "picturable" in future novels. One final note - the "denouement" was a bit too long; it should have been more "Aha!" than "Ah well.." Nonetheless, I like the book and and thought it was a great first effort.