Ada Sibelius is raised by David, her brilliant, eccentric, socially inept single father, who directs a computer science lab in 1980s-era Boston. Home-schooled, Ada accompanies David to work every day; by twelve, she is a painfully shy prodigy. The lab begins to gain acclaim at the same time that David’s mysterious history comes into question. When his mind begins to falter, leaving Ada virtually … virtually an orphan, she is taken in by one of David’s colleagues. Soon she embarks on a mission to uncover her father’s secrets: a process that carries her from childhood to adulthood. What Ada discovers on her journey into a virtual universe will keep the reader riveted until The Unseen World’s heart-stopping, fascinating conclusion.
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I stumbled upon The Unseen World in my new favorite place (the library) and picked it up not really knowing what to expect. Well, the library has done it again! I loved this book. It’s beautifully written with extremely well-developed characters who have relationships that are complex and realistic and deeply moving. Plus, it’s got a mystery, it’s got some romance and some death and some family drama, it’s got artificial intelligence and code-breaking and questions about the role of technology in modern life — basically everything you need for an amazing story. I was surprised by how much I liked this, but I recommend it highly!
I stumbled onto this book almost by accident, proof that the most potent recommendations still come from people we “know,” or at least feel some connection with. The author, Liz Moore, and I have some Boston author friends in common, and as soon as I started reading, the setting felt familiar—even though I’ve never actually been to Dorchester.
(And since this is my first book review in 2017, feel free to let me know how well I follow my own recommendations for writing book reviews.)The Unseen World by Liz Moore
The story itself is about a brilliant single father who runs a lab and educates his daughter, Ada, by bringing her to work. My brother worked in a very similar lab in the early 1980s, when the book begins, and even as I devoured the fictional story I was remembering his real life experience. The extra layer kept pulling me away to wonder where fiction and history intersected, but the words on the page kept pulling me back—proof of a subtle but consistent structure that framed what could’ve been a very disjointed tale into a great story.
When David, Ada’s father, loses his brilliance to Alzheimer’s, he leaves behind a history so complicated that it takes Ada the entire novel to work out what really happened before she was born. So on the surface it’s a story about family, and how we build strong connections with those we respect even if we aren’t related by blood.
Underneath, it’s also about science, and education, and how we learn… and about our relationship to our work. About language, and lies, and how to live our best lives even when that doesn’t match convention. There are so many themes, it’s impossible to list them all here.
And yet all these themes tie together neatly in the end. As soon as I finished, the confusing time line (which jumps, jarringly, from the 80s to 2009, about halfway through the book) looked logical and appropriate. And then the epilogue managed to surprise me all over again—even after I’d thought all the surprises were out in the open at last.
As soon as I finished the book, I started reading from the beginning again, unwilling to let it go—and wondering if the language quirks I noticed early on were part of the plan all along. Even though I only reread the first few chapters, it was obvious the second time through how carefully the story had been constructed. There’s a subtle structure holding it all in place, solid and quiet, never interfering with the story line. And unlike many novels these days, the final chapters are just as carefully polished as the beginning ones.
My only complaint were two small quirks in time when I was jerked out of the story: reading along in the moment, the narrator suddenly took a step into the future to look back with perspective on what I was reading as the present. Now that I’ve seen the overall structure, it makes sense that time could be mixed up like this; at the time, on the page, those two moments just seemed like editing mistakes.
Maybe they were mistakes; more likely, they were carefully planned accidents. Part of the beauty of The Unseen World is that it doesn’t try to explain everything in too much detail or tie up anything too neatly. Moore trusts the reader to make the necessary leaps from one fact to another; all she does is quietly provide the springboard. The lack of strict chronology only reinforces the mystery, drawing us to the logical but still surprising conclusion—and still leaving room for a very satisfying “aha!” at the end.
Maybe this story resonated with me because I grew up in a similar time and location… but I think not. Ada’s life is so different from mine, it does require a leap off that springboard to feel such an affinity. Luckily, Moore provides that.
This one is recommended for anyone who enjoys a carefully constructed literary yarn; there’s certain to be a theme here that appeals.
A beautifully written story about a father, a daughter, secrets, and artificial intelligence.
Ordinarily I choose not to read anything that will give me the feels…this one gave me ALL of them, dammit. And I didn’t even mind!
Part fiction, part tear-jerker, part sci-fi and 100% awesome, this book wormed its way into my cold, cold heart and settled in.
I will be thinking about this one for a long time as I return to my usual stabby reads.
Beautifully written, captivating story line about a girl and the relationship with a father who she doesn’t realize has a very different past….and how that affects her life, kind of coming of age with some twists….don’t miss this one.