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Do the Math: A Novel of the Inevitable |  | Author: Philip Persinger
Publisher: IUniverse
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Seller: gbsbooks
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 1523049
Media: Paperback
Pages: 266
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7
ISBN: 0595469884
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780595469888
ASIN: 0595469884
Publication Date: April 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
What could be worse than losing the love of your life? Getting her back!William Teale is a brilliant professor of mathematics. His theory of inevitability posits that any human action, no matter how insignificant, might result in a disproportionately huge calamity.His wife, Virginia "Faye" Warner, is a world-famous romance novelist who specializes in reuniting soul mates after a tragic and prolonged separation. According to her math, "one past and two hearts plus one love equals four-ever." The Teale-Warner marriage is a thing of geometric and artistic perfection, a melding of the heart and the brain-amour and algebra.But when Faye's ghostwriter suffers a nervous breakdown and shakes all the arrows out of Cupid's quiver, Faye reintroduces her husband to love. Unfortunately, it's not with herself, but with the woman William had loved and lost years ago. Love is about to clash with inevitability, and it's unclear which will emerge victorious.Told in the off-beat voice of William's graduate intern, Roger, Do the Math reveals the curious relationship between logic and love and the delightful consequences of taking a chance.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
 Chances Are.... August 26, 2008
L. Shirley (fountain valley, ca United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Do real men read or even write romance? Yes! Philip Persinger in his first novel, "Do The Math" delights all readers with this charming and statistically calculated story of love and math. Although you'll find a multitude of formulas throughout this book, they are not in the form of your typical romance or what some may call a"chick lit" read. Persinger combines his love of numbers with a romance that was meant to be and comes up with the perfect equation for a refreshingly different book about romance that is not a "romance book", yet still romantic.
Told from the point of view of "Roger", an aspiring mathematician, the story revolves around William Teale, a once promising genius of Math who has seemed to have lost all will and motivation to continue his work on a complicated but important and ground breaking thesis. Married to world famous Romance Author Virginia Faye Warner, William has settled into an unlikely(think"Beauty and the Geek") but happy and comfortable marriage, and into his tedious existence of college Math professor. But things are getting a shake up or maybe even a wake up in William's world when after 25 years apart, a chance meeting with the love of his life renews his spirit for life.
Roger, his intern and confidant, is like a fly on the wall in the Warner-Teale household as he helps the professor search for his theory buried among the papers in their vast private library. He learns who is really responsible for the dozens of successful romance novels and what happens when the "ghost writer" is taken ill is the story within the story. Teale now romantically inclined, wants to help with the next novel the publisher and the public have been clamoring for. Teale's approach though is from the Mathematician's point of view. Figuring out the perfect formula for the next story is not the traditional boy meets girl scenarios for William, his is a thought process of theory and equations to boggle the mind. Will the results of his efforts work or is it just too complicated for Faye's fans? Is the story really his story of lost lost love, now found, and are we in for a happy ending? It is a good probability you will have a good time finding out.
Persinger's words flows wonderfully.There are substories that he skillfully brings full cirlce into the core story. The dialogue is snappy and very real. There are an array of supporting characters that will charm the socks of of you. A temperamental ghost writer, "Faye's" fan club of feisty older gals who you just don't want to mess with, and the group of math students who you can just picture walking around with their pencils and calculators sticking out of their shirt pockets. I have to admit though, there were times when I felt like a kindergartner walking in on a meeting of the high school Math club and got a little lost during the math discussions(but that is just me, I always kind of drifted off in the 3 years I had to take and retake Algebra). But honestly that is all part of the fun in this story that will have you smiling and maybe even laughing out loud.
So you won't find any scenes of intense passion or any of the usual suspects here. But a feel good and funny story about the story of romance - mathematically speaking of course! And by the way - the story of a chance meeting with the love of his life is a story the Author knows well! And chances are - you'll love it!
ADD this to your romance library and enjoy!...Laurie
Wonderful May 20, 2008
Goldwoman (LA)
An original romp set in the bucolic Hudson River Valley that creates a fun collision between the unlikely worlds of romance writing, and academia. This book is about love, fate, and growing up.
