The book of getting even : a novel /

*Starred Review* Even as a teenager, mathematics prodigy Gabriel Geismar finds ways to cope with life; he distracts himself from what is base (such as seeking sex in a men's bathhouse) by thinking of numbers, and he finds a new family after a hateful standoff with his rabbi father. As a 16-year-old freshman at Swarthmore in 1970, Gabriel is approached by fraternal twins Danny and Marghie Hundert; both fall in love with him, and he reciprocates these feelings physically with Danny. An unexpected bonus is the twins' father, the renowned physicist Dr. Gregor Hundert, who, along with his wife, envelopes Gabriel in familial love, then guides his budding career. Tragedy ensues, as the Vietnam War causes Danny to follow his principles to extremes, while his father suffers dementia. Losses aside, Gabriel with a doctorate and associate professorship in astrophysics finds solace in his concept of the universe, from multiple galaxies to the smallest insect. A beautifully written and keenly intelligent novel, set in a context of cosmology, this is in turn humorous, almost unbearably moving, and comforting, as it points the way to Gabriel's perfect freedom.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2008 Booklist

In this delightful, character-driven coming-of-age novel, Gabriel Geismar grows up in mid-20th-century New Orleans as the only son of a rabbi, maturing into a brilliant, homosexual mathematician who is out of sync with his father's values. At Swarthmore in 1970, Gabriel meets the twins Daniel and Marghie Hundert, the children of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gregor Hundert, one of the so-called Hungarian Eight who emigrated to America and worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the bomb. Fascinated by the stately, Old World professor and his kindly wife, Lilo, and deeply attached to Marghie, a cinema-obsessed vegetarian, and to Daniel, an angry counterculture figure, Gabriel spends the summer with the family at their Wisconsin retreat, which yields cherished conversation and understanding. As Gabriel departs to study astrophysics at the University of Chicago, the tempo of Daniel's activism builds, and Marghie begins running a movie house. When the once great professor sinks into senile dementia, Lilo makes a necessary but terrible decision for them all. The editor of Saul Bellow's forthcoming letters, Taylor turns in a smart, humane look at what Gabriel calls the era's "intergenerational rancor." (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

This elegiac novel features the long, tragic friendship of three young people coming of age in the 1970s. They meet as undergraduates at Swarthmore and begin their adult lives full of promise. By the end of the novel, that promise has given way to sadness, regret, and defeat, mainly because of bad choices. All three protagonists are skillfully rendered. Daniel and Marghie are fraternal twins, children of a Nobel prize-winning physicist, while Gabriel is the son of a rabbi from New Orleans. Although parts of the novel would have benefited from further development, much here is beautifully drawn: Gabriel's failed or unrealized romantic relationships prove especially poignant. These young people also lose their parents, and Taylor handles these passages with eloquence and pathos. This is a novel about friendship, loneliness, and the hazards adults encounter as they make their way in the world. Although not without its flaws, it nonetheless has much to offer. Recommended for libraries with large fiction collections.-Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Taylor's second novel (Tales Out of School, 1995) is an inconsequential story, with considerable pretensions, about a brainy gay Jewish astronomy student, his brainy best friends (twins) and their super-brainy parents. Gabriel Geismar is a mama's boy with an overbearing father, a rabbi in New Orleans. Gabriel loves numbers, especially as they relate to the cosmos; his other love is male bodies, which he satisfies by visiting a bathhouse. Deliverance from the rabbi comes in 1970, when he wins a scholarship to Swarthmore, outside Philadelphia, and meets Marghie and Danny Hundert, fraternal twins, who both fall in love with him; he reciprocates Danny's love, while Marghie becomes his big sister. The movie buff (Marghie) and the pacifist (Danny) are the children of Gregor Hundert, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who, along with other Hungarian Jews, developed the atom bomb at Los Alamos. Gabriel is in seventh heaven when the courtly, old-world parents take a shine to him: These, surely, are his rightful parents, not the rabbi and the rebbetzin, whose deaths are described with arch humor. The story meanders through the '70s. Gabriel becomes a professor of astrophysics. Love affairs founder. Gabriel and Marghie ease their solitude with imaginary helpmates. Neither one is a fully formed, knowable character. We don't know Danny either, though he defines himself in spectacular fashion, first by his vow of silence to protest the Vietnam war, then by his attempt to assassinate Kissinger. This was Danny's project: "To get even. With the big perpetrators." It's hard to square it with the words from the Bhagavad Gita which are his father's mantra: "[T]he good deeds a man has done defend him." Gregor seems mocked by that mantra too, as he slips into dementia. The novel ends in irony and ambiguity as Gabriel, a more reliable "son" than the incarcerated Danny, scatters Gregor's ashes in Budapest. An intellectual peep show whose ultimate meaning remains elusive. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.