A visit to the gallery Book

This was entertaining and educational, but it wasn't really a work of fiction. It was a long parable illustrating fascinating ideas about geometry. Very well-written and thought provoking, but there was no actual story.

I've always loved Kurt Vonnegut's succinct and brilliant advice to would-be crafters of fiction: "All your characters must want something, even if it's only a glass of water." The characters here don't want much of anything, other than to be used as tools by the author to illustrate mathematical ideas. And they get what they wish without having to even try.

The characters didn't desire something and face obstacles to the realization of their respective desiderata, with the level of tension steadily increasing as we the readers are swept along in the story, feeling that tension rising, observing those characters as they ultimately either succeed or fail but are, nevertheless changed in some way by their struggle. That's what fiction is all about.

Also: there are puns. But most of these British, so you might not get them. Even more disturbing: you might be British and you will get them.

I don't mean to give the impression that it's a bad book. It's a good book, if you want to learn about some fascinating aspects of modern geometry. But the story was always subservient to the math; it existed solely to illustrate the ideas. Great ideas, cleverly presented, but the story was flat and the characters two dimensional. I'm sorry about that last comment, but really, who could resist?