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“Five senses,” they told me. How chauvinistic that seems now. Understandably so, but still.

Remember [book:Flatland|433567]? (I like to think everyone read that in grade school but am now wondering if it was only us math geeks?) Anyhow, Immense World brought back those feelings of wonder; of imagining what we know is out there but can never, ever fully understand. A dog navigating the world through smell. The countless ways of arranging color receptors, giving some animals a visual experience we can barely even describe. Touch. Vibration, through air (sound) and through ground. Sensing electrical fields. Magnetic fields! How little we know! And of course, [book:bats|197189543]. All creatures taking their senses for granted, just like we do, but we have that amazing ability to study and learn and devise instruments that help us see-hear-sense farther. And to imagine.

“[...] we can try to step into their worlds. We must choose to do so, and to have that choice is a gift. It is not a blessing we have earned, but it is one we must cherish.” Yong, more than anyone else I’ve ever encountered or heard of, has made me recognize that gift. Has let me glimpse those worlds of sensation. He does so with tremendous compassion and humility.

An unexpected pleasure which I might’ve appreciated more with a little preparation, so I’m targeting this review toward people who know nothing about this book series.

The most important thing to know ahead of time is: whatever expectations you might have, let them go because this will be both more and less. Yeah, there’s a murder mystery, and an interesting (VERY CONVOLUTED) side plot, but those feel incidental. The bulk of the story, as I saw it, is just a pretty decent fella living a fairly ordinary life, treating people with respect and kindness and compassion, and for the most part surrounding himself with similarly caring loved ones. As other reviewers have noted, what makes this book is the relationships. And they’re lovely. Mature. Strong. Low-drama. Some people might find a book like this boring; I found it refreshing even with the pages-long digressions into college scheduling conflicts. It felt like life.

Proofreading was appalling, worst I’ve seen in years. The occasional mystery elements required Golden Gate-level suspension of disbelief. Tangents galore, little side stories that get abandoned—again, much like life. And the Edith Warner snippets felt like afterthoughts, tacked on in postproduction because oops we should probably connect somehow to the book title. Even so I really enjoyed it, am glad to have read it. Would love to pick up another one in the series, but (sigh) I first need to become more tolerant of misprints.

Remarkable. Emotionally powerful on many levels. Larsen writes with a bold directness that I found both refreshing and uncomfortable. Narration is third person but entirely from the POV of one character, Irene, almost as if it were first-person disassociated: the reader has constant awareness of her emotional state but only indirect awareness, via her inferences, of the minds of others. Unusual but effective. Even more unusual, there’s only one sympathetic character in the book and it’s not Irene: it’s her husband, who we realize she does not know at all, and her imaginings of who he is are a tragedy of their own. This is a complex, layered book.

Larsen must’ve been a fascinating person. Insightful, sensitive, witty. The main themes for me were choices, consequences, loss, loneliness, and the crushing of our hopes as we commit to paths in life. There is more than one character living a lie, and we see a lot of the costs involved. Larsen adds in religious intolerance, sex ed, responsible parenting, with enlightened positions on each. Absolutely delightful to find in a 1929 book. (Depressing, too, since the problems she rails against persist today).

4.5 stars, rounding down because the language was often more tell than show. But, no, rounding up because this was just too impressive.

“Five senses,” they told me. How chauvinistic that seems now. Understandably so, but still.

Remember [b:Flatland|433567|Flatland A Romance of Many Dimensions|Edwin A. Abbott|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435435775l/433567.SY75.jpg|4243538]? (I like to think everyone read that in grade school but am now wondering if it was only us math geeks?) Anyhow, Immense World brought back those feelings of wonder; of imagining what we know is out there but can never, ever fully understand. A dog navigating the world through smell. The countless ways of arranging color receptors, giving some animals a visual experience we can barely even describe. Touch. Vibration, through air (sound) and through ground. Sensing electrical fields. Magnetic fields! How little we know! And of course, [b:bats|197189543|What Is It Like to Be a Bat?|Thomas Nagel|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|40899183]. All creatures taking their senses for granted, just like we do, but we have that amazing ability to study and learn and devise instruments that help us see-hear-sense farther. And to imagine.