Between prose and poetry April 29, 2008
Spenser J. Alpern (New York, NY)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm in a reading group that focuses on writers' first novels. I was assigned to find something new (published in 2008) for the group. I never write book reviews, mostly because I can't. But this book is so terrific that I told myself that telling other people about it would be like my own humble offer of thanks to the author. This guy is GOOD. The dialogue is like sitting at the next booth in the diner and listening to other people talk. The descriptive parts are like photography. I blew through this book in a weekend and it only took me THAT long because I didn't want to let it end too quickly. I am going to watch for this guy's future works. I think I may have found the next Great One. Interested to hear others' review of this too.
 Math and romance have never been more fun. February 13, 2009
BookReview.com (Madison, WI United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This begins with a witty Acknowledgment: "Thanks to the Mater (mother) for her great proofreading and helping make sure that nothing in the content would displease Queen Victoria.... Finally, thanks to Emily Nomer, whose arbitrary and capricious comments made the entire writing process odious and hateful." Then the book gets even better. Its narrator is sort of a loser that becomes a graduate intern for a college math professor whose wife is a celebrated (but agoraphobic) romance novel writer. Unfortunately she has had writer's block for the past twenty years and had hired someone to author all her books after the first one. He has just quit.
Her husband is convinced that as a mathematician he and his assistant (who always seems to fall asleep and wake up to eavesdrop on decisive conversations) can eek out a formula for the romance genre. He begins by listing innumerable plot scenarios including this one: "A self-effacing academic type, totally married and honorable, stumbles out of a dark terminal into the brightness of a clear day in March and almost walks in front of a taxi at the airport, except that he is grabbed by the nape of the neck and is saved by the love of his life, who he lost twenty-seven years earlier." The young intern concludes this somehow matches the appearance of an attractive blonde writer the wife has just hired despite her husband's elaborate efforts to prevent that from happening.
"Do the Math" is in the vein of John Kennedy O'Toole's great "A Confederacy of Dunces." It is funny, clever and original in a way that pulls the reader into its farcical, hugely entertaining storyline. I'm not sure who this will appeal to (my guess, neither math majors nor readers of romance novels), but I loved every page. There are some great lines: One of her books is "Tomorrow is Only a Day Away." Her husband is described in an article as, "...an expert at logic and probability, who according to associates `can't tell the difference between a candlelit supper and a power failure.'" And then there's one of the narrator's friends who, at a hilarious bachelor party for a fellow math geek, says of their mutual acquaintance, "Leopold's idea of group sex is doing it with another person."
I honestly didn't care where this book was going or if it would take forever to get there. Phillip Persinger you are a genius. Math and romance have never been more fun.
Not your average romance November 17, 2009
Elizabeth Beeton
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read a review of this book that pissed me off, but the blurb looked interesting and so I went forth to iUniverse (yes, it's independently published) to purchase the ebook. I will spare you the nightmare of actually getting the book, but iUniverse? Bite me. Fortunately, the author came through for me when I copied him on my bitchmail to iUniverse (which they still haven't responded to). Anyway, he got me a print copy of his book posthaste and so I was a fan on that basis alone.
Here's the blurb:
What could be worse than losing the love of your life? Getting her back!
William Teale is a brilliant professor of mathematics. His theory of inevitability posits that any human action, no matter how insignificant, might result in a disproportionately huge calamity.
His wife, Virginia "Faye" Warner, is a world-famous romance novelist who specializes in reuniting soul mates after a tragic and prolonged separation. According to her math, "one past and two hearts plus one love equals four-ever." The Teale-Warner marriage is a thing of geometric and artistic perfection, a melding of the heart and the brain-amour and algebra.
But when Faye's ghostwriter suffers a nervous breakdown and shakes all the arrows out of Cupid's quiver, Faye reintroduces her husband to love. Unfortunately, it's not with herself, but with the woman William had loved and lost years ago. Love is about to clash with inevitability, and it's unclear which will emerge victorious.
Told in the off-beat voice of William's graduate intern, Roger, Do the Math reveals the curious relationship between logic and love and the delightful consequences of taking a chance.
Only one bad point and it's technical: The funky paragraph breaks in dialog. Oh, I don't mean the looooong monologues that have to be broken, but, for example:
"Her home away from home," he answered. "Room 407. New Coventry Medical Center. Only the best."
"By the way," he added as he picked up Claire's drink and toasted me with it. "You did very well tonight, Roger."
That unnecessary split happened enough that it was annoying, but certainly not enough to diminish the overall fantasticity of this novel. If you ever needed a posterbook for the validity of self-publishing, this is it.
