Customer Reviews

The Parrot's Theorem: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was immediately drawn in by the first few lines of The Parrot's Theorem, where Max, a deaf boy living in Paris comes to the aid of a parrot being beaten by two men. From there, I was lead into a journey where Max, his twin siblings, and his friend Mr. Ruche wade through nearly the entire history of mathematics to unravel the circumstances behind the suspiscious demise of Mr. Ruche's friend, Elgar Grosovure.

Max brings home the wounded, and now silent, parrot just as Mr. Ruche has received a cryptic letter from his old friend in Brazil. Grosovure writes that he will be sending Mr. Ruche - an antique bookseller - his entire reference library of mathematical texts and histories because Mr. Ruche will care for them, or at least sell them to "the right kiind of person." Yet, as the letter goes on, it emerges that Grosovure is sending the library because he is expecting to be killed by some people who would like to extract information from him, regarding a proof of a mathematical theorem that Grosovure has been working on in private, hidden away in the rainforest.

At this point, the library arrives, and the unraveling of the mystery begins. As the story progress, the various threads begin to intermingle and converge: of Mr. Ruche's past friendship with Grosovure, their differences and love for philosophy and mathematics; a single mother with adopted children, and their discovery of that fact; a rare breed of talking parrot who speaks in mysterious portions of theorems and history - all these weave together in a truly original way to create a story that is both suspenseful and truly enlightening.

Or tries to, anyway. After the first third of the book, I began to tire of Guedj's poor and idealized delineation of Jon and Lea - the twins, who do most of the expository dialog - as reluctant and nascent geniuses, capable of absorbing mathematical proofs within minutes, and contiually burning the midnight oil to supply their own, more elegant versions of these proofs. Max who initially drew me into the book, is capable of speech (owing to the fact that his deafness was slow onset) which calls into question the reason for the device at all. Further observations regarding Guedj's writing are a variation on this theme: poor characterization, and dialog which is simply a slave to the intellectual agenda of the book.

Yet, it is this agenda that kept me reading The Parrot's Theorem all the way to the end: Guedj not only has a profound respect for the history and evolution of mathematics, but a terrific sense of the human drama and poetry involved in thousands of years of human intellectual development. The historical facts are interesting, the biographical material is fascinating - the proofs of the theorems are well outlined and comprehensible even to a straight C student who flunked Calculus.

The cover of The Parrot's Theorem makes many promises about this being a renaissance-style novel, a "European" novel, and so on, but this is not a book suited for average kids or even many adults. Yet, simply on the material covered, it is much more palatable that sitting down with Euclid's Elements or Newton's works. If you are interested in the history of mathematics, and are patient with a writer who hasn't yet mastered believable plot and dialog, you may really enjoy The Parrot's Theorem, a truly unique book.

Anyone who enjoyed Jostein Gaarder's novel Sophie's World and who has any interest at all in mathematics will likely enjoy this novel. Guedj's book is a history of mathematics disguised inside a murder mystery. It covers a lot of ground and is a lot of fun.

The basics of the story are this: Mr. Ruche, a octogenarian former Parisian bookseller, inherits a library of mathematics books from an old friend living in the Amazon who has died a mysterious death. At the same time Max, a deaf child living with his family in Mr. Ruche's house, rescues a parrot from a Parisian market. Mr. Ruche becomes convinced he can solve the mystery of murder and bird by using his new library to trace the history of mathematics from Euclid through Fermat and Goldbach. I leave it to the reader to discover exactly what is accomplished by this tour of great mathematics.

One thing the reader will certainly discover is some insight into the development of mathematics. As a math teacher I am constantly looking for books that might interest my students in the subject. This book fits the bill. It is somewhat slight and a bit narrow in its coverage of math's history but it does hit on a number of the big discoveries and issues. As a novel, well...the fiction is really secondary to the math. Still, it's a good read.

This is an interesting story for anyone interested in the history of math, and indeed, western culture. An intriguing story, and a story of intrigue, we go from Paris to Manaus and elsewhere, always with a mathematical connection. The math is fun and interesting in the context of the central part of the story, the old friend who sent all of his math books, and a complicated secret, to Paris, where a family took on the task of deciphering the complex riddle. While the English translation has some strange ways of saying things (maths instead of math), the interested reader easily gets used to that, enthusiastically following the tale.

