The first 60% of Austin Taylor’s novel Notes on Infinity are not great. They are narrated in the voice of a neurotic, woke, girl-bossy Harvard student called Zoe who, in spite of growing up in extraordinary opulence, feels like a victim because she’s “a woman in STEM.” Zoe is not really in STEM in any meaningful way. She’s a dumb, self-important hack who is handed extraordinary opportunities and vast amounts of money because she is very well-connected and takes her victimhood story onto the TED-X circuit.
200 pages of Zoe recounting her many neuroses makes for a bit of a slog. But for the readers who manage to stay with it into the second part of the narrative, there is a wonderful surprise. This part of the novel tells the story of Zoe’s boyfriend Jack. Jack is really what we would call disadvantaged but, in the world of rich kids with prestigious identities at Harvard, Jack’s poverty, his broken home and drug-addled mother don’t count for anything because he is that most despised of things, a white man.
Better to transmit the extraordinary banality of Zoe’s invented drama, Taylor writes her part of the narrative in the annoying tone of a “diverse” Harvard princess. This is a mega gutsy move for a first-time author. How many people will quit reading the novel because they’ll think that Austin simply doesn’t know how to write?
When Jack’s part of the story begins, you all of a sudden discover that, oh yes, Taylor can write. I was listening to the book on Audible and was caught completely unawares when Zoe’s stupid prattle that went on for two hundred pages gave way to a shattering, poetic, and beautiful story of Jack. I had to stop and rewind because the change was so dramatic. This is a masterful handling of the narrative devices where the way the story is written makes the point without the author having to spell it out.
Big props to Taylor for having the extraordinary restraint needed to conceal that she actually knows how to write way past the first half of the novel.
The reviews of the book play up the sciency component and the distant echoes of the Theranos scandal but those are lazy, uninteresting readings. What the novel is really about is how the American working class is destroyed by getting involved in anti-human agendas of self-pitying elites.
Is there a happy ending to such a story? I won’t give any spoilers except to say that the ending of the novel is realistic.
This is the best novel I gave read this year so far.
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