Connie Willis’ novel, Bellwether, is a romance for brainiacs — or wannabe brainiacs – using eureka moments in science history, nifty nuggets from the lives of the brilliant, and quotes from Robert Browning, to drive along the plot of a scientist studying the trend of hair bobbing. Bellwether could also be the bible for anyone who has ever bucked a trend. Actually, given all the super-neat facts on trends throughout the centuries that Willis tucks into her novel, Bellwethercould be the bible of anyone who has ever aimed to be the ultimate trend-setter, as well as anyone whose goal is to be the ultimate trend follower. So that covers just about everybody: trend-setter, follower, and ignorer. Everyone will like this book.
Bellwether appeals because it is intelligent, really, really funny, and entertaining. It is also predictable, but only in its outcome. The process of getting there is pure chaos, and as chaos theory is one of the many streams running through the book, this is one time chaos makes perfect sense. Chaos is like a great work of art: it makes you see things from a new perspective and in a new light, and you suddenly understand things in a whole new way. And maybe you’ll even have a scientific or emotional or creative breakthrough. In the novel chaos gets our heroine Sandy to love (predictable) but with a twist: the first kiss is described as being like “the discovery of penicillin and the benzene ring and the Big Bang all rolled into one. Eureka to the tenth power. Like coming to the source of the Nile.” I like that description a lot. And there are some surprises at the end, which I leave for you to find out.
Willis is best known as a science fiction writer, and she has won many awards in sci fi lit, but here she is down to earth wild and crazy, a breath of fresh air amidst some of heavy titles I’ve been lifting lately. I finished reading this book with a sigh of satisfaction and wistful wishing for more.
One of the most super of the neat trend facts Willis treats us to: tattoos “first became popular in the 1600s when explorers brought the practice back from the South Seas. The fad recurred as an upper-class craze in the Edwardian era….Winston Churchill’s mother had a snake tattooed around her wrist.” You have got to be kidding me! Winston Churchill’s mother?
And one sad Fact: ouija boards — telling the future — gain in popularity during war times, first becoming a U.S. fad in WWI and then again in WWII. But its peak of popularity was during the years of the Vietnam War. No stats in yet on sales during the years of the on-going war in Iraq.
