The Explanation for Everything: A Novel
Andy Waite is a biology professor who has never gone in for religion, but he lives for glimpses of his wife’s ghost. He’s trying to balance grief and fatherhood and a complicated relationship with his neighbor while applying for a grant that would help him prove that the brains of alcoholic mice are wired differently. None of it is going very well, although he is a pretty decent father to his two young girls. Then his seminar on Darwinism, “There Is No God,” is infiltrated by a Campus Crusader for Christ, and a student asks him to sponsor her independent study on intelligent design. All of this leads him to question the faith he was so confident he did not have. Nothing is neatly answered, and even though some of Andy’s actions are desperately cringe-worthy, you root for his hard-won wisdom. Grodstein handles everything with a subtle wit, managing to skewer both the ultraconservative and the ultraliberal without making either seem absolutely wrong. Both the tone and the plot of the grieving professor finding answers in science are reminiscent of Carolyn Parkhurst’s Dogs of Babel (2003). --Susan Maguire