"Plowing The Dark" by Richard Powers

I just finished reading this novel out loud to Maëva. It is one of the ones from my May conference list. I dutifully read it because I had gone to the bother of purchasing it, however, I can't say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience nor that I would recommend the volume to any of you, although it might be an appropriate candidate for Roy's sci-fi group as it involves computers and virtual reality and such (Are you still doing that, Roy?). Why not? One of the reasons is that at times several pages would go by without my understanding a single thing. I was reading the words, and the words were English, but the addition of said words were not computing into any comprehensible meaning for me. Furthermore, the two completely different story lines are eventually tied together in the final pages, but the connection supposes you are ready to suspend the realistic premises from which you have understood the first 400 pages of the novel to accept that a fantastic occurence is responsible for the freeing of a hostage. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the occasional fantastic episode (Oates writes a mean one from time to time!), I just wasn't particularly impressed with this one. To give Powers the benefit of the doubt, perhaps I was distracted by the fact that I was reading and nursing at the same time and was not giving the novel my full and undivided attention. For that, I apologize. However, I still do not plan on picking up any of his other novels any time soon.