The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings

The Weight of Numbers Reviews

• 
  Liviu

  The Weight of Numbers is a wonderful tapestry novel that works unexpectedly well. Not really sf as it takes place from the 1930's to the 00's and from England, to Mozambique to the Apollo missions, though infused with sfnal musings.
  
  Following a diverse cast of characters who are related sometimes in obvious, sometimes in strange ways, Weight of Numbers is threaded together by the author into a coherent whole that is very satisfying.
  
  The novel moves non-linearly in time, space and character arcs so it rewards careful reading and I actually reread the first 200 pages once I got there as quite a few early scenes take added significance later, but the pages turn by themselves and the author keeps it absorbing all the way.
  
  I do not want to rehash the story arcs especially that discovering the connections between them is part of the novel's power, but I would like to make some comparisons.
  
  For example you can look at Weight of Numbers vs Cryptonomicon as in Adam Roberts' Stone vs IM Banks Culture; in other words a darker, more "realistic" and with somewhat different conclusions take on similar themes.
  
  In this view both Cryptonomicon and Culture are the typical sf books where things make sense, societies evolve and stuff has meaning (mostly), while Weight of Numbers and Stone form the more "literary" approach where stuff happens, there is no master plan, people live and die while life goes on...
  
  Or you can look at Weight of Numbers in comparison to the recent Gods without Men and note that while the H. Kunzru book is indeed a more "literary" offering as prose goes (say China Mieville vs Leviathan Wakes to add more sf comparisons of recent significance), it is also ultimately less interesting as it piles stuff upon stuff and essentially leaves it there, while Weight of numbers actually concludes storylines and arcs and in very rounded and satisfying ways.
  
  
  
• 
  Adam

  Events counterpoised with the moon landing are a central set piece of this novel, which is appropriate since every scene in this novel is as pitiless and barren as the face of the moon. This bleakness permeates whether appropriate or not as Ings twists and turns through events and characters spread over the last half of the 20th century. The right tone for Mozambique in the grips of the genocidal civil war between FRELIMO and the South Africa (and Rhodesia) supported contras RENAMO or London during the blitz, but for swinging 60’s London is more disconcerting, though I much prefer it to a nostalgic sentimental view. Like a more organic David Mitchell, Ings creates a canvas filled with interacting characters from a sixties radical turned human smuggler, a child star turned to a suicidal anorexic performance artist, astronauts, Turing styled math genius who envisions the internet in the 50’s and is disturbed on actually seeing it completed, anti-castro activist turned marijuana smuggler and in settings from Chicago, London, Florida, Mozambique through 70 or so years. As the character descriptions indicate the unreliability of human dreams and the danger of them is a major theme.
• 
  Jerico

  This book is rough. Not unpolished (the prose is quite smooth, as if worn but quite a few revisions) but hard to finish. It reminds me a little of something by Pynchon: its scientific in elements of narration and description, its networked and scattered and very post modern (blah, blah, blah). Its a lot colder than Pynchon and stays far away from resolution. I thought it might be a message novel at first, something oblique on its moral but I think this might be the bleakest book I've read in a while.
• 
  Florita

  I'm a bit fed up with all these postmodern novels that take a disparate bunch of usually thoroughly unsympathetic characters and bring them all together over some random connection, like they are all distant cousins of Benny Hill or all use the same haemorrhoid ointment or something. So what?
• 
  Jayne Charles

  Given the numerical theme of this book I'm tempted to contribute a few numbers of my own. It's got 420 pages, of which about 400 left me baffled. I speed-read a good 50 towards the end, desperate to have the thing finished. It made me laugh precisely twice.
  
