---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #528084 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Thinks..., David Lodge writes another witty satire on the vagaries and triumphs of contemporary British academic life and achieves a fine balance between multiple points of narrative interest. He gains much momentum from psychologically nuanced romantic intrigue, and also manages to offer intelligent speculation on the state of play in the scientific and philosophical investigations into the nature and workings of human consciousness, without preaching or becoming ponderous.

Thinks... recounts the experiences of Helen Reed, distinguished novelist, who accepts a creative writing teaching gig at the fictional University of Gloucester after the sudden death of her husband. Here she meets Ralph Messenger, scholar, spin doctor, philanderer and head of the illustrious Colt Belling Centre for Cognitive Science. Scientist and novelist spar:

She asks them what they were working on. Jim says robotics, Carl says affective modelling. Kenji says something indistinct that Ralph repeats for her benefit--genetic algorithms. "I can guess what robotics is," says Helen, "but what on earth are the others?"
Carl explains that affective modelling is computer simulation of the way emotions affect human behaviour.
"Like grief?" Helen says, glancing at Ralph.
"Exactly so," he says. "Though Carl is actually working on a program for mother-love."
"I'd like to see it," says Helen.
"I am not able to give a demonstration, I'm afraid," says Carl. "I am rewriting the program."

The form of the novel carefully mirrors its intellectual concerns. We are given Ralph's attempts to tape-record his random thoughts; Helen's more introspective diary and the often hilarious writing assignments of Helen's motley crew of students, who attempt literary solutions to the problems Ralph poses Helen. Written with enviable deftness, Thinks... manages to be generous to its characters and serious about the intellectual and ethical questions it poses for itself without losing satiric bite. --Neville Hoad

Synopsis
Ralf Messenger enjoys the affluent lifestyle afforded by his position as director of Holt Belling Centre for Cognitive Science. When he meets Helen Reed, a distinguished novelist, a stand-off between them is formed by their mutual attraction for each other under impossible circumstances, but all that is about to change...

---

Customer Reviews

Amateurish.
Don't get me wrong, I normally love the work of David Lodge and after all he lives in Birmingham.I've read all his books and they are always well written and loaded with well observed social comment and wit but not this one I'm afraid. ' Thinks ' was a let down.Full of characters I couldn't have cared less about and a storyline that just developed who into a basic who is sleeping with whom.It revolves around two academics at a university.The smug,narcisisstic and self satisfied Ralph Messenger and Helen Reed, a widowed author.I hated the characters and I was even taken to speed reading the book just to get to the end,which I hate doing.If this is a realistic example of academics at play at university, Lodge is doing a good job of deterring people from going.Is it worth anyone getting into debt with tuition fee's, if it goes towards paying the salaries for this lot, I ask myself? A contrived and very poor novel.

Entertaining if not thought provoking
This book is an entertaining story, and it's as simple as that. The male hero reminds me distinctly of the real-life zoologist Dawkins, in his arrogant assuredness of the falsehood of religion, and yet the female character is the stereotypical lapsed Catholic who still attends mass but doesn't really know why.

Nothing outstanding, but if it's the only unread book left on your shelf, it's worth picking up.

Oh dear!
By far David Lodge's worst novel, I like to think of it is a blip. A tired and embarrassing rehash of the campus novel that he is so justly famous for, "Thinks" is ...well, awful. Luckily, the majestic "Author, Author" has demonstrated that Lodge is still a force to be reckoned with. Please read anything else by this wonderful writer before you embark on "Thinks"!