Word: reader
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Lightman's Einstein, a 26-year-old patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, is tormented with dreams about time. Every night he envisions a new world where time affects the inhabitants of Bern differently. Each vision is organized like a fable, ending with an important message for the reader on how to live life best...
Lightman relates these fantasies of time with beautiful simplicity and intensity, as well as ironic humor. Although some of images used seem cliched, the visions of lovers stopped in time and grandparents growing young again still touch the reader and force one to reconsider accepted conceptions of time. Surprisingly enough, Lightman bases many of the dreams on real physics. In a vision derived from the theory that gravity stops time in a black hole, Einstein dreams that in the center of time, time freezes. Even the vision in which time branches into three dimensions has scientific backing...
...where pain, violence and profound isolation are as regular as Happy Hour at the local bar. Beauty and horror alike commingle in visions of lyrical grace in the mind of the tortured hero. He ends the first story, "Car Crash," with a vivid hallucination and a cry to the reader: "And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help...
...after so much piercing, visionary pain, rehabilitation is neither a believable nor an appealing option. The angels at the drive in and behind the bar speak louder than the apostrophes which end many of the stories, addressing the reader. Johnson's depictions of the druggie's singular experiences shine with a metallic grace; the visions, the "rushing on a run," resist the very messiness of the world in which they occur. This simultaneous representation of a crude reality and a burning vision is Johnson's final unresolved gift to the reader...
...runs the opening quotation of Ian McEwan's new book, Black Dogs, and so, in turn, the book affects the reader. It challenges our beliefs and evokes a longing for an unfathomable, mystic philosophy. McEwan describes a man trying to overcome spiritual confusion by writing a psychological portrait of his parents-in-law. Yet there is no trite summary, no kernel of meaning to be extracted, because the book poses questions, rather than answering them...