One minor detail - the bird on the book is not the same species as the bird IN the book. The cover bird is a Scarlet Macaw, while the bird IN the story is a Blue-fronted Parrot.

What a book! The story is fascinating, the characters are unusual and it is very well written! Every single page I went through was a delight .
The book creates a comfort and nice atmosphere for those who hate maths. It is an adventure that makes you keep your attention to the very end. I strongly recommend this book for all Maths lovers, students, and those who have difficulties with the subject since it might open their minds to a new and enchanting world!

I was so delighted to see that The Parrot's Theorem is now available in the US -- I read it in French, and special ordered it in English for a friend. This is a fascinating book, and a painless way for a non-math person to learn a great deal about mathematics and its development through the years. A real keeper!

Very good if you want to learn with a most amusing way the history of mathematics. Event though the story has some "mistakes", the way it unfolds will not leave anyone untouched. Some experience in mathematics is needed from the reader (or some effort if such an experience is not present, after all the main character is a philosopher).

Excellent, fun tale enriching you with great history & quotes related to Mathematicians. You'll love it!

Can't say I was impressed as the recommendations encouraged me to be.

I like the idea - it's cool when gifted academics who love their subject can make it palatable for the uninitiated (as Lodge, for example, can do with literary theory on a good day). Even better if they can then incorporate it into an entertaining plot.

Alas, this is another Sophie's World, where plot and character are overwhelmed by lecture notes. It simply isn't convincing to paint his target audience - those X-box playing, eye-brow pierced, hip-hop teenagers represented by Jon-and-Lea - going into raptures over calculus. We're supposed to be taken in, seriously, by passages such as:

`Well, why do we have a result which is patently absurd?' Jonathan asked again.
`Because of my hypothesis', Lea looked down.
`And what was your false hypothesis again?'
`That there is a fraction which, squared, equals 2: a2/b2 = 2.'
`Then get rid of it!'
The twins picked up two forks from the table and began tapping a reggae beat on two wine glasses, singing:
We know that
By our action
We've proved that there is no fraction
Which, squared, could equal 2,
It's true, it's true.
A round of applause greeted this Bob Marley version of their proof...

Oh really?

OK, he's turned a proof into dialogue involving teenagers, and dropped Bob Marley's name, but this simply is not enough to make this cool or credible (indeed, its transparency makes it the opposite). This is not an aberrant passage: the family are constantly bursting into rapturous applause or riotous laughter over some engaging and hilarious algebraic expression. Doubtless Guedj tortured himself in trying to break down various theories to their barest and most understandable forms, but the reactions he paints in his imagined audience are wildly different from those of the actual readers. It's like the self-deceptive optimism of canned laughter in a dodgy sit-com.

He has succeeded in incorporating some interesting history of mathematics into something more palatable than a straight non-fiction primer: I particularly enjoyed the fascinating biographical anecdotes around some of the individual mathematicians. The characters interwoven make it more possible to get through some of the theory, but I don't think he was successful in integrating his plot with that of the chronology of maths theory. The characters are interesting, but their relationships and reactions strain credibility too far, and the pages of theory usually do nothing to enhance or inform the plot.

I would say that the book is alright, not excellent, if it were a simple novel with a plot-driven theme.
But if you want to learn math, then sure, read it. It explains math concepts fairly well, and isn't really hard to understand at all.

Little secret- i never did finish it, school came along and it just isn't interesting enough (at least to me) that you actually want to know what happens...it's something that I read when I had nothign better to do.

Honestly, I didn't like it too much, just because it wasn't captivating enough for me.

While doing my best to follow the maths & become educated, I was horrified by the lax authorial attitude towards food & cooking.

Describing ancient greek mathmaticians drinking ouzo while eating calamari & tomato, the narrating character allows that they may not have drunk ouzo, but overlooks the minor fact that tomatoes are a new world fruit & were unknown to the ancient greeks.

Later, as the cast sits down to dinner, a bottle of chianti that has been chilling on the balcony is fetched. Why are they chilling what is almost certainly a red chianti?

That meant I stopped reading at page 128, returned the book to the library, and had a little lie down. If the author is trying to be learned, he cannot be so ignorant in other areas, it lets the side down.

And knowing about food, drink, and cooking is perhaps more fun than knowing how to determine the volume of a true cone.