The Unseen World: A Novel

This is a beautiful, profound book that requires a deep level of commitment and investment from the reader. It’s a slow burn, there’s not a lot of dialogue, and it’s 451 pages long. But it’s the kind of book that makes you feel like you’re in good hands, the kind that will reward you both emotionally and cerebrally if you take the plunge.

I went into it knowing very little, and I had no idea what to expect. How deep would the artificial intelligence aspects of it go? Who were these characters? This vague sense of mystery and wonder begins in the first pages and builds steadily through to the end.

At its core, The Unseen World is a coming-of-age story about Ada, the strange, thoughtful, brilliant daughter of David Sibelius, a computer scientist at a prestigious university lab in the 1980s. Ada spends the formative years of her life in the lab with David and his colleagues, where she comes to share her father’s love for mathematics, cryptology and puzzle-solving.

When David suddenly falls ill, Ada’s peaceful world is upended. On top of that, she begins to suspect that David has been harboring secrets, and will spend the next couple decades of her life trying to decode the mysteries of his life.

The Unseen World is a fully realized novel about one family’s legacy, but more than that, it’s about what it means to be human: the inevitability of hurting the ones we care about the most, and the redemptive power of love, loyalty and forgiveness.

By the time I reached the final pages, I was completely blown away (and devastated) by how it had all come together — like one of David’s and Ada’s puzzles. Every piece of it made sense, every piece of it was an essential part of the whole.

Be forewarned: What starts as a suspenseful story de-evolves into a 100 page info dump about a homosexual relationship that reads like a boring autobiography.
Spoiler: That's the big secret. The father is a homosexual who changed his identify to start again. I wish I would have known I was getting into LGBT literature before I started this.
Also, at about 2/3 of the way through, the drama comes to a complete halt and the remainder of the story turns into a detailed, telly synopsis, almost like a dry newspaper article. It's almost like the writer wasn't able to finish the book on her own and the publisher finished the story with a dry, stiff summary lacking any tension or drama.

This is the best novel I've read all year. I borrowed it from the library and wanted my own copy to reread -- and to help the author sell a lot of copies! It is intelligent and moving. I cried at the end.

The Unseen World by Liz Moore—available in stores today—is another case of a fantastic description that, when I started actually reading the book, wasn’t really what I was expecting. It wasn’t entirely a bad thing, as the novel had strong thematic resonance, but it did take me a while to get invested in it—more so because of its pacing and organization. Weaving the early days of artificial intelligence development and computer programming with a deeply emotional personal tale, The Unseen World is a layered glimpse into the past while also looking forward to the possibilities of the future.

Ada Sibelius has lived an unusual life for a fourteen-year-old girl in 1980s Boston. Raised by her single father, she has spent much of her life with him at the computer sciences lab he directs, learning what he taught her and contributing to the lab group on their developing projects despite her youth. But when her father’s health begins to cause problems and confusion, Ada is forced into a more traditional school (a private Catholic school as opposed to public school, but a school where she must interact with her peers in age) where she must face the fact that she isn’t familiar with the social morays of being a teenager. As her father’s health and mental state continue to deteriorate, Ada learns that he had more secrets than anybody knew—secrets that cause Ada to question her own reality and identity as she struggles to unearth the truth.

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"The Unseen World", by Liz Moore, is completely captivating; while I was reading it I was engrossed - thinking of nothing else. As the story begins, in the early 1980s, our precocious teen-aged protagonist, Ada Sibelius, is being raised by her single-father, David (her mother was a surrogate). David "home-schools" Ada in the Computer Science Laboratory that he heads up at a fictional university in Boston. She's just part of the family there with the other lab personnel along with each year's new group of grad-students; there she helps with a computer program that is a precursor to Artificial Intelligence (AI), into which she pours her heart.

Liz Moore, is at her best when creating characters who do not fit "the norm", as we saw in her acclaimed novel, "Heft". Ada shares nothing with her contemporaries and is, for the most part, happy the way she is. But something happens that upends Ada's life; threatens her future, and calls into question her knowledge of the past. Much of the story is a puzzle (both literally and figuratively) which Ada must solve about her father, David.

