She is diagnosed with cancer, but survives long enough have a child, Arthur, who grows up to become an astronaut. Love and Other Experiments is precisely the type of novel associated with the College but is unfortunately ineligible for the Goldsmiths Prize due to the (rather unnecessary) rule that disqualifies any books by current, and even former, members of staff and students, the same rule that, for example last year, ruled out, among others, This Brutal House, Mothlight, Patience and Girl, Woman, Other. My least favourite part of the book and with the exception of Greg’s hypothesis of after death explained to a child (which I thought was a very clever link), the substance of the stories was too much for me to handle (and comprehend). The novel starts as a heart wrenching tale of modern parenthood, with themes as intimacy, trust and mortality as subject matter, in the Ant. In fact, the novel asks us to consider how far can we extend our empathy if humanity is to survive and is on the whole rather positive on our loving capacity to achieve this.

The forking paths reminded me of Borges’ El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, and the novel as a whole has some similarities. This book just kept on getting weirder and weirder while maintaining the relatable human story at its core. It becomes a book that explores human and non-human consciousness, parallel worlds, artificial intelligence, religious faith. Ward introduces the novel as an emotional story about the relationship between two partners, Rachel and Eliza, as they decide to embark on the journey of raising a child together.

El resultado es bastante extraño, con varios capítulos que parecen de relleno y otros que tienen una buena premisa, pero que fallan en una ejecución demasiado fingida en sus formas. Oddly, although the author copiously cites various other authors and literary works that impacted her own writing, she never mentions Lem's Solaris, which would seem to have been an obvious influence there. Each chapter is preceded by an explanation of a short thought experiment that informs the contents of that character's story. She incubates life and death, a paradox that spreads throughout the labyrinthine complexities of the narrative to come. What I can say is that I see why this book might not work for some people, and at times even I was so perplexed that I couldn't pin down my own feelings.

The second Prisoner’s Dilemma chapter is far less about the mathematical/game theory logic of the dilemma itself, and far more about alternative pathways that stem from the co-operate/defect/defeat options, and the chapter explores three storylines about a Cypriot Turkish boy who decides to swim away from shore after his friend’s ball. Ward's debut is an experimental novel that cleverly merges philosophical investigations into the nature of love and reality with literature or, to be more exact, with narrative games on how our decisions and random destiny plot the storylines of our lives. These are imaginative devices to contemplate a different hypothesis or unsolvable riddle which provokes questions about the meaning of consciousness, the shape of reality and the limits of perception. However, while the first half (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️�

So it’s enlivening to read Sophie Ward’s conceptual novel which is a series of interlinked stories each exploring a different thought experiment.