  It's probably my fault. The whole thing is written with the confidence of someone who knows stuff, and who could probably teach you stuff if you could figure out what any of it meant. It's probably best enjoyed by people who read slowly and are comfortable puzzling over every last sentence. People who excel at cryptic crosswords. I am certain that had I read it in this way, the last section would have bloomed into three-dimensional technicolour clarity. But for for readers like me, perhaps lacking in the patience and I daresay intelligence needed, the experience was like chasing a bus, desperate to get on board before it disappears round the next corner, whilst not totally sure it's even the right bus. My mental notes were reduced to staccato non-sequiturs (Anthony loses his trousers...ends up on Kibbutz). Need to practice those cryptic crosswords.
• 
  Brock Ray

  Not sure who named this book or wrote the flap description, but they should find new jobs. This book is not about numbers or any of the things written on the book jacket; it’s about a series improbable — and unknown — connections across several lifetimes. The writing is labyrinthine, but also poetic. Depressing yet compelling, the search for meaning is elusive at best. This is writing for the sake of the form, rather than a cohesive plot. Recommended if you like to chew on your literature.
• 
  fonz

  No me ha gustado. Vaya, no es que sea una mala novela, todo lo contrario, que Ings se ha metido aquí una currada importante de personajes y estructura, sencillamente es que las historias de la gente que componen este relato fractal no me han interesado en absoluto, a excepción del Mozambique colonial-postcolonial, la descarnada visión de la relación Primer-Tercer Mundo y el tráfico de personas. El trasfondo de la novela explicado a través de su estructura, es decir, la historia del siglo XX como una red tejida por los seres humanos, similar a un sistema fractal caótico gobernado por microacontecimientos al azar, es interesante a priori pero en mi opinión no está bien aprovechado, no impacta ni resulta sugerente, queda como un fuego de artificio estructural perdido en la hojarasca de la novela, excesivamente prolija en personajes interactuando y detalles que no aportan demasiado a la narración y que, en muchos casos, quedan como cabos sueltos, aunque imagino que esa es la intención.
  
  El estilo es muy bueno, pero a veces se le va la pinza sobreescribiendo o rizando el rizo con las figuras literarias, por ejemplo hay un pequeño parráfo comparándo el sonido del rotor de unos helicópteros con la humedad de la saliva de Jobim interpretando Garota de Ipanema que me ha parecido la metáfora más rebuscada de la historia. También me chirría a veces, cuando parece querer asegurarse de que entendemos lo que está contando y se dirige al lector a través de escenas o capítulos en apariencia banales, como el encuentro sexual fortuito entre dos personajes en el que uno de ellos le cuenta a otro que está trabajando en un proyecto sobre seres humanos entretejiendo redes y generando arquitecturas, en resumen, lo que vamos a leer durante las próximas cuatrocientas páginas. Me pareció descolocante como mínimo, una especie de "guiño, guiño, codazo, codazo", del autor hacia los lectores la mar de raro.
• 
  Michel

  While the style is smooth and polished, the plot is rough, ambiguous and unfinished, or so it seems. Not to be recommended for amateurs of mystery and suspense —well, not quite true, I am an amateur of mystery and suspense— let's just say it isn't at all what you'd expect from the blurb.
  This a cold, deliberate, unemotional vivisection of the 60s, when the counter-culture was the culture; when we rejected the mechanical morality of the past —Good was obeying the Law (and Traditions and Customs), Evil was breaking the Law— and replacing it with sentimental morality —Good was what felt good, Evil was what felt bad— and not a small dose of morbid fascination for outliers and outlaws...
  The legacy of that decade is impressive, don't get me wrong: men are now allowed to feel, women to conduct the Foreign policy of the strongest Nation in history, blacks to preside over said Nation, we've come a long way, babe — it's just that we all at once chose to leave our thinking hats on the coat-hanger; becoming pacifists in the middle of a vicious cold war; chanting flower-power while withholding condemnation of Manson, Sla, Ira, Plo, Baader-Meinhof, Red Brigades, Ccc, &c…; as well as "generously" granting independence to countries we never invested a red cent to prepare for self-rule, and then superbly ignoring the consequences.
  I'm rambling.
  This is a welcome "sit up and take stock" novel about fascinating, if unsavory, characters, written by an obsessive re-writer, always finding "mot juste" and "sentence juste".
• 
  Lucy Furr

  So, I initially picked up The Weight of Numbers from the used bookstore because I liked the cover. Seriously, that's the reason. Sometimes I have good luck with that sort of thing, sometimes I don't. I'd say that this time was a pretty good success.
  