And one aside, which I don't know if it was tongue-in-cheek or not. A vague reference is made to the movie Poltergeist, but the story is set in 1978 and that movie didn't come out until 1982. I could see how that could go either way, so I'm giving the author the benefit of the doubt.
This is the story of 50-year-old professor of mathematics William Teale and Virginia, his romance-novel-writer wife and Claire, Teale's lost love from 25 years ago. It's told from the point of view of his 25-year-old intern, Roger, in first person. And oh, it takes place in 1978. Did I say that already?
This book's kinda sorta billed as a romance. I think. I'm not really sure. And I don't really know what it is anyway except hilarious. I know it's supposed to be poignant and bittersweet. I know it's supposed to be about Teale's relationship with his wife and his lost love. Really, I do know that.
But what you have to know going in is that I have an eccentric sense of humor and a wee bit of a crush on higher math. Can't add or subtract without a calculator (multiplication and long division are simply out of the question) and I really just don't care for discrete math much, but after some struggle and time, I'm a fair hand at simpler calculus. It's like the bad boy you just want to take home and try to tame.
Okay, so what that's got to do with the price of tea in China is this: If you don't get the math jokes, it's okay. It's still funny. If you do, it's ROFLMAO funny. The author conflates mathematics and romance in such a bizarre way I can't help but chortle just thinking about it. For instance, Teale tries to figure out what to do about his problem using set theory in a discussion with Roger:
"It's about balancing the quality of the empty set against one with two elements," I started out. "That just doesn't make sense."
"No, it doesn't," he said.
Relieved by that concession, I followed up.
"Then how can a set of two elements be qualitatively equivalent to an empty set?"
He smiled wearily. "Unexplored territory, isn't it?"
He thought a moment longer. "It's the wasteland," he said. "We understand the null set. There's nothing there. But a set of two elements which has no connection, or, if connected, no contiguousness, that is, ultimately a set that is in and of itself empty, isn't it?"
In other words, using set theory, Teale equates his relationship with his wife (two elements in one set that are disconnected) to a set with nothing in it.
All the little oddball characters that populate a college campus/faculty/town are fondly drawn and you can immediately find the equivalents of these people in the memories of your own college experience. All the subplots come together nicely in one tight, tidy little knot at the end (although I'll admit I knew where one of them was going on page 23, and sure enough).
Now, about that "romance novels are just a formula" business: That is repeated ad nauseam throughout the tale, but funny enough, even though they spend valuable computer time (vacuum tubes! keypunch cards!) trying to figure it out, they read from a how-to-write-romance manual and follow it strictly, and yet...they never manage to figure it out, disproving their own premise that there's a real formula to it.
I had no problem with this facet for three reasons: (1) Though all the characters (including the romance novel writer and her ghostwriter) think this, it doesn't seem to be thought of as a bad thing; it's simply a fact of their life and needs to be adhered to as any other product specification, as they're up against a deadline, and (2) This is set in 1978, remember. The specifications outlined are, to the best of my recollection, exactly how romances were written in the late '70s, so I can't really go throwing stones at fact (or at least my perception of fact), and (3) For all the "formula" talk, it was still respectful of the genre and its fans.
Some passages that made me howl (and wake up the Tax Deducations) got their pages dog-eared. (The horrors!) Examples (although I must warn you that my sense of humor is a bit, ah, weird, and these are somewhat out of context so they might not translate):
[Sample from a technical writer for a nuclear reactor handbook applying for the job of a romance novelist ghostwriter]:
"...pump type can be determined by identifying flange at top of housing. Inductive cooling pump has a rigid pressure release vent hanging down perpendicularly on flange centerline. Whereas action release coil pump is unique because of the two nipples protruding from either side directly above the emergency bleed valve."
and
"A warning. The manifold might be hot. Use caution when sliding the spanner between the opened blades, as there is a danger of electrical arcing... It might be necessary to remove the probe from the main sheath and reinsert with proper lubrication... If vibration continues, apply appropriate torque to the uppermost junction point until release is achieved..."
[Romance novelist] closed the booklet with a rude snap.
"There has been a terrible misunderstanding here."
"I'm sorry?" said Claire.
"This seems so-how should I put it? Technical."
Even though it is in no real way similar, it vaguely reminded me of Neal Stephenson's The Big U. Loved the premise, loved the voice, loved the characters and the humor is dry enough to make you beg for water.
And, oh, the author didn't assume the reader would be 5 and need everything explained.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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