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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not Your Typical Coming of Age Story, October 26, 2007
When writing a coming of age novel an author runs the risk of producing yet another formulaic tale of how a young person endures life's hardships and "finds himself." It's a genre we can all relate to, we're all familiar with the trials and tribulations of youth. The test for a writer is then how do you take advantage of this easy way of connecting with readers without becoming cliché? While many fail at this task, Dominic Smith comes out far ahead through his multi dimensional characters, carefully constructed plot and well developed messages.
The main character, Nathan, is a young man who moves through his boyhood years with the keen awareness that he is failing his scientist father; Nathan is not the genius his father had brought him up to be. After barely surviving a severe car accident Nathan develops synesthesia, a condition that affects sensory input and storage, hence allowing exceptional memory capabilities. His father jumps at this second chance at having a gifted child and enrolls him in a type of live-in laboratory for savants. There he comes into his own, developing new relationships and learning about the ones he already has.
The Beautiful Miscellaneous takes on many hefty subjects, including familial relationships, love, death, religion and the unknown. At the same time, Smith keeps the tone light, making it a very enjoyable read. You take away what you want from this novel; an entertaining story about a boy with memory powers or a thought provoking story about what life means to each one of us.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fine Second Novel, August 9, 2007
The Beautiful Miscellaneous is the second novel from Dominic Smith. The first, The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre, is historical fiction, while Miscellaneous is a foray into contemporary fiction. Set in the mid- to late 1980s, protagonist and narrator Nathan Nelson has the self-described misfortune of being the son of a particle-physicist genius, who first waits for the genius gene in his son to kick in, and then tries, unsuccessfully, to jump start it; Nathan of course considers himself average at best, wishing at times to please his father even as he longs for the freedom to simply be who he is, even if he's not yet sure who that is.
Following a car crash, the seventeen-year-old Nathan emerges from a two-week coma to find he has developed a case of synesthesia -- a medical condition which enables him to see, taste and feel emotions associated with words -- along with a photographic memory; he can memorize phonebooks, encyclopedias, and recall dialogue from television sitcoms. Nathan's father, Samuel, sees this as the precursor to great things to come for his son, and so he sends him to the Brook-Mills Institute for Talent Development, a research facility in which Nathan meets a host of other gifted young people, including a blind pianist who plays by ear and Teresa, a young woman who can look into a person and identify medical infirmities, and from whom Nathan learns to smoke and drink, and with whom he eventually falls in love. While Nathan is a charming if somewhat annoyingly passive protagonist, these tertiary characters, along with Whit, Samuel's best friend who also happens to be a retired astronaut turned poet who's verse suffers from an incurable case of the malapropism -- "Up here in the dark, far from the poi-holloi...", are a wonderfully colorful cast of supporting characters.
The narrative is nicely paced, at times humorous and nearly flawless in its poignancy, and if the denouement is a trifle too tidy, it is the journey -- the exploration into the nature of intelligence as well as the father/son relationship -- that makes Miscellaneous worth the read.
Highly recommended.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Genuis can arrive from across the void., June 10, 2007
Nathan Nelson is the main character of the novel. He is the only child of a genius father. The father is certain that genius can arrive at any time. Although Nathan is above average, he is not like his father. And it soon becomes apparent that no amount of special training by his father or genius camps can transform him into brilliance. Nathan's mother is an extremely bright woman who runs the household with military discipline; loves reading novels; belongs to a travel club; makes exotic dishes for dinner; and attempts some normalcy in their household. In all they make a rather eccentric but loveable family. Not to mention that an ex-astronaut named Whit hangs out at their house a lot and becomes like a member of the family.
A few chapters in the novel, Nathan is involved in a car crash which causes clinical death; resurrection; and then a coma for several weeks. He appears to make a full recovery with one small exception ~ he can memorize everything, a state called synesthesia. First he recites everything from shows on television; then he memorizes the Bible; novels; poems, etc.. Not only can he remember everything but words come to him in color and Smith's literary talents really shine here, i.e., "burn resembled an upright man with a mustache; safe was something substantial, a stone house" (87). He goes on to tell us that every word was married to a mental image in his brain. The word guest is wheat-colored whereas the word patient is slate-gray. Smith's description are wonderful and a big part of the novel.
It appears that the accident may have let Nathan become the genius his father always wanted. Once Nathan has fully recovered he is sent to a school for gifted children where he mostly hangs out with a girl he falls for and learns to smoke and drink. Things are not going quite as planned. Than another unexpected tragedy strikes the family and things change again. Father and son struggle to come together throughout the novel and Smith makes the characters so real - almost touchable.
It's a great novel. It is funny and sad. It's a coming of age story for Nathan and a middle of the road story for his father and mother. It's about family and love and it is beautifully written. I loved every moment of this book and did not want it to end.
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