From Publishers Weekly
Still working more than 50 years after he won the Pulitzer for The Caine Mutiny, and more than 30 years after The Winds of War, Wouk, now nearly 90, has license to write what he pleases: in this case, a light, sprightly story about lost love, high-energy physics and the machinations of Washington. At 60, physicist Guy Carpenter is happily married and the father of two, including a new baby. In the late 1980s and early '90s, he worked on the Superconducting Super Collider, a gigantic federally funded project in Texas aimed at finding the elusive Higgs bosun subatomic particle. Congress pulled the plug on the SSC in 1993 in real life as well as in the novel professionally stranding Carpenter and leaving the Higgs bosun undiscovered. Ten years later, Carpenter has gotten his life back in order, but when a group of Chinese scientists publish a paper claiming to have discovered the Higgs bosun, his quiet existence is upended. Not only was Carpenter a key staff member on the SSC, he has sustained a secret romance since graduate school with Wen Mei Li, the chief scientist on the Chinese team. This confluence of circumstances puts Carpenter on the spot with his wife, the media, Congress and possibly the CIA. It also introduces him to a former movie star congresswoman, who's charmed by his intellect and sympathetic to his plight. The plot is busy but secondary to Carpenter's banter and romantic escapades. Occasionally corny but also playful, thoughtful and passionate, this first novel by Wouk in 10 years will charm fans with its companionable warmth and wry humor. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From AudioFile
Narrator Jonathan Davis turns mere pages into a living story by giving a distinct voice to each character. His females don't speak in falsetto, but vary from whining to seductive. A lady scientist, Wen Lu, has a horrible Chinese accent, but listeners will know her when she talks. The novel rises from the hole remaining after the 1993 Congress killed the expensive nuclear collider being built in Texas to find a nuclear particle. When the Chinese discover the particle first, military minds and the American press awaken in panic. Davis's performance adds realism to a story in which hormonal urges, jealousy, and national pride energize the never-ending race to have the world's biggest bomb. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Book Description
Guy Carpenter is a physicist with a quiet,setled life: a prestigious job at NASA, a devoted wife and new baby, and a troublemaking cat. But he is about to get mixed up in an international scandal of enormous proportions. The legendary bestselling author of War and Remembrance, The Winds of war and the Pulitzer Prize winning The Caine Mutiny returns with his first work of fiction in ten years, a smart and funny look at the often unbelievable, sometimes absurd interplay of science, media and politics.
A Hole in Texas FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Guy Carpenter has a pretigious job at NASA, a devoted wife and new baby, and, aside from a troublemaking cat, a settled, quiet life. But things take an unexpected turn when this regular guy finds himself mixed up in an international scandal of enormous proportions." "Years ago, Guy worked on the Superconducting Super Collider, a giant government project dedicated to detecting a tiny, elusive particle called the Higgs boson. Wrangling in Congress shut the project down before it could succeed, but now the Chinese claim to have found the boson. It is a discovery that sends the nation into a panic. How did the Chinese surpass American science? What about the horrific military implications of a Boson Bomb? Is it time to start casting Hollywood's first boson-based blockbuster? An expert is needed to assess the new threat to national security." Guy is propelled into the center of the media blitz, his old love with a Chinese female physicist surfaces, a new romance with a beautiful Congresswoman beckons, and the breakup of his happy marriage threatens. In the meantime, Congress holds urgent hearings, Hollywood comes courting, the CIA is investigating, and an unctuous reporter dogs his every step.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
… Mr. Wouk also uses the nostalgic preobscenity "whatever the Sam Hill it is" to characterize the Higgs boson, the subatomic particle around which this novel revolves. Well, whatever the Sam Hill he may have had in mind with such a premise, he spins it into a crackling yarn and writes with an enduring vigor that whippersnappers might envy. — Janet Maslin
Publishers Weekly