  Quite honestly, I was expecting something a bit different based on the blurb on the inside, but I have to say, I think it turned out much better than what I was expecting. This book moves sporadically through time (the last 60 or so years) and (outer) space to bring you snippets of the lives of a plethora of characters, who are all, in the end, connected to each other, sometimes in ways they don't even realize. Even towards the end, new characters are being introduced and fitted into this web of a story. Poorly executed, this could have been a train wreck of a novel, but Simon Ings pulls it off wonderfully and brings it all together for a conclusion that may not be as cut and dried as you'd like, but certainly does make you think. Nowhere else will you find a book where astronauts, outer space, mathematicians, professional wrestlers, rats, war torn London, the invention of the internet, people smuggling, eating disorders and electroshock therapy come together in such a fashion (or even at all!).
  
  A very enjoyable read, one that take a bit of effort, but is well worth it in the end.
• 
  jenn

  okay so, i put this book down. i read maybe 200 pages of it and absolutely hated it. it's a great concept- all of these people in different times and different places are connected to one man.
  
  it has a slow start that never really picked up speed, in my opinion. i finally put it down because i found most of the content to be boring (at least to me) and some what filthy.
  
  that said, maybe it's just not my style. simon ings has written a number of science fiction works, a few novels and one non-fiction book called "the eye: a natural history." so, if you're into that sort of thing... science... you might dig it.
• 
  Stephen

  I don't know what to make of this book. It was lovely to read and I really wanted to learn about the stories of all the characters. But after reading through nearly three quarters of the book I was still being introduced to new characters and the plot was not yet linking up in any meaningful way. So I quit. But I still kind of wonder how it ended and it it all came together at the last minute? Each chapter seemed to start to new storyline, but the previous chapters remained unresolved. I understand that is a strategy to build tension, but I'd just had enough of the lack of resolution when I put the book down for the final time and sent it back to the library.
• 
  Katherine

  I wanted to like this book. I loved The Eye, a natural history so I thought I'd give his fiction a try. But, I just could not enjoy this one on any level. I found it confusing. I don't mean the multiple interconected characters and large philosphical underpinnings, I mean, I had to re-read sentences several times and still wasn't sure what the hell he was saying. I might have plowed on regardless had it not been so damn bleak. If I'm going to have my will to live sapped I'd like a little something to make it worth it the pain.
• 
  Beth

  The weight of numbers starts off fairly slow and sort of confusing. Somewhere in the middle of the first chapter I was wondering if the entire novel was about a middle aged astronaut and his issues with his wife... But whoa... keep reading.
  I really enjoyed the authors style and each chapter is exciting and well executed.
  good book
• 
  Mandy

  this book made no sense. I was sick most of the time I was reading it, but I don't think it would have made much more sense if my head was clear. I feel like it would be better the 2nd time through, but there are too many other books I'd rather read than read this twice.
• 
  Sammy

  I'm not really that into this book, but I've only just started... I'm hoping I'll change my mind soon.
  
  I have one serious gripe, but we'll see if it's still a big impasse as I get farther into reading...
  
  I really wanted to like this book.
• 
  Jill

  This is one of those books that requires a reread. The first go was enjoyable, though a bit disjointed -- despite its length, it's something you need to read all at once. That, or keep a character map -- people keep showing up out of supposedly nowhere, but things do come together at the end.
• 
  Peter Gasston

  Took me a second read to start seeing the connections between the time periods, which I didn't really get first time through. It's a clever book, an ambitious one, but not one that's easy to empathise with. I liked it, but I don't think it will be one I'll remember forever.
• 
  Alex Rogers

  Another bizarre Ings book - quite disturbing, obsessive attention to detail, amazing characters and sense of place - and I'm never quite sure that I understand it or really get what he's doing. Fascinating, very readable, very impressive.
• 
  Ginette

  This was really bizarre and disjointed.
• 
  Jessica

  This book reads like a poor attempt to imitate Richard Powers. I won't be finishing it, and that almost never happens with me.