Notes on Infinity - Austin Taylor
I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley. This review contains spoilers.
This was a bit of a frustrating read, because although I broadly enjoyed it I can see the book that it could have been and it's so much better than what we ended up with. And although I did like it, I think the flaws are going to stick with me more than the successes.
The main reason for that is that the good parts of this book unfortunately feel like they're copying the homework of other books. The opening, Zoe and Jack meeting at Harvard and slowly developing the obsessions that fuel the rest of the narrative, is every post-The Secret History dark academia novel. The transition into being a book about tech start-ups feels like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, even down to the writing style, that feels like a constant stream of montage that shows us scenes from a life without ever letting us spend meaningful time in any given moment. And the final act's pivot into tragic downfall is aiming for the emotional weight of A Little Life without quite getting there.
Part of the reason it never gets there is that Jack is, simply put, not Jude. Despite all of his many, many flaws, A Little Life manages to make us want to root for Jude. Jack, on the other hand, is an unmitigated piece of shit. We see him only in glimpses, and the romance between him and Zoe never landed true for me. There's no chemistry between the characters, and when they do end up together it feels like it's because the author needed them to in order to tell the story she wants to tell. I think it's telling that the actual "we get to be together for real now" part of their relationship effectively takes place off page. They get together, they buy a house, and then they're done.
Jack is treated with a level of sympathy by the novel that he simply doesn't deserve. By the time the book switches to his point of view in an attempt to explain what he did and why, I was sick of him. I didn't hate him, I just didn't want anything to do with him. Even he points out that his tragic backstory doesn't actually excuse the things he did, the massive mess he makes of the lives of the people around him. He is, unfortunately, a massive piece of shit, and the "tragic" ending simply confirmed that view of him for me.
My biggest frustration, though, is that there is almost a really great book here. This could have been a cutting indictment of start-up culture and of men in tech, a book about the way men (especially straight white men) are empowered to bullshit their way through life while everyone else is held to a higher standard. All of the components are in place. But it so desperately wants to be a tragic romance that it completely defangs itself.
That's not to say there's nothing to like here. It's mostly well written - though early on I was convinced this was a classic case of "men writing women" and was very surprised to learn that the author is a woman - and it's a pleasure to read. But much like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, it's lacking the substance that it requires to really land in the way that it wants to.