I don't want to go into detail about the plot, because Moore is so wonderfully adept at revealing everything with perfect timing. We become so close to Ada, so concerned for her, that our adoption of her as a character in whom we are heavily invested, creates tension and suspense as we read on to find out if and how she will solve the puzzle of her life.

I LOVED this book! The main character, Ada, is joining the many other characters that live on in my head. The writing is gorgeous. The AI topics are all too relevant to today. This book did take me a few pages longer than usual to get into it, but it was well worth those extra pages. Bravo!

I am hesitant to write a negative review about this book, because I heard the author interviewed on NPR and she seemed like a very nice person. But I was bored by the excessive level of detail in the story, and seriously underwhelmed by the "twist" at the very end. I get that the detail was included with specific purpose, but humans reading the book are likely to get bored.

I am hesitant to write a negative review about this book, because I heard the author interviewed on NPR and she seemed like a very nice person. But I was bored by the excessive level of detail in the story, and seriously underwhelmed by the "twist" at the very end. I get that the detail was included with specific purpose, but humans reading the book are likely to get bored.

Liz Moore is a terrific storyteller - her first two novels are among the best I've read the last several years. The story she chose to tell here, however, is dull and 200 pages too long. Maybe next time.

Born in 1971, Ada Sibelius is a twelve-year-old prodigy, and the daughter of an enigmatic, scientific genius, David Sibelius. David is director of a prestigious computer science laboratory in Boston that gathers the best minds in the field. An only child, born through surrogacy, Ada was homeschooled (more like “lab-schooled”) by her unorthodox father and became an integral part of his colleagues’ lives, especially his best friend and close colleague next door, Diana Liston.

For twelve years it was just David, Ada and the lab. She even participated in David’s experiments in artificial intelligence, a language acquisition program called ELIXIR. Under David’s tutelage, Ada cultivates a saber-sharp, inquisitive mind that augurs a bright future.

David and the Steiner Lab provided Ada all the security, love, and knowledge she thought she needed. Occasionally, she wished for a peer group, to socialize with other kids, but they were only fleeting desires. However, Ada didn’t anticipate the sea change in her lifestyle at this age, either. When this happens, it prompts a dedicated search through David’s past, a lifetime journey of discovery that leads to an astonishing but inescapable conclusion.

Suddenly thrust into a conventional social network, Ada attempts to navigate in a new, uncertain world. How to harness and express herself in new codes of conduct and engagement with others? “…she often felt as if there was something fundamentally incorrect about her, as if she was caught between two worlds, a citizen of neither.” The narrative tension arises from a meticulous progression of plot, but its beauty resides in the liminal spaces of the mind.

Questions of identity, both literal and figurative, consume Ada and permeate the story. The answers, she reasons, are hidden in a patchy web of history. Her life was once so cloistered, and now her ties are loose and her bonds tenuous. What gives us the substance of who we are; in other words, what makes us human? This book probes the nature, nurture, and future of our identity.

The pace is unflinchingly steady despite the structure of chronological leaps. The past, present, and future were uniformly revelatory. I was directly caught up in the story, and rapt by its graceful poise and tensile symmetry. Not one detail is indulgent or unqualified, and the spotless prose is lean, sinuous, and even cabalistic at times.

The author’s portrayal of Ada was a radiant yet restrained brew of psychology, emotion, and thought. Moore masterfully stood aside from her writing; the words were a doorway to the plot and characters. Ada could have walked off the pages and breathed on her own, so authentic was her characterization. She will go down as one of my favorite female characters of this century.

It’s a surprisingly swift read with a powerful denouement and fascinating but inevitable finale. I couldn’t turn the 400+ pages fast enough. The multi-genre approach will appeal to mainstream and literary readers alike, as it cross-sectioned both without sacrifice. It’s a mix of family drama, suspense thriller, speculative fiction, and mystery. Definitely on my most lauded books of the year.