The DiagnosisThe Diagnosis
Title rated 2.9 out of 5 stars, based on 7 ratings(7 ratings)
Book, 2000
Current format, Book, 2000, 1st ed, All copies in use.Book, 2000
Current format, Book, 2000, 1st ed, All copies in use. Offered in 0 more formatsAlan Lightman's first novel,Einstein's Dreams, was greeted with international praise. Salman Rushdie called it "at once intellectually provocative and touching and comic and so very beautifully written." Michiko Kakutani wrote inThe New York Timesthat the novel creates "a magical, metaphysical realm . . . as in Calvino's work, the fantastical elements of the stories are grounded in precise, crystalline prose." WithThe Diagnosis, Lightman gives us his most ambitious and penetrating novel yet. While rushing to his office one warm summer morning, Bill Chalmers, a junior executive, realizes that he cannot remember where he is going or even who he is. All he remembers is the motto of his company: The maximum information in the minimum time. When Bill's memory returns, "his head pounding, remembering too much," a strange numbness afflicts him, beginning as a tingling in his hands and gradually spreading over the rest of his body. As he attempts to find a diagnosis of his illness, he descends into a nightmare, enduring a blizzard of medical tests and specialists without conclusive results, the manic frenzy of his company, and a desperate wife who decides that he must be imagining his deteriorating condition. By turns satiric, comic, and tragic,The Diagnosisis a brilliant and disturbing examination of our modern obsession with speed, information, and money, and what this obsession has done to our minds and our spirits.
Title availability
About
Details
Publication
- New York : Pantheon Books, c2000.
Opinion
More from the community
Community lists featuring this title
There are no community lists featuring this title
Community contributions
There are no quotations from this title
There are no quotations from this title
From the community