Name: Gold Bug Variations
ISBN: 9780060975005

Richard Powers

A national bestseller, voted by Time as the #1 novel of 1991, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1991" by Publishers Weekly, and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award--a magnificent story that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art, by the brilliant author of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance.

Gold Bug Variations

Eva Sabine

While the back cover of the Gold Bug Variations describes it as a “magnificent double love story of two young couples separated by a distance of twenty-five years” it is rather a sequence of manic ramblings on genetics. The book is spread over three time periods flipping between first person narration and third person reflection with no true distinction. As a result, the opening is incredibly confusing (even more so with the dense series of scientific metaphors). Throughout the novel, Powers clearly aims to convey the beauty of the improbability of life, but quickly lost me as he waxed poetic about codon sequences for 450 of the 740 pages. His continued use of scientific wording for artistic language easily made this book a biology professor’s wet dream and demanded a couple college level classes as prerequisites. 

After reading approximately 150 pages of genetic garble, I turned to goodreads reviews to determine if I should actually power through this behemoth of a book. Overall, it received 4/5 stars, which convinced me to continue. I mean, I absolutely loved The Overstory (also by Powers), and was anticipating some moment when this other book of his would turn good. For me, it never came. 

I went BACK to browse the goodreads reviews after finishing and was rewarded with some of the most entertaining ones I have found to date, which I included in my post for your sake. Readers gave the book either 5 stars or just 1, and the type of person who seriously loved this book, like Nick Craske, demonstrated a sense of STEM humour I just don’t have. 

The book eludes to appreciating the sheer chance that atoms/molecules/codons/genes/cells/organs were able to arrange in such a way that we are able to be alive, but by the end I was so exhausted that I failed to truly appreciate it. In short: great message Powers, but holy shit you could’ve presented it in a much better way.