The head’s tools in the landscape of the heart
Victor Aaron is a neuroscientist who blindly, stumblingly navigates the new emotional reality created by the death of his wife, only to find that he’s been failed by the very tools of science that once comforted him.
We trust Victor’s achingly self-conscious voice as he begins the shaky task of setting out into a new world where he must come to terms with his own inevitable aging, and where women—dead or alive, young or old— carry such mystery and contradiction that an entirely new language must emerge to make sense of it all.
This debut novel takes few risks, but boasts some humorous turns (especially Victor’s floundering efforts at an affair with a much younger woman). Flawed as they are, Victor and his inamoratas offer unexpected insights when we’re least likely to to be looking for them.