36 Arguments for the Existence of God

Several years ago, I read and enjoyed Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's The Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal and Quantum Physics, and more recently heard her give a wonderful lecture on Spinoza at the Santa Fe Institute, please see my post of 12/6/2011. She topped both of these with her extraordinary 2010 novel, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. It is a novel of big Ideas: religion, philosophy, love, parents/family, loyalty.    It is also very well written, with great word-smithing, and at moments extremely funny. 36 is chock full of clever one liners that had me howling. I know, yes, yes, I'm a word-nerd, but this is genuinely good stuff! The characters are wonderful, and perfectly developed. The man in the middle of all this is a philosophy professor with an unexpected best seller, The Varieties of Religious Illusion. The characters orbiting him are well conceived and delightful: his mentor a messianic literary scholar, his wild former girlfriend the anthropologist, his current love the master of game theory, and a child prodigy mathematician who is heir to lead the Hasidic community where our hero grew up. Never have so many grand ideas been so much fun. Read it!