Interesting story, great narration

I have enjoyed each of Alexander Masters’ books. The subjects are interesting and handled with humour and compassion.
This book was uplifted further by fantastic narration. You get a strong feeling for what Simon is like ( and Alexander a bit also) and had me laughing out loud in parts.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Marmite

The title is Marmite, because my guess is that you will either love this book or hate it. Actually, it has had a great many positive reviews, which is why I bought it. The book is 8 hours long. I gave up after 2 hours, but they seemed like 8.

This review is based on just the first quarter of the book. If asked to sum up my thoughts, I would say that the book is irritating and pretentious. And the author is an unprincipled, possibly jealous, wannabee celebrity. The subject of the book is a socially inept mathematics genius called Simon Norton. In fact, it seems that he is virtually a social outcast, who lives in a squalid basement flat and communicates verbally using a variety of tonal grunts. So, what happens when a biographer discovers he is living above a genius? Answer, he enters his subjects life and writes a biography. So far, so good. This could have led to a really interesting insight into Norton’s academic achievements and the areas where he has pushed back the boundaries of mathematical knowledge. Along the way, his foibles would have emerged and the reader could have been suitable impressed that a person, so incapable of negotiating life’s normal social environment, could be a mathematical genius. The biography of Nobel prize winner John Nash falls into this category and it spawned the well-received film, A beautiful Mind. What we get from Masters is a painfully detailed description of the cluttered and dilapidated nature of Norton’s living area, his eating habits, and his petty obsessions. Having looked up Masters other works, it appears that he is taking the genre of predatory biographer to a new low and my main gripe is about how badly the author seems to have bullied his subject. Finally, I want to say that I was underwhelmed by the prose, which seemed like an amalgam of styles, sometimes bordering on pastiche. My views are clearly not typical and I should also point out that I hated the last year’s best seller called The Hare with Amber Eyes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful