Eric Williams

Episodic, unengaging, and forgettable. You don't feel connected to any of the characters. This is a consequence of the nature of the book, but has never been a redeeming quality of any good book. Even in an anthology like Winesburg, Ohio, the characters may appear in only one chapter but you at least get to know the characters in the chapter. The only recurring characters here are Einstein and Besso, who appear mostly together and only in about 10 of 180 pages in the book. It's also not very dream-y, unless Einstein has shorter and more succinct, organized dreams than most people do, but it seems unrealistic even for Einstein to have 30 dreams in 90 days all united around a common theme. Some chapters are thought-provoking, but for me, the thoughts they provoked were gone in about 3 minutes. To summarize those thoughts, "Neato. But moving on..." Most chapters were not thought-provoking. Some included internal contradictions or inconsistencies, making me wonder if the author had just written up a single draft of a chapter and then moved on to the next without re-reading or giving a second thought to what he had written. Many were formulaic in that they included descriptions of 100 to 200 words followed by a general statement on how people acted in this conception of time, with no real support as to why people would act that way. "Because of this, all people acted like this." Realistically, there was no reason people would act like that, and if some did, it would be maybe 20% of people, max, not all people broadly. Not to mention, it's quite presumptuous of an author--any author--to put him- or herself inside the head of Einstein, much less to go on to communicate ideas as if they may have been Einstein's. The fact that the author had the audacity to do this seems to be the primary reason for the high opinions of the book. It's overrated. It's short, and once you get the basic idea of it--about 5 chapters in--you should move on. It's short but too long for what it is, which seems to be undecided.