“as she climbed across the table” by Jonathan Lethem

After I finished my last book of fiction, I took a long time to select my next one. I had plenty to choose from, so that wasn't the problem. I stood in front of my TBR shelves, contemplating first one, then another, but eventually rejecting each one (this one too long, that one too short, another too sad or too silly). 

Finally I settled on as she climbed across the table. Short, but not too short. Possibly sad or silly or both, but at least the author wasn't untested: Jonathan Lethem has written more than a dozen books, of which I've read one. (Though that was more than a decade ago!) 

This is one of those stories that seems simple and can certainly be taken at face value, but it feels really allegorical. It seems like one of those books that is rife with symbolism and full of deep meaning.

At face value, this story is narrated by a professor of anthropology, Philip Engstrand, who was living with particle physicist Alice Coombs until very recently. A Nobel laureate at their university, Professor Soft, has created something never seen before: a void, an absence, a vacuum, a separate universe, that comes to be known as Lack. Alice's professional interest in Lack quickly becomes an obsession, to the point where she admits to Philip that she is in love with It. Most of the story revolves around Philip dealing with having been jilted for Nothingness, with Alice in turn being rejected by It. 

Digging a little deeper . . . I didn’t get it. It's a story about obsession and the human need to find meaning in the unknown, even when the unknown is unknowable. And maybe that's why I didn't get it? Because there's nothing there to get? (Probably not. But that's what I'm going with.)