INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Lauren Grodstein
The intellectual debate between a student and a professor gets personal in Grodstein’s new novel By S. Kirk Walsh Almost every aspect of his life is suffused by the sudden loss of his wife. Andy’s scientific research has moved from degenerative diseases to alcoholism. “He had spent the past five years at Exton Reed just, like, experimenting, trying to prove that the genetics of alcoholism lead to immutable behavior patterns,” writes Grodstein. A few pages later, the author writes, in reference to Andy’s lab specimens: “Poor mice. They were the only animals whose alcoholism he was able to forgive—he knew the genetics behind it, after all— and he often found himself envying them their singleminded devotion to drinking, and their peace.” Initially, what appears to be a traditional campus narrative of a widower professor transforms into a well-crafted debate about evolutionary science and intelligent design. Every third semester, Andy teaches a course provocatively titled “There Is No God (Special Topics in Evolutionary Biology: Ethics and Debate).” A majority of his students are often content to digest his theories of Darwin while the right-wing religious detractors on campus stay away. During this particular semester, a couple of ardent believers come knocking on his office door. One is a transfer student named Melissa Potter who asks if she can sign up for an independent study with Andy; she is attempting to prove that there is some kind of science behind the evangelical underpinnings of intelligent design. Reluctantly, he signs on as Melissa’s academic sponsor—and their debate becomes an entangled relationship that opens up Andy’s way of seeing the world and experiencing the loss of his wife. In the process, Grodstein takes on this complicated subject matter and effortlessly dramatizes it in an engaging narrative of grief, faith, doubt and redemption. “I’ve always been interested in evolution and evolutionary science,” explains Grodstein, “but I’m not
“The first time Andy met Louisa, she was covered in blood,” begins Lauren Grodstein’s thought-provoking fourth book, The Explanation for Everything. Quickly, the reader learns that the two characters are meeting in the waiting area of an emergency room in Princeton, N.J., after enduring minor mishaps (a bike accident and an encounter with a kitchen knife, respectively). By the next chapter, the narrative jumps forward 12 years; Andy Waite is seeking tenure at a small liberal arts college in southern New Jersey as well as a hefty, midcareer grant from the National Science Foundation. His life has changed radically since his first meeting with Louisa in the ER. After getting married and having two girls together, Andy is now a 40-year-old widower tenuously trying to hold his life together after a drunk driver kills Louisa. 22
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15 september 2013
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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