NanoMan is about very bright people behaving like idiots, in the lab and in the bedroom. NanoMan will delight the legions of readers who adore social satire set in the back-biting world of academics. Main character Jake Avery is a brilliant chemistry professor, gorgeous and screwing up royally. He leaves first wife Angela and baby girl to marry Helen. She's a professor too - and as beautiful as Jake is handsome. Helen's also ruthless, hyper-competitive and will sell her soul to obtain money for her scientific research, even if those with the deep pockets are Rapture-believing evolution deniers. Jake has to figure out how to put a brake on his downward spiral before he's completely nano-sized.
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By Philip Menzies
Mar 27, 2012
I just finished Nanoman last night. I thought it was great. I reluctantly put it down to eat dinner. (A lovely meal on the deck.) Then I returned to it immediately after dinner. Your work is an index to just how many novels are out there that this has not been picked up. I understand that the number of novels and proposals is just staggering, as I'm sure your all too well aware. The scene in Gray Auditorium is riotous--or should I say "scenes," given that so much is going on. Interesting that sinfulness in the biblical sense brought Helen down rather than the "sin" of bad science. But perhaps that sin would have brought her down eventually and inevitably. Just wanted to tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lulu.com puts out a really good physical product--much better than I would have guessed. Excellent perfect binding. Good paper.
This is a fast and entertaining read, but a novel with depth as well. Very quickly one comes to care about the characters, and Jones' insight into relationships (the humor, the pathos, the complications) is alone worth the read. But there is so much more. As the sub-title states, it is about bad chemistry, both in terms of relationships, but also about the ethical problems inherent in the relationships among science, corporations and the public good. This fast-paced novel brings all this together in a brilliant climax that shocks, amazes, amuses and is commensurate with the artistry that leads us to it.
Jones crafts a debut novel both witty and insightful. The world of scientific research is not often explored in fiction, but is here explored and intermixed with plenty of social and emotional drama, to what I'd call great success. Although the scientific backdrop is interesting and avoids inaccuracies and annoying technobabble, the real meat of the story revolves around a woman scorned and her conflicted ex-husband, who, while having made poor decisions in the past, becomes more endearing as he attempts to redeem itself and understand the consequences of his mistakes. Overall, I found this novel short, interesting, and thought-provoking. There's solid character development, some humorous situations that were probably written from experience, and good questions raised about the position of science relative to faith in the modern age. Two thumbs up!
