An ant is used as a medium to connect individual stories and emotions (the same ant is on the cover and inside of the book). The sagacious ant, drawn by the scent of decay, in feeding on Rachel’s tumour exercises – against readerly expectation – a benign function. She incubates life and death, a paradox that spreads throughout the labyrinthine complexities of the narrative to come.

But overall this just wasn't really for me though it will definitely be a story that I remember for a long time. Ward beautifully conveys this deep and at times mysterous empathy through the relationships among her characters and the heartwork they do to matintain them: in marriage partnerships and between parents and children especially.Each chapter begins with the explanation of a particular thought experiment and then uses that experiment as the foundation of the fiction that follows. Her debut novel, Love and Other Thought Experiments, was published in February 2020 by Corsair and was longlisted for the Booker Prize in July 2020. But many of the philosophical thought experiments are around consciousness and the nature of reality, and the novel, while retaining this very human element, heads into very different stylistic territory by the end, rather Matrix like, although the author has also acknowledged the inspiration of The End of Mr. Oh, mum, just say I’m a lesbian,’ Rachel told her when Elizabeth asked what she should tell the hairdresser who wanted to know why she hadn’t seen Rachel for so long.

If you're looking for a plot summary—firstly, I do think this book is best gone into with very little context besides a sentence or two ( a woman claims an ant has crawled into her eye and from there the universe of these characters' lives unravels and intertwines simultaneously to create a thought-provoking narrative that will leave you questioning your own existence).

The result: Something akin to a series of writing exercises, jampacked with interesting ideas that never fully converge.

a genuinely affective family narrative that is emotionally compelling as well as intellectually stimulating. The novel consists of a series of connected short episodes, each based around a philosophical thought experiments which is explicitly explained at the start of each chapter. She wrote a novel for readers who enjoy pondering philosophical questions and like authors who turn stories into puzzles - in the Booker context, "Love and Other Thought Experiments" reads like the antidote to the chick lit entry Such a Fun Age, as Ward's novel would also be bona fide material for the Goldsmiths Prize for fiction that breaks the mould.There are a few LGBTQ+ characters included at the forefront of the cast, but they seem to exist naturally and without identity-based conflict in this world, thus failing to generate any social commentary; I think it’s very important for marginalized characters to be present in books this way, as people worth the page space without having to examine their lives for the reader’s benefit, but again it doesn’t exactly help one connect to or feel for these characters. This description probably doesn't convey what an enjoyable experience reading the book is - the science and philosophy never distracts too much from the human stories. The more the story of the little family progresses, shifts and morphs, the more the topic of artificial intelligence takes center stage, questioning the nature of the future a. De cualquier manera, más que de temas fantásticos, el libro habla de relaciones entre pareja y entre madre e hijo, especialmente, sobre cómo estas relaciones se mantienen ante el paso del tiempo y enfrentándose a circunstancias adversas. A stand alone fictionalised work centered just on the thought experiments would have been preferable for me.