Fantastic, obsessive compulsive writing. Beautiful and tragic and uplifting and flawed and annoying and informative, it ties together themes from disparate fields (biology, computer science, music, humanity) all to support a beautiful and complicated love story. ( )

Tedious due to FAR too much science, its epic length adds to the dilemma..I did my best but could only handle the first 150 pages. As with all authors, his narrative style has evolved over the years and I personally find books written in the 2000's to be far more engaging.

Conceptually its an interesting story and for those familiar with his encyclopedic mind, he went a bit overboard with this one..

"...and that's all I'm going to say about that.." ~ Forrest Gump ( )

Clever interpolations of Genetics, Music, and People...

yet not one of the main characters holds any fascination
unless one enjoys betrayal, obsession, stupidity, adultery,
and the constant of death.

Why did Jan never go to see Ressler before he died?
Her incessant "I-I- I" wore thin really fast.

Readers may also be overwhelmed by the overwhelming compounding of genetics.
Worse was the Animal Cruelty, from the tortoise parade and lobster's tail to the lab rats.

The most intriguing parts were the results of the Daily Library research. ( )

Two moving and mobile plotlines, a clever high-level structure, and more affectionate science nerdery than you could reasonably hope for. The novel's title works in Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug and Johann Sebastian Bach's The Goldberg Variations, in a clever nod to the main thematic material, but in addition to those motifs of codebreaking and music, Powers also works strains of genetics, knowledge, and information into the mix, in addition to more human subjects like love, fidelity, and responsibility. Much like in Gain, the only other book of his I've read, he manages a deft admixture of somewhat quotidian plots with high-level concepts (in Gain, the fictional history of a soap company is overlaid onto a woman's struggle with cancer; here, it's genetics and Bach over two interrelated love affairs), and I think he succeeded even better in this earlier work at unifying ideas and messages he wanted to get across with the action. In fact, the scaffolding tricks he used to unfold the story were so clever that it's even more impressive that the main narratives were as compelling as they were in comparison.

There are two separate but inter-related narratives. The earlier one is set in the 1950s, the quest of biologist Stuart Ressler to determine how DNA translates genotypes into phenotypes while simultaneously struggling with his love affair with a married fellow biologist. The later one is set in the 1980s, the contemporary journey of reference librarian Jan O'Deigh to dig up more information on Ressler's failure and retreat into doing IT drudge work for a bank, along with her love affair with his coworker Franklin Todd. In the past, Ressler is the classic archetype of a science junkie, near-monastically devoted to his work until he falls in love with one of his co-researchers, who's inconveniently happily married even as she more than returns his feelings. In the present, Jan has been drifting along in her career as a librarian until Franklin asks her to help him indulge his curiosity about why his genius coworker abandoned his field in his prime, and she subsequently becomes much closer to both of them as she retraces Ressler's research steps. While each plot can move somewhat slowly at times, as each main character periodically pauses to ponder for a bit too long, their stories are quite compelling and relatable, especially the way that each struggles with big questions about life, responsibility, and parenthood.

However, the book gets even better once it's accepted that the slow parts are there for a reason. Powers decided to use Bach's famous Goldberg Variations as a template for the structure of the novel. This is obvious from the very first chapter, a brief poem laying out the major themes and goals of the novel under the heading of Aria, but the true import of that doesn't sink in for a while - each chunk of the story has its part to play in the overall piece. What seems like a slower, more contemplative part is just fulfilling the role of a quieter spot in the Goldberg Variations. Additionally, the main characters bond to their love interests and then peel away like complementary strands of DNA (though not identically in each timeline), so the genetics angle gets worked into the structure as well, and also into the narrative as Ressler attempts to follow in Crick's footsteps and Jan tries to follow in his. It's still written very humanistically in spite of all the high level science content, with long runs of great descriptive writing that's always on the edge of being self-indulgent while never quite going over. And while I preferred the science chat to the human narrative most of the time, much like with Gain, Powers managed to deliver a touching resolution that emphasized the themes without feeling forced. "Virtuosic" is a strong word, but it fits here. ( )

This one was a big of a slog for me. There were two parallel connected love stories built around the love of science and music as interconnected disciplines. The characters are almost alienatingly clever - I often felt lost in the dense parts. I was tempted to drop the book during the first half, but challenged myself to stay with it and it was OK. (January 13, 2007) ( )