Let's assume you are a crafty scientist, better trying to communicate your work, and you have a hankering for visual media. Perhaps you'd end up with something akin to an infographic: comprehensive, stylish, factual, at least ideally. A piece of work for the consumption of information, that does as little as possible to confuse or misinterpret but remains pleasing to the eye. In the best possible case, the arrangement of this information would highlight certain truths that weren't as obvious til

" Some of the science in this book is impossible but I’m ok with that. If you get enough right, I think a scientist would give you some leeway."

"I think unfortunately the internet often breeds a false entanglement. We feel we’re connected but it’s very fleeting and I think that true entanglement requires deep concentration, there’s no shortcut to that."

The use of race

"I wasn’t quite sure how they would connect but I felt really compelled to write them. And then I realised with Radar that I had to go back in time, because I couldn’t just drop in the line ‘he was once black but now’s he white’. You can’t just slip that in there!"

He was filled with a terrific sense of lightness, as if his whole body were lifting off the ground.

"I'm black!" he whispered to the wounded whale.

"No," Charlene cried. She came up to him on the bed. "You aren't black".



[...] declares this ending "a curious failure of invention for a man whose only gift was an overactive imagination." Other reviews complained about how an ending left too much unexplained. [...] "this last line... a plea for information, for anything concrete... becomes the voice of a reader left in the lurch."

"If you ask me," said Fabien, "it sounds like a lot of bullshit."

Let's assume you are a crafty scientist, better trying to communicate your work, and you have a hankering for visual media. Perhaps you'd end up with something akin to an infographic: comprehensive, stylish, factual, at least ideally. A piece of work for the consumption of information, that does as little as possible to confuse or misinterpret but remains pleasing to the eye. In the best possible case, the arrangement of this information would highlight certain truths that weren't as obvious till this work and a deeper understanding might emerge, a symbiotic pairing.At many points whilst reading this book I thought about that infographic and wondered at Larsen's intentions: was his aim to create a fiction inspired by truths or explore scientific phenomena through art?Such art may have been the intention but is certainly not embodied in 'I am Radar'.I started this book with a lot of excitement because Larsen's debut, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet , was so utterly enjoyable. Yes, it rambled at times but the story, characters, the sense of wonder and discovery were perfectly balanced. Coming off such a strong back I was willing to give this book quite a bit of leeway.So where did it go wrong ?Ladies and gents, I'd like to have a chat about tokenism from two quite different perspectives.By profession I work in applied quantum Physics, more specifically particle physics - so if I tell you that fact checking a bunch of big names and institutions does not justify thethat Larsen builds his plot around, you should believe me. Physics in this book is another word for magic. Larsen, interviewed here by Foyles claims:Which is a completely reasonable thing to say. Indeed there is a whole genre built around this idea.You see, the thing is though, that you have to actually try and care about the science in your story. You have to at leastand understand what is happening and explore some facet of it: its implications to everyday life, extrapolations about what might be possible if a tiny aspect of it was changed, etc. and indeed if it has anything to actually do with the story. I just get the (very strong) feeling that at some point, when looking around for more content to throw into thisof a book, Larsen saw the word entanglement and thought 'ooo, that's a fancy word, let's use it!'. You think I'm being too mean?Tokenism. Using a language, a culture, a person you have no actual interest in exploring just to have it's face value somewhere in your synopsis.And if you think I'm using this word lightly, let's move on to example 2.In the interview I linked above, Larsen is asked about the 5 seemingly unconnected novellas that this book comprises and the tenuous threads that link them back to the title character, Radar. Why did they happen?:That's right,is how much forethought went into, what could have been an interesting or at leastexploration of racial identity from the 60's to the 2010's.The book itself is really confused about how to talk about this issue and in the ends settles for: not at all.For example, in Part 1 Radar's mother is so horrified and confused with giving birth to black baby she spends the first 4 years of her child's life trying to fix him i.e.Let that sink in for a minute.But then in Part 3 she reveals the fatherhood of Radar could be called into question after all! He may in fact, be mixed race all along!Radar's reaction to this is.. bizarre.Radar then cycles off into the night, on some tangential quest, and briefly encounters a couple of policemen one of which is african american. He has the urge to tell one of them 'that he had just found out he was also black' but also 'sees how this isn't the best idea'.What the hell is this thread about Larsen?To make matters worse, his mother backtracksin Part 5 and Radardecides that she MUST BE right. What a reactionary character. His thought process in Part 5 goes along the lines of: he's not black of course not, and hebe the son of the radio technician who raised him. How else could he be so good with radios?How indeed, Radar, how indeed.Jesus.I actually really enjoyed Parts 1 and 2. Medical mysteries, Nordic cults, a bit of Tesla fan-service and some puppetry babble with a Serbian (likely, also very much NOT-Serbian) twist.And if you're wondering how this list eventually turns into a coherent story: SPOILER, it doesn't. What Larsen sets up in these first two parts, he spends the rest of the novel trying to flesh out and provide some sort of justification for. There's just so much going on, so many back-stories and tidbits, that the reader starts to wonder what is relevant and what they should care about. I'm not even going mention that ending. Infact (direct quote):Larsen, you're just writing this review for me.I will say that the writing is not bad at all, which nearly drove me to give this book 2 stars rather than 1. The characters are mostly ok (oddly other than Radar, who is bland and buffoonish and seems grossly immature for someone in their mid-thirties). Some of the imagery is nice, but feels recycled.Larsen says this book is not only about the novel, that the story transcends a book and is also about performance art and the(there's a website and the book launch was in a puppet museum) but other than making a statement that he did ART his viewpoint in the book contradict each other a lot. He talks about how a lack of deep understanding is holding us back from each other but tokenizes race and science for buzzwords and shock value. He presents us with 648 pages filled with descriptions of a performance group that waxes lyrical about the spontaneous performanceIn your own words Mr Larsen: