reviews of this book

…he liked anything to do with science - the experiments, weighing stuff in chemistry and physics - the boxes of bronze weights - the way they sat snug in their holes. The box was held shut with a small hook and eye. Inside the lid the green velvet was bruised where it had come in contact with the weights. The knobs were to give something for the tweezers to lift. Never use fingers - the sweat would alter the weight and render them inaccurate. He liked all the weights, from the 50 grams - a real bruiser - right down to the lightest, no more than bits of metal foil so fragile they needed to be covered with a glass lid lest they be lost, lest they blow away. The balance itself was enclosed in a glass and wood box to protect it from draughts. Wind could skew the results, said the teacher. In really critical weighings they were told to close down the glass front so that their breath would not prejudice the result. The weight of your breath. The dark needle would swing against the white calibrated scale and it would come to be exactly vertical with the addition of the smallest silver wisp.

'Dead on,' Martin would say.

And in Chemistry classes titrations amazed him. How could something change so utterly and so completely? He would have a conical flask of navy or scarlet liquid in his left hand. He would have to swirl it to keep the liquid moving until it would suddenly - with the addition of a single drop from the burette, turn clear as tap water.

Every time it happened he got a jag of pleasure. Like when a sum worked out. Or when he suddenly understood something the teacher said. A clarity. Like the day he understood weight, that it was dependent on gravity, how hard a thing pressed downwards was its weight.