The Dork of Cork by Chet Raymo, Bloomsbury, pp 354, £14.99
Book titles matter. Would War and Peace have achieved classic status if it had been called Oops! Here Comes Trouble!? Would Madame Bovary have gained its place in the literary canon if Flaubert had named it The Ooh-La-La Girl? I can only hope the answer is yes for Chet Raymo's sake. His chosen title, The Dork of Cork, suggests a lumbering, trivial, schoolboy-funny book. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a sophisticated, expansive, witty and moving novel.
Raymo is a professor of physics and astronomy at Stonehill College, Massachusetts, and this, his second novel - though he has written many popular astronomy books - is a light, sweet box of deceptively simple and engaging anecdotes and stories told by Frank, a dwarf and astronomer. The past and the present are two strands to Frank's life.
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.