The Diagnosis, Alan Lightman
The Diagnosis, Alan Lightman
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The Diagnosis

Author: Alan Lightman

Narrator: Scott Brick

Unabridged: 12 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/08/2000


Synopsis

Alan Lightman's first novel, Einstein's Dreams, was greeted with international praise. Salman Rushdie called it "at once intellectually provocative and touching and comic and so very beautifully written." Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times that the novel creates "a magical, metaphysical realm . . . as in Calvino's work, the fantastical elements of the stories are grounded in precise, crystalline prose." With The Diagnosis, Lightman gives us his most ambitious and penetrating novel yet.

While rushing to his office one warm summer morning, Bill Chalmers, a junior executive, realizes that he cannot remember where he is going or even who he is. All he remembers is the motto of his company: The maximum information in the minimum time.

When Bill's memory returns, "his head pounding, remembering too much," a strange numbness afflicts him, beginning as a tingling in his hands and gradually spreading over the rest of his body. As he attempts to find a diagnosis of his illness, he descends into a nightmare, enduring a blizzard of medical tests and specialists without conclusive results, the manic frenzy of his company, and a desperate wife who decides that he must be imagining his deteriorating condition.

By turns satiric, comic, and tragic, The Diagnosis is a brilliant and disturbing examination of our modern obsession with speed, information, and money, and what this obsession has done to our minds and our spirits.

About The Author

Alan Lightman is the author of six novels, including Einstein’s Dreams, which was an international bestseller, and The Diagnosis, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the author of three collections of essays and several books on science. His latest work is the memoir of his family, Screening Room. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Granta, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Nature, among other publications. Since beginning his career as a theoretical physicist, Lightman has taught at Harvard and at MIT, where he was the first person to receive a dual faculty appointment in science and in the humanities. He lives in the Boston area.Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. His stage appearances throughout the US include CyranoHamlet, and MacBeth. In the audio industry, Scott has won over 20 Earphones Awards, as well as the 2003 Audie Award in the Best Science Fiction category for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. After recording nearly 250 books in five years, AudioFile Magazine named Scott “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy” and proclaimed him one of their Golden Voices. Brick’s range is unparalleled as he reads thrillers to narrative nonfiction, from biographies to science fiction with aplomb.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dennis Littrell on August 16, 2019

A novel of despair and dark humor This is a novel about the numbing of our lives. What is our disease? We don't know. What is the cure? There is no cure. Is this the price we pay for the guilt we feel for never being man enough? How is it that we fail in the midst of success? We are sick, but what is......more

Goodreads review by Audrey on August 14, 2024

When I started this book I thought I’d hate it because I didn’t think it would be the kind of book Alan lightman would be good at writing. It turns out he wrote it perfectly but I’m taking off one star for being so depressing......more

Goodreads review by Alison on October 18, 2019

Oof. I had high hopes for this because the first chapter or two really pulls you in. But honestly, you can read the first little bit and the last little bit and get the gist of things just fine. I really didn't like the interspersed philosophy bits although I understand why they were there I guess.......more

Goodreads review by Chandra on August 28, 2008

I kept waiting for something to happen. After 369 pages I was still waiting.......more

Goodreads review by Kevin on June 26, 2019

An American caught up in our healthcare system by way of Kafka.......more


Quotes

In Praise of The Diagnosis

"The Diagnosis is packed with dark power and awful humor. Lightman's intelligence, imagination, and clarity of style mark him as one of the most brilliant contemporary American writers."  
--Annie Proulx

"I know of no novel that captures the technological horror and pervasive spiritual poverty of our wildly prosperous land in so powerful a way as The Diagnosis. It is haunting."
--Norman Mailer