I'm surprised at all the enthusiastic reviews and that this was chosen for the Giller prize. Both my book club and my husband were underwhelmed. The plot should be a winner, but the execution felt too sketchy.

The first half feels quite detached and more of a perfunctory recounting of the events in his life. Despite being set in pre-Depression New York, he does not do the city or the time period justice. Feels quite remote. I'd be curious to know if this is a deliberate choice, to convey a surreal quality to his high living capitalist American life vs. his oppressive and persecuted existence in Russia when he loses his political protectors. But if so, it’s odd as his lack of control over his destiny is no different in America or Russia. Deliberate or not, the writing style was for the most part not engaging.

The second half of the book does pull you into Termen's life and circumstances much more effectively, but the novel still has a rambling, unsatisfactory feel to it. This story, especially with the tremendous liberties taken with Theremin's life should have been utterly fascinating, but we all felt we had to push ourselves to read it. One interesting aspect of the book is that the writer has Theremin serve as the narrator and one intriguing aspect of the book is that the format is to recount his story as if he were addressing his thoughts to his muse.

By the time you reach the end, you don't feel you know his character anymore than when you first meet him. Maybe that’s the point, that he is nothing more than the channel for everyone else’s desires and machinations so he gets lost in his role as the facilitator, but he doesn’t seem to grasp that. He just feels and acts like a shell of a man all the way through. Nevertheless, the reader shouldn’t feel like they are just reading a shell of a book.