You Lost Me There

May 17, 2010
A famed neuroscientist learns potent lessons about the fallibility of memory in Baldwin's underwhelming debut, a highbrow melodrama that stretches for resonance and is narrated by noted Alzheimer's researcher Dr. Victor Aaron, who works at a small but prestigious Maine lab and grieves the death of his screenwriter wife, Sara. Victor finds a series of note cards that recount key moments in their 33-year marriage, but Victor's memories of the same events are either missing or differ, and it becomes clear there were longstanding issues in the marriage—notably that Victor felt threatened by Sara's success and wasn't supportive of her work. Victor does the normal confused and grieving middle-aged man things—becomes fixated on his laments, takes a younger lover—and eventually finds himself hosting his goddaughter, Cornelia, who inadvertently provides the clue that allows Victor to discover Sara's final, unfinished screenplay. Sara's perspective—here limited to her note cards—is affecting and provides the novel its best moments. Unfortunately, readers are stuck for the most part with Victor, whose unsympathetic culpability and fundamental blandness sap narrative energy and make much of the novel feel like filler.

July 1, 2010

In this flaccid first novel, a scientist picks through memories of his marriage to a writer.

He's no slouch, this Victor Aaron. The 58-year-old geneticist is a top Alzheimer's researcher; after stints at Harvard and NYU, he's now professor at a prestigious institute on Maine's Mount Desert Island. His personal life is a mess since Sara, his wife of 33 years, died in a car accident. Victor has been meeting secretly once a week with Regina, a young postgraduate researcher on campus who writes poetry and enjoys burlesque dancing. Is she just "bereavement therapy"? Maybe so, for the sex has petered out since Victor became impotent, and Sara is always on his mind. When their marriage was going through a rough patch, her therapist had them write about its most important moments; in her index card notes, Sara comes through loud and clear. Professional advancement was important for this childless couple; Sara's path was rockier than Victor's. It was not until she turned 40 that she hit paydirt with a feminist play that became a Broadway smash. Another fallow period ended with her greatest success, a screenplay for a romantic comedy. Not surprisingly, Sara and Victor have different memories of these pivotal moments. Their adultery-free marriage is threatened only once, when an ill-chosen word of Victor's leads to separate bedrooms and Sara's departure to Los Angeles. The incident confirms the stereotypes of Temperamental Artist and Insensitive Scientist ("Victor listens to neurons, not people"). Baldwin tries to spice up his thinly plotted novel with an array of minor characters (his libertine best friend, his outspoken goddaughter, his gossipy aunt), all of them feistier than the bland Victor.

Fails to achieve liftoff.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2010
Months after his wife, Sara, is killed in a car accident, Dr. Victor Aaron is still in the throes of mourning, although he has rather peculiar ways of showing it. By day, Aaron functions as a dedicated lab rat, heading groundbreaking research and trolling for corporate grants. By night, he conducts a sexually intense but ultimately unsatisfying affair with a considerably younger graduate student named Regina, whom he pursues to the point of stalking. Further complicating his recovery are his weekly command-performance dinners with his wifes elderly aunt Betsy and the sudden appearance of his goddaughter, Cornelia, who moves in with him while interning at a local restaurant. Amid the chaos, Aaron spends his insomnia-fueled nights combing through Saras belongings until the discovery of a series of disturbing notes, in which she chronicled the tumultuous years of their marriage, sends him into further despair. Baldwins manic debut novel delivers a capricious, poignant, yet oddly perceptive account of the quixotic nature of relationships and the fallacies of memory.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)