A Theory Of All Things [Hardcover]

Peggy Leon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2010

Tragedy tore the Bennett children apart when their mother walked out on them after the birth of her last child, followed by the suicide of a brother. Now, the five grown siblings, each brilliant, troubled and a little wacky, face personal crises that will bring them back together in a new way. Mark, a student at Stanford University is brilliant at String Theory but a novice at relationships. Having made a fatal faux pas at a university function, he now must have sessions with the university s formidable psychologist, Dr. Himmel, and family issues as well as the hopeless love he carries for a co-worker emerge. Mary, the eldest sister and surrogate mother, struggles with caring for their father Frank, a once famous furniture-maker, whose dementia is spiraling beyond Mary s control. Luke, the fragile youngest brother has been latched onto by a tattooed nymph named Willow. Ellie, artist and free spirit, whose much younger lover has left her pregnant and alone on a far-flung Greek island, asks Mary to come get her and bring her home to Santa Barbara to have her baby. Sarah, Ellie s identical twin, and up and coming New York photographer, has a drama of her own. She has discovered a homeless woman who may or may not be her mother, Jean. Told in e-mails, missed phone messages, and their unique and sometimes heartbreaking voices, A Theory of All Things weaves a lyrical, mesmerizing story of a family, who has loved and lost, who is broken, but is mending.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Leon's second novel (after Mother Country) the Bennetts, a pleasingly dysfunctional family, grapple with troubling events from their childhood: their mother's abandonment and brother Peter's suicide. Now scattered, the family keeps in touch via e-mails and phone messages. Mary is living in the family home, caring for their father stricken with Alzheimer's. Her thoughtful narration grounds the book, which is otherwise filled with eccentric chapters from her siblings' points of view. Each individually complains of a dilemma and begs to be rescued. Brother Mark is the outcast—a physicist in a family of artists who must bail the youngest, Luke, out of jail and look after their father while Mary goes to fetch pregnant Ellie from a Greek island. Eventually, the whole family reunites, along with a homeless woman, a skeptical girlfriend, a tattooed runaway, and a shabby mutt, to hash out their disturbed past. The characters are always on the verge of a breakdown, but their epiphanies save them (and us) from emotional exhaustion. Despite overused metaphors, Leon's novel touches on very real familial issues yet maintains a playful tone. (Mar.)
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About the Author

PEGGY LEON divides her time between Santa Barbara, California, where she wishes she lived, and Cooperstown, New York where she lives, writes and teaches. Her previous novel, Mother Country, a Book Sense pick, was published by The Permanent Press.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Permanent Press (March 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579621953
• ISBN-13: 978-1579621957
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,989,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Bookclub Read, June 1, 2010

By 

Susan Miosek (Cooperstown, NY, US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Theory Of All Things (Hardcover)

Our bookclub read Peggy's book last month and we all LOVED it ! We honestly ,truly did and it doesn't even count that Peggy is one of our members! We would love it anyway and may I say we are a very discerning group of readers,educators,professional women who know what we like! Not only that but we know Oprah would love it too and we think she really needs to come to Cooperstown,NY and put us on her show . Oh,yes,Peggy too as there would be no book at all without her !

One of the things we like to do at our meetings is try to pretend the book is being made into a screenplay and we pick the actors we think would fit the roles. We had a grand time doing so with A Theory Of All Things because Peggy could tell us how close or far off the mark we were. We also had so much fun deciding who in our group were "Marys" and who were not . Wish you all could have been there . Susan Miosek ,Cooperstown,NY (where we have much more than Baseball !)

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read, May 13, 2010

By 

Maryann Dietz (Cooperstown, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Theory Of All Things (Hardcover)

This was a wonderfully drawn story of family dysfunction...poignant, humorous and wise. Having avoided all thoughts of Physics since High School I was both surprised and enlightened at my new-found understanding and enjoyment of how this science relates to life. Give this book to everyone on your gift list!

5.0 out of 5 stars elevates art to life, March 10, 2010

By 

S. Deeth "Sheila Deeth" (OR, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Theory Of All Things (Hardcover)

This is the second of five bound galleys that I've received from the Permanent Press. The first, the Chester Chronicles, was great. Peggy Leon's A Theory of All Things may even be better. And honestly, I'm not just saying that, and I don't feel under any obligation to love all these books. But I really do love this book!

A Theory of All Things opens with emails to and from Mark, a young man who evidently committed some dire faux pas at a university function. I think I may have met him many years ago, at college, studying math. He was the one that could wax eloquent about string theory but would struggle to understand why it's not important to calculate minimal lengths for tying parcels together. He was the seriously cute one, genius in the making but not quite capable of living in this world of lesser beings. The author portrays Mark so convincingly that his mishaps evoke astonished laughter, his misunderstandings induce cringes of embarrassment, and his ham-handed attempts to compliment his girlfriend leave readers in despair.

But Mark has a family and a theory; several theories in fact, though he hopes one day to combine them. One theory in particular concerns the singularity of disaster. Can the past, before the world fell apart, actually be considered irrelevant to the present that grows out of its chaos? But who will it hurt to have their feelings and their memories so discounted?

Mark's family and friends each have their say in this book. The writer sister who stays at home, center of the family, guardian of a father who's falling apart from Alzheimers; the photographer composing images, real and imagined, into story; the artist digging beneath while missing what might be lying on the surface; and the wandering brother, Luke, who seems to have searched for home ever since he was six.

A disaster blew this family apart, but, like all disasters, it eventually proves to have been built on many things that came before. Characters create their own histories, and even the mathematician proves infinitely creative in his observations of entropy. But it isn't true that everything's winding down--not even the father whose broken memories evoke the phantom world of their lost childhoods. And strangers walking into their lives see and build on the foundations of the past.

Like a universe, expanding and contracting, the family is brought back together by circumstance. Love changes them. Memory feeds them. Risk brings them out of themselves. And Mark's last grasp for truth doesn't destroy it after all, but ends in a wonderful rebuilding and quiet revelation.

A Theory of All Things is a beautifully hopeful, vividly real and creative novel, built on fascinating characters, tragic situations, bright humor and solidly patient reality. Like one of Luke's wind-chimes, so intriguingly described that the reader sees and hears them in the written word, the trials of life are turned into something startlingly wonderful, reflecting more than sunlight, elevating life, and mathematics, into art.