Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A delightful book full of paradoxes and unexpected insights, February 13, 2009
Occasionally a book comes along of such originality that it stops you in your tracks, of such sharpness that it makes you think again about so many things and of such warmth that it makes you want to share it with everyone you meet. David Eagleman's Sum is just such a book.
Ostensibly a book about what happens after we die, ironically Sum is really an examination of what it means to live. After all the divide is perhaps not as great as we think and as John Keats once wrote, "Life is but a Waking Dream."
In the course of these 40 imaginings of the afterlife, Eagleman takes you on a long and varied emotional journey. Some of the Sums are absurd and surreal, others are poigant and poetic, others are funny and wild, some are neurologically cutting edge while others are dreamily abstract. It's an astonishing feat of the mind and to top it all, they are all written is this clear and limpid prose that is a joy and completely effortless to read.
I have a feeling that this book is going to become one of these word of mouth sleeper hits. There are at least 20 people I plan to give it to straight away and everyone I have read snippets of it to has immediately responded to its humanity and humour.
I'm sure that at least one or two of reviewers of this book will be tempted to write, "Greater than the Sum of its parts", because that is exactly what it is. Enjoy and dream and smile and weep.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poignant & Thought-provoking, February 15, 2009
SUM is both poignant and thought-provoking, while avoiding all the historical pitfalls of literature on the subject of death and the afterlife. Not preachy or pretentious, SUM is essentially a page-turner, but a page-turner that one revisits time and time again to savor a missed allusion or a significant observation.
Each alternate explanation of the hereafter is a fresh look at life and the living, communicated through a unique voice. Some heart-wrenching, some playful- none trite and all witty. Eagleman truly has a special gift for boiling concepts and ideas down to their simplest form, and in SUM, he has written something that will speak to each and every one of us. It is a book that can not only entertain, but also spark new lines of thought and imagination.
Upon mentioning the book to a new acquaintance, he replied that 3 of his friends had read it and were buying copies for all their friends- his own was sitting out in his car. And how often are people so moved to share a piece of literature that they buy copies for all their friends? I think this only speaks to SUMS' brilliance, creativity, and singularity.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"In the afterlife you meet God....She is the elephant described by blind men...", February 24, 2009
We live in a universe that doesn't simply lay its mysteries at our feet. Mystics, philosophers, theologians, and scientists all, in their own way, posit theories, beliefs, and "knowledge," about the existence of God and an afterlife. This inherent confusion opens the door for further "what ifs" about who, what, where, and when runs our cosmos and what kind of "life" might follow physical mortality. Neuro-scientist David Eagleman has seen his opportunity to contribute to the melee. His Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives plunges right in, brashly inventing new benchmarks for Divine behavior and eternal life. This small book of only 110 pages brims over with ideas as each vignette envisions a different, often ironic and amusing, afterlife.
For instance, there is "Distance" which allows "us" to ask God face to face why He lives in a palace far, far away instead of " 'in the trenches with us.' " God replies he used to live among us, but " '[o]ne morning I awoke to find people picketing in front of my driveway.' "
And "Circle of Friends" tells of an afterlife in which each person exists on an earth peopled only by those he or she knew in life -- for most people about "0.00002 percent of the world's population. "The missing crowds make you lonely."
Eagleman's biological expertise makes stories such as "Descent of Species" especially lucid and rich reading. The former asks what would happen to a weary sentient being -- say, you -- who decides to reincarnate as a lower species -- say a horse. What would happen to your capacity to make a higher choice during the next life/death cycle? After all: "The thickening and lengthening of your neck immediately feels normal as it comes about. Your carotid arteries grow in diameter, your fingers blend hoofward...and meanwhile, as your skull lengthens into its new shape, your brain races in its changes: your cortex retreats as your cerebellum grows, the homunculus melts man to horse, neurons redirect, synapses unplug and replug on their way to equestrian patterns, and your dream of understanding what it is like to be a horse gallops toward you from a distance. Your concern about human affairs begins to slip away...."
One of the most intriguing tales is "Mary" in which Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein (Enriched Classics), sits on a throne in heaven because God so admires her book: "Like Victor Frankenstein, God....has much to say about bringing animation to the unanimated. Very few of His creatures had thought deeply about the challenges of creating, and it relieved Him a little of the loneliness of His position when Mary wrote her book."
SUM is not a conventional religious book per se because it bursts out of established religious thought instead of reinforcing it. These tales conjure versions of the Supreme Being who have more in common with the foible Greek and Norse gods or us than with an image of an omniscient, omnipotent God. These imaginary Capital Beings cry, feel depressed and disappointed, and are uncertain and ignorant. They aren't the emblems of rectitude and glory usually portrayed by Western churches. These are a scientist's fabulous imaginings, not a parson's or a priest's.
This is also a humanist collection. SUM contains forty fables complete with subtle but unmistakable messages about living and loving in the here and now. For example, a person who isn't naturally gregarious who reads "A Circle of Friends" might begin to socialize more. Reading "Descent of Species" is apt to encourage people not to look the gift "horse" of their human life in the mouth....
SUM broadens our spiritual vision as it shines a witty light on forty postmortem worlds that each reach out in clever Aesopian admonition. Plus, it's just fun, fast reading. Don't miss it.
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