Telephone famously has three versions, each one different than the others—something I might be able to comment on if I’d read more than one. The novel is also divided into three sections, signified by different devices separating the chapters. In the first, it is Latin phrases; in the second, chess annotation, neither of which I understood (although I admit to being too lazy to look up the Latin). The third is a repeated sentence.
Zach Wells is a geology professor and paleontologist whose focus on his work in the Grand Canyon becomes dislodged when he and his wife Meg notice changes in their 12-year-old daughter Sarah, the person Zach loves best in the world. She has begun having minor seizures and her vision is blurry.
After visiting several doctors, the Wellses learn that Sarah has a rare neurological disease that is going to kill her. Zach clearly doesn’t know what to do with his grief.
Around the same time, he finds notes asking for help in some shirts he ordered from eBay. Perhaps to distract himself, he discovers where the packages came from and goes to a small town in New Mexico to investigate, oddly leaving his wife home to cope with Sarah, who is entering dementia.
This is an odd novel. Although Sarah early on tells him he can’t save everyone, he isn’t trying. He is unnecessarily harsh with a colleague up for tenure and a student with a crush, then he turns around and is nicer to them.
For me, apparently not agreeing with the critics, although wonderfully well written, the novel seems to go in several directions that are unresolved. But then, perhaps this is true to life, truer anyway than stories that neatly wrap everything up.
Zach isn’t a particularly likable person, and his way of running off in the midst of trouble, leaving the burder on Meg, is egregious. This novel is about grief, but it’s also about trying to have some kind of control over the randomness of life.
This is the last book I had to read for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize shortlist.
What? Me Read? 