Synopsis
David Lodge's satirical comedy is the 11th in his series of academic novels. In THINKS..., Helen Reed is a young widow who teaches creative writing at a provincial university, where she is relentlessly pursued by the calculatedly charismatic, sexually predatory--and married--Ralph Messenger, who heads the Center for Cognitive Science. In addition to the romantic/sexual tangle, Lodge's novel also explores the question of whether science or literature is better at plumbing the depths of the human psyche. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2002-09-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 352 pages | | Height: | 7.8 in | | Width: | 5.0 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 8.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
The growing relationship between two very different individuals--Ralph Messenger, the director of the Holt Belling Center for Cognitive Science and expert on artificial intelligence, and Helen Reed, a recently widowed novelist--is chronicled in the alternating voices of the two characters. By the author of Therapy. Reprint.
Industry Reviews
"THINKS... is David Lodge's least inspired title, yet the novel is his most skilfully organized work of fiction. In alternating and sharply contrasting chapters, Ralph Messenger and Helen Reed reveal themselves....Lodge is a post-modernist writer in the guise of a reliable realist....[N]o description of Lodge's ingeniously symmetrical plots, in which learned allusions abound..., can give us an accurate sense of the warmth and intelligence of Lodge's prose."
Times Literary Supplement - Joyce Carol Oates (02/23/2001)
"Though Mr. Lodge uses his antic sense of humor and novelistic craft to try to enliven Helen and Ralph's debates, there is something canned about their discussions....It is when Mr. Lodge turns instead to describing the day-to-day dramas and high jinks at the University of Gloucester that the novel actually begins to engage the reader's interest....[T]he reader's suspicions that the talented Mr. Lodge has written this book on automatic pilot only grow in the novel's final pages, which feature a host of highly improbably developments..., [suggesting] that Mr. Lodge was trying in vain to provide this otherwise lackadaisical novel with a big finish."
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani (06/04/2001)
"Like any good satirist, Lodge is an equal-opportunity deflator of pretensions....Part of the pleasure of Lodge's academic fiction is the gentle way he targets the smugness and superficiality of intellectuals. His voice is chummy, confiding. He will teach you some things, heckle some orthodoxies, allow some rueful laughter. But he won't utterly rearrange your worldview...."
New York Times Book Review - Lisa Zeidner (06/10/2001)
"Despite the occasional self-indulgence..., THINKS... is a cleverly crafted novel, which asks provocative questions about sex, love and death, and the relationship between mind and body. It is also a black comedy about male vanity and female gullibility, and the perils of reading other people's computer files."
Literary Review - Pamela Norris (03/01/2001)
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