The Beautiful Miscellaneous

Dominic Smith's beautifully written new novel explores genius and loss, failure and redemption, in this portrait of a son trying to make peace with the crushing weight of his father's expectations. Nathan Nelson is above average in everything he does, but his father, a renowned quark physicist, will not give up his quest to uncover his son's latent gifts. Consequently, Nathan has spent his formative years in whiz-kid summer camps, learning college algebra and visiting the Stanford Linear Accelerator. By the time Nathan is seventeen, hopes for a late-blooming prodigy seem dashed, but a tragic accident and ensuing coma leave Nathan with an altered mind that allows him to memorize vast amounts of information. Nathan's father, looking for an application for the new talent, sends him to a research institute where, amid neurological misfits and savants, Nathan tries to find a purpose for the altered way he sees and hears the world.