The Theory of Everything

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. [14], 336, [2] pages. Minor DJ wear. Lisa Grunwald's dazzling, funny, tender new book--her first work of fiction since she made her literary debut with the highly praised Summer--is a novel about what happens when you get what you want. The place is New York City. Alexander Simon, a physicist on the threshold--at age thirty--of momentous achievement. He is a man who can explain the most complex hows and whys of science and of life, but when it comes to the actual process of living, he falters. He likes having Linda in his life--he may even love her--but aside from bed and board, there's not very much he is willing to share with her. He likes having his father just across town, but their relationship seems to have dead-ended. Until, astonishingly, after an absence of two decades, his mother reappears. She floats back into Alexander's life on a cloud of astrological and numerological theory--she believes in all the "ologies" that make her son's scientific blood run cold--and, to his great amazement, sets him on a circuitous course that brings him to a palm reader of seductively florid personality, returns him to his long-ignored, mysterious dreams, and finally, leads him to the house of an alchemist, where everything Alexander has ever known about the world--and, more importantly, about himslelf--will be deconstructed, reconstructed, and perhaps, once and for all, made clear. This is the story of a family falling apart, then gathering their resources and finding inner strength to cope with the deepest loss. It is about the inner strength everyone has, the strength that comes from love. Lisa Grunwald Adler (born 1959) is an American author. She is the author of six novels and one children's book. With her husband, Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler, she has edited three anthologies: The Marriage Book (Simon & Schuster), Letters of the Century (The Dial Press), and Women's Letters (The Dial Press). Grunwald has been an editor and writer at the magazines Esquire, Avenue, and Life, and has freelanced for others. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: Grunwald's novel displays the conflict between the opposing worlds of science and magic. Alexander Simon, a 30-year-old New York physicist, thinks he's on the verge of discovering the theory of everything--a theory that will unite all other scientific theories. If he's about to pin down the scientific meaning of life, Alexander is horrible at actually living it. He is a scientific man who dreams of angels and fights the ghosts left by his flaky mother, Alice, who left home when he was 11. Though he moves in with his girlfriend, he can't tell her he loves her. Rather than deal with his life, Alexander escapes to work, the only place where he can force the world to make sense. When mother Alice returns, she and a palm-reader friend show him that he, like Alice, longs for the magic. He again sets off in search of the theory of everything, but this time it's a much older theory--the practice of alchemy and its quest for the secrets of the universe. Grunwald's lyrical and sensitive prose reveals her real strength--allowing characters and their relationships to develop into an exceptionally readable story. Her considerable insight into the mechanics of human alliances and emotions provides many flashes of recognition.