The Explanation for Everything

June 3, 2013
A little romance fails to lighten a heavy-handed parable about the limits of belief and intolerance in Grodstein’s third novel (after A Friend of the Family). Biology professor Andy Waite, preoccupied with applying for tenure and securing a major grant, is relieved to be teaching his signature biology course, which is called “There Is No God.” Grieving for his wife Lou, who was killed by a drunk driver, Andy throws himself into his responsibilities and does what he can to keep her killer in prison, but he’s lost when it comes to shepherding his two daughters through problems with school and friends. Then transfer student Melissa Potter enlists Andy to sponsor her independent study project about intelligent design. She also babysits for the Waites, bringing her closer to Andy and his family and to changing Andy’s mind about the existence of a higher power. The cultural clash engineered by the author opens as fresh and diverting, but gets bogged down in improbable plot turns involving Andy’s neighbor and Melissa’s megachurch. Heady discussions about God between Andy and Melissa feel as unrealistic as their romance, leaving a void where a lively debate should have been. Agent: Julie Barer, Barer Literary.

Starred review from September 1, 2013

Andy Waite is just about holding his life together, trying to raise his two young daughters after his wife, Louisa, was killed by a drunk driver. As a biologist, Andy devotes himself to researching the effects of alcohol on laboratory mice. He is also obsessed with preventing the guy who killed Louisa from being paroled. At the mediocre college in southern New Jersey where he teaches, Andy offers a class called "There Is No God" on evolutionary biology. Most of his students are apathetic, except for a few evangelicals who strongly disagree with him. Then a persistent undergraduate named Melissa persuades him to sponsor her independent study project on intelligent design, and Andy reluctantly agrees. As Melissa becomes less sure of her religious convictions, Andy reevaluates his ideas about belief and forgiveness. VERDICT Many novelists explore love and loss, but Grodstein (A Friend of the Family) adroitly tackles big questions about faith and science, guilt and responsibility, punishment and healing. This engaging, and provocative novel is hard to put down. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 6/24/13.]--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2013
In her fourth novel, Grodstein (A Friend of the Family, 2009, etc.) writes of loss of love and belief. Andy Waite's a biology professor at Exton Reed, "eleven hundred students and forty-two acres of crumbling quad hidden at the ass end of New Jersey." Andy loves teaching a class entitled "There Is No God," a Darwinian homage. Andy's mentor was a notorious Richard Dawkins-like professor, Hank Rosenblum. But Andy's morose; his wife, Louisa, was killed by a drunken driver. He does have two precocious daughters, and tenure's imminent, and there's a possible National Science Foundation grant, one related to studies about alcohol and the brain. Louisa's death explains his research, but nothing rational explains his agreement to mentor Melissa Potter's independent study: an objectivist argument for intelligent design. Images of Louisa linger as Andy interacts with Sheila, divorced neighbor and recovering alcoholic. As his emotional relationship with Melissa skates toward intimacy, Andy is plagued by doubts--over his project's validity after befriending Sheila; over his unbending opposition to parole for the young driver who killed Louisa; and over his rigidity as Melissa's warmth and generosity make real the power of spiritual belief. Rather than offering the works of St. Augustine or C.S. Lewis as rationalizations for belief, Grodstein offers the homilies of a fictional local pastor; it's a bit of an easier road, but her narrative sparkles with irony and wry observation. A fundamentalist student, Andy's vocal opponent, loses his faith. Rosenblum's overbearing prodding of a brilliant student who rejects science for marriage to a pastor results in her suicide. As the possibility of the divine sparks emotions Andy cannot comprehend, he learns he's caught up in another person's experiment. A college professor, Grodstein is perfect with her description of campus tremors radiating after a colleague strays from conventional wisdom. While Melissa's motivations and actions are sometimes contradictory and counterintuitive, Grodstein's portrait of Andy is spot-on, as is that of the evangelical student, Sheila, Rosenblum and the minor characters. A rumination on love and loss, faith in reason and faith in the divine.

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September 1, 2013
Andy Waite is a biology professor who has never gone in for religion, but he lives for glimpses of his wife's ghost. He's trying to balance grief and fatherhood and a complicated relationship with his neighbor while applying for a grant that would help him prove that the brains of alcoholic mice are wired differently. None of it is going very well, although he is a pretty decent father to his two young girls. Then his seminar on Darwinism, There Is No God, is infiltrated by a Campus Crusader for Christ, and a student asks him to sponsor her independent study on intelligent design. All of this leads him to question the faith he was so confident he did not have. Nothing is neatly answered, and even though some of Andy's actions are desperately cringe-worthy, you root for his hard-won wisdom. Grodstein handles everything with a subtle wit, managing to skewer both the ultraconservative and the ultraliberal without making either seem absolutely wrong. Both the tone and the plot of the grieving professor finding answers in science are reminiscent of Carolyn Parkhurst's Dogs of Babel (2003).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)