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A review by lauralhart
Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward
5.0
Sophie Ward's LOVE AND OTHER THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS is one of the most clever, engaging, and thought-provoking books I've read in a while. Questions surrounding the nature of consciousness—what does it mean to be conscious, how much can we truly trust our perception—have been on my mind at work, especially after reading THE WORLD ITSELF by Ulf Danielsson (forthcoming from Bellevue in 2023). And I've always enjoyed books that engage with the philosophical and psychological in turn. This book does it beautifully.
This is a brilliantly constructed novel with ten chapters that rotate around an initial story: a couple, Rachel and Eliza, decide to have a child. From here, we experience several points of view, even the point of view of an ant, through the lens of a different philosophical thought experiment (e.g., Gilbert Harman's "brain in a vat"). Sometimes I'm disappointed when I connect with the initial perspective and find it changed to another character's perspective in the next chapter, but each narrative voice in this book is so excellently and emotionally rendered that I was captivated all the way through. The novel can be read and enjoyed, I think, without delving too deep into the underlying questions about consciousness and time, but it's an even richer experience if you *do* choose to engage on that level.
This is definitely going on my "must re-read shelf," and Ward is going on my list of authors to follow because MAN. What a book. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy. No thanks to COVID-related burnout that caused me to wait so long to read this book.
This is a brilliantly constructed novel with ten chapters that rotate around an initial story: a couple, Rachel and Eliza, decide to have a child. From here, we experience several points of view, even the point of view of an ant, through the lens of a different philosophical thought experiment (e.g., Gilbert Harman's "brain in a vat"). Sometimes I'm disappointed when I connect with the initial perspective and find it changed to another character's perspective in the next chapter, but each narrative voice in this book is so excellently and emotionally rendered that I was captivated all the way through. The novel can be read and enjoyed, I think, without delving too deep into the underlying questions about consciousness and time, but it's an even richer experience if you *do* choose to engage on that level.
This is definitely going on my "must re-read shelf," and Ward is going on my list of authors to follow because MAN. What a book. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy. No thanks to COVID-related burnout that caused me to wait so long to read this book.