Still working more than 50 years after he won the Pulitzer for The Caine Mutiny, and more than 30 years after The Winds of War, Wouk, now nearly 90, has license to write what he pleases: in this case, a light, sprightly story about lost love, high-energy physics and the machinations of Washington. At 60, physicist Guy Carpenter is happily married and the father of two, including a new baby. In the late 1980s and early '90s, he worked on the Superconducting Super Collider, a gigantic federally funded project in Texas aimed at finding the elusive Higgs bosun subatomic particle. Congress pulled the plug on the SSC in 1993-in real life as well as in the novel-professionally stranding Carpenter and leaving the Higgs bosun undiscovered. Ten years later, Carpenter has gotten his life back in order, but when a group of Chinese scientists publish a paper claiming to have discovered the Higgs bosun, his quiet existence is upended. Not only was Carpenter a key staff member on the SSC, he has sustained a secret romance since graduate school with Wen Mei Li, the chief scientist on the Chinese team. This confluence of circumstances puts Carpenter on the spot with his wife, the media, Congress and possibly the CIA. It also introduces him to a former movie star congresswoman, who's charmed by his intellect and sympathetic to his plight. The plot is busy but secondary to Carpenter's banter and romantic escapades. Occasionally corny but also playful, thoughtful and passionate, this first novel by Wouk in 10 years will charm fans with its companionable warmth and wry humor. Agent, Betty Sarah Wouk at BSW Literary Agency. (Apr. 14) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Unassuming NASA physicist Guy Carpenter, who abandoned his hunt for a particle called the Higgs Boson, is suddenly in the limelight when the Chinese claim they've made the discovery. Oh, yes, and his old Chinese flame is in the offing. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
AudioFile
Narrator Jonathan Davis turns mere pages into a living story by giving a distinct voice to each character. His females don't speak in falsetto, but vary from whining to seductive. A lady scientist, Wen Lu, has a horrible Chinese accent, but listeners will know her when she talks. The novel rises from the hole remaining after the 1993 Congress killed the expensive nuclear collider being built in Texas to find a nuclear particle. When the Chinese discover the particle first, military minds and the American press awaken in panic. Davis's performance adds realism to a story in which hormonal urges, jealousy, and national pride energize the never-ending race to have the world's biggest bomb. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
At 88, Wouk (The Will to Live On, 2000) writes with the brightness of a 45-year-old kid hell-bent on fun about subatomic physics. The hole in Texas is the underground 50-mile Superconducting Super Collider built at Waxahachie but closed down when Bill Clinton cut the budget. Astrophysicist Guy Carpenter spent five years preparing 10,000 superconducting magnets for the project, then suddenly found himself out of work, as did a whole raft of fellow physicists. Since then he's worked on the forthcoming, vastly advanced space-telescopes project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (four scopes floating a million miles out) and has had many second thoughts about what the collider was supposed to search for: the Higgs Boson, an elementary particle or force field that allows atoms to attain mass and thus produce the substance of the material universe. Or something like that. Guy wonders: Was the Boson just moonshine? Then, shaking up the whole field, Chinese physicists announce that they've found the Boson. The American military gets nervous indeed: a Boson Bomb would be to the hydrogen bomb as the hydrogen bomb is to gunpowder. Widowed but wealthy Congresswoman Myra Kadane, who is on the science appropriations committee that will keep the wavering space telescopes project funded, pastes herself to Guy to learn more about the Boson. Guy's wife Penny, a microbiologist, isn't jealous of Myra but rather of Guy's old girlfriend Wen Mei Li (now 63), who once worked with Guy. She has led the Chinese to the Boson, and now comes back to the States for a conference. Guy, meanwhile, has been hired as a consultant for an idiotic disaster movie about the Boson Bomb. Worse, when he's fired as well, the movie companywants back its $25,000 advance (Penny's already spent it) because a Washington Post reporter has dubbed him the "Deep Throat Physicist" who passed secrets to the Chinese. Then the House subpoenas the Deep Throat Physicist to appear with the Mother of the Bomb, Wen Mei Li. Ingenious. Absolutely ingenious: Wouk's first fiction in ten years. Agent: Sarah Wouk/BSW Literary Agency
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