“[...] we can try to step into their worlds. We must choose to do so, and to have that choice is a gift. It is not a blessing we have earned, but it is one we must cherish.” Yong, more than anyone else I’ve ever encountered or heard of, has made me recognize that gift. Has let me glimpse those worlds of sensation. He does so with compassion and humility.

Five stars for research! The authors did their homework; the presentation was accurate down to the minutest details I'm aware of. I even learned a few more.

Unfortunately, too many flaws that I couldn’t overlook. First is the narration gimmick: first-person from the perspective of ... self-aware Uranium? It’s unclear if it’s a particular lump of it, or just one atom, or maybe just the gestalt of all Uranium? I found it annoying. Second, the characters were drawn almost indistinguishably; perhaps unavoidable given the heavy-stroke artwork, but I found it hard to keep track of the dramatis personae.

Third and most painful was the expository dialogue. “Yes, you are a renowned chemist and you are an excellent engineer, as well as being the indispensable president of...”; and “Oh no! Another flat! It’s the third one this week!”; and (Groves to Oppenheimer, December 1943): “But do you realize, only a few years ago, the greatest scientific minds in the world thought it would be impossible to isolate Uranium-235 from Uranium-238 without turning the entire country into a gigantic factory...?” Cringeworthy and continuous; not every page, but almost.

Then again, consciousness and communication are particularly strong interests of mine so I may be overly sensitive.

You’re almost certainly familiar with Kahneman’s and Fredrickson’s wonderful ice-water experiment (“When More Pain is Preferred to Less”, also called the peak-end rule), the one where victisubjects opted for a longer (90s vs 60s) painful experience if the last few seconds were less painful. I love that result. I’ve found it invaluable for reframing life situations.

This is a 436-page book, of which the first 220 or so pages are excruciating. Oh, how I wanted to toss it away! But I was encouraged to stick with it. I did. And I’m glad.

Halfway through, it took an interesting twist, and yes it was foreshadowed but no, not the directions it took after the midpoint. That was thoughtful, creative, nuanced, suspenseful, engaging, and even sweet; and it just kept getting better. A whole lot of Did Not See That Coming, even when you think you see what’s coming, and damn, I really loved it. Solid 4.5 stars, but rounding down because even with all that praise it was still objectively heavyhanded (I know, it’s YA, I should be more forgiving); because of the eyeroll-worthy dei ex machina and other wildly convenient coincidences; and finally because I can’t objectively be sure if the last half was truly-actually good or if I was swayed by the peak-end rule. What I can say is, I’m really glad to have read this and can highly, highly recommend it but only to those who promise to persevere through the first half. Tesh took a big risk in writing the book that way, and I’m sure it cost her sales and readers. If she decides to go for the adult reader market, I’m looking forward to seeing her future work.

Haunting. A powerful beginning; so good that the first thing I did upon finishing the book was reread the first few chapters. Effective first-person narration, ostensibly epistolary but inobtrusively so. Dual timelines worked beautifully: about 80% was 1973, tense, dramatic, distinctly uncomfortable; the rest, in 2016, tempered the heat with mature reflection. Getting to know the narrator like that—first as an interesting, conflicted adult, then as the hotheaded but caring young person she was— ... well, I found myself crushing hard on her. The book is much more than about her, of course, but it’s so enjoyable to have the author devote care to every aspect. That’s why we read.

The story is fiction, the events behind it are not, and near the one-third mark I felt compelled to read up on the historical basis. Waiting that long worked well for me, and I recommend it. Or perhaps even waiting until after finishing the book. This is history I never knew (yes, that bothers me!) but I think that, had I read up about it beforehand, the book’s effect would’ve been lessened.