海角大神

Hansel and Gretel have nothing on Milo Andret. The Michigan boy can find his way home from the middle of the forest, no pebbles, breadcrumbs, or map required.

Growing up in a silently oppressive house near Cheboygan, in A Doubter鈥檚 Almanac, Milo spends more time in the 350 acres of woods than with his parents, both of whom have thoroughly abandoned ambition. His dad survived a World War II shipwreck to become a science teacher, while his mother, who graduated summa cum laude in chemistry, works as a secretary.

Milo, a loner who is bored by math but gets good grades in science out of respect for his dad, can accurately picture where he is on earth at every moment 鈥� and can draw in exact, perfect detail anything he is looking at.

He has such intense powers of concentration it borders on the monomaniacal. One summer the teen carves a 25-foot looping chain out of a felled beech, with no seam or glue, and stores it in a hollowed trunk.

After high school, he spends the next few years working at a gas station, before a Berkeley professor identifies him as the kind of mathematical genius who comes along once a generation. Disclaimer: No knowledge of proofs or theorems is required to enjoy Ethan Canin鈥檚 excellent eighth novel. He treats alternately treats math like elegant poetry or infuses it with crackling energy. (There鈥檚 a great chapter where Milo discovers computers that is has the forward momentum of a spy novel.) In both cases, it can be admired from a safe distance by the English majors of this world.

At Berkeley, Milo tackles one of the Everests of math, the Malosz conjecture 鈥� and begins his own 鈥減uny assaults on the heavens,鈥� as his mentor describes higher mathematics. Milo is as methodical about topology as he was about carving the chain. While those of us who never made it to AP calculus may laugh out loud at the claim that 鈥渟uccess in mathematics is in good part a question of merely wanting badly enough to look,鈥� a punishing work ethic and teeth-gritted determination look pretty familiar 鈥� and yield results in almost any field.

A professorship at Yale and a Fields medal later, Milo鈥檚 mathematical abilities are second only to his ego, his attractiveness to women, and his ability to drink. And that鈥檚 when Canin announces on page 283 that he鈥檚 been tricking us all along: The narrator is not Milo, but rather his son, Hans, who is trying to capture 鈥渉is logical brilliance, his highly purified arrogance, his Olympian drinking, his caustic derision, his near-autistic introversion, and his world-class self-involvement.鈥�

He鈥檚 telling the story of his father鈥檚 life, he says, 鈥渢o understand the truth about him, including the idea that he can鈥檛 entirely be blamed for what he did to us, and for what he did to himself, and for what happened to him.

鈥淚 haven鈥檛 left much out 鈥� only the few particulars that I truly can鈥檛 bear to record,鈥� Hans says.

Hans describes himself as a failed mathematician (albeit one who made a fortune in derivatives). He鈥檚 followed his father into addiction and his grandfather into teaching high school, and he鈥檚 looking for answers that go beyond biology.

聽Neither of Milo鈥檚 children escaped his foray into fatherhood unscathed. Milo鈥檚 brilliant, neglected daughter, Paulie, describes her dad as 鈥渢he quicksand my life is built on.鈥�

How someone who cannot get physically lost can so profoundly lose his way is the rueful question at the heart of Canin鈥檚 elegy for a prodigy. Hans鈥檚 unwillingness to write off his dad as a womanizing, alcoholic monster gives the novel a poignancy it needs to avoid being yet another clich茅d portrait of a genius who handcrafted his own downfall. (Milo鈥檚 inexhaustable drinking ultimately takes a toll on his body in ways that can be painful for his family to witness 鈥� and even for a reader to read.)

鈥淸Brilliance] is just an obsessive kind of love,鈥� Hans says at one point. 鈥淸F]aith and love 鈥� that鈥檚 what it comes down to.鈥�

The second statement may be true, but it also can sound trite. It鈥檚 Canin鈥檚 ability to chronicle the first that gives the novel its fuel and poignancy.

Take Milo鈥檚 ability to reproduce in pencil or ink anything his eyes see with the accuracy of a computer printer, which he treats as a party trick.

鈥淭o his own mind, in truth, his actual gift seemed closer to a form of idiocy. It was as though he didn鈥檛 see the object he was drawing but the entire array of space instead 鈥� all things that were the object and all things that were not the object 鈥� with equal emphasis,鈥� Canin writes. 鈥淚t was symptomatic of something he鈥檇 noticed in himself since childhood 鈥� an inability to take normal heed of his senses, the way other people did as they instinctually navigated a course of being. In this way, it was like mathematics itself: the supremacy of axiom over experience. He wondered why others didn鈥檛 see this.鈥�

His son鈥檚 chronicling of his life is the reverse.

聽鈥淒oes one grow wise in increments? By fractioning a life and then summing it?鈥� Hans asks.

聽In 鈥淎 Doubter鈥檚 Almanac,鈥� one does.