May 25

May 25 Love and Other Thought Experiments

Author: Sophie Ward
Publisher: Vintage (forthcoming US edition)
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Rachel and Eliza are hoping to have a baby. The couple spend many happy evenings together planning for the future.

One night Rachel wakes up screaming and tells Eliza that an ant has crawled into her eye and is stuck there. She knows it sounds mad - but she also knows it's true. As a scientist, Eliza won't take Rachel's fear seriously and they have a bitter fight. Suddenly their entire relationship is called into question.

Inspired by some of the best-known thought experiments in philosophy, particularly philosophy of mind, Love and Other Thought Experiments is a story of love lost and found across the universe.

TL;DR Review

Love and Other Thought Experiments is hard to review. It’s incredibly written, but also one of the most bizarre and unexpected books I’ve ever read.

For you if: You like weird, experimental books!

Full Review

“We are not a brain. We are the purest distillation of consciousness without any of the distractions.”

Wow, where do I even start with this one? Love and Other Thought Experiments isn’t published in the US yet (it’s coming in the fall), but it was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, which is how I came to pick it up.

You don’t get a lot of information from the cover description — just that it’s a book written in “thought experiments” that starts when a woman says an ant crawled into her eye but her girlfriend doesn’t believe her. Now, having read it, I’m sorry to say that I can’t tell you any more information than that lol. What I can tell you is that this book is a complete roller coaster, bizarre and unexpected and completely unpredictable.

I can’t help but give this book five stars on the review sites because it’s one of the most creative novels I’ve ever read, and the writing is truly excellent. But it’s hard to verbalize much more than that — I’m still kind of like whaaaaat. I did really love the way each chapter was tied to a famous philosophical thought experiment; they were interesting to connect back to the story and to reflect on for my own life. And the characters here are rich and beautifully written. But again, it was such a strange trip!

I realize this review is probably not very helpful lol. My advice is to read this if you tend to like books that are weird and experimental, and if you have someone else to buddy read it with so that you can talk about it after (which you will NEED to do).