Life After Genius

Mar 23, 2010

Gigi rated it

this is one of the rare occasions when i wish i could call the author and vent my frustration about devoting hours of my life to their craft only to be shoved down a literary trap door. i am flat out annoyed by how ridiculous this story became. ridiculous and lazy and negligent.

when you meet the main character mead, you are at first tempted to not go on his journey because you're sure you've heard it all before. ten year old boy, wildly smart and ostracized by his peers, somewhere-ville small to...more this is one of the rare occasions when i wish i could call the author and vent my frustration about devoting hours of my life to their craft only to be shoved down a literary trap door. i am flat out annoyed by how ridiculous this story became. ridiculous and lazy and negligent.

when you meet the main character mead, you are at first tempted to not go on his journey because you're sure you've heard it all before. ten year old boy, wildly smart and ostracized by his peers, somewhere-ville small town usa, parents with unrealized dreams who make all the wrong choices when trying to set it right for their kids. throw in a hearthrob older cousin who plays softball and a quarry where the kids make daring leaps all summer and you know where this story is going.

but you forge ahead, because in the opening chapters there is something compelling about the language and a hint of something new about this coming of age tale. and so you follow mead through incidents with bullies, puberty and embalming and then to college where he discovers girls, cd players and seduction at the hands of a wealthy, conniving elder classman who has problems of his own with old dad. blah blah blah. i am not going to talk about plot points because they're average at best.

and then, for no reason at all (although, perhaps, a feeble spin at holden caulfield's repeated use of "damn" or "and all"), mead starts saying "shit" every dozen sentences. literally. we're talking scores of "shit" littered all over the second half of the novel. standing alone or tossed in mid sentence. for instance: "time enough to get some work done, to finish mapping out that stupid outline for the dean. visiting mathematicans. shit. that's heady stuff." OR (not half a page later) "the dean has invited professional mathematicians, the most brilliant minds in the field, to come listen to me. me! shit i am going to look like a fool up there on that stage."

i struggled through the second half of the book (one must never put a book down once started), trying to avoid those "shits" like literary landmines. impossible. by the time i came to the end of the book (and to a finale that was actually more offensive than the landmines!), i felt like i had been pelted with cactus plants all afternoon.

in short: no go on Life After Genius.(less)

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Mar 08, 2009

Jeffrey rated it

Recommends it for: anyone who ever thought being a genius was easy

Shelves: literature, coming-of-age, read-in-2009

Mead Fegley is a genious and goes to college at a young age to study mathematics where he has a real aptitude, but his journey to college is waylaid and he rushes home a few days prior to his presentation of an important paper on a noted mathemician's theorem. Jacoby's tale is split into three separate time lines, which are her way of showing how Mead turned out the way he has, what happened in college and why he left. This non sequential story worked for me although I could see how it would not...more

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Nov 28, 2008

Lauren (Shooting Stars Mag) rated it

Teddy is a genius. He graduated high school early and would have graduated college at the age of 18. That's right...he would have. Instead, Teddy (now known as Mead) is back home and refusing to reveal why. With his mom trying her hardest to get answers out of him, his father believing he shouldn't work at the furniture/funeral home with him, and his uncle putting Mead down any chance he can get....what will happen on this journey home?

I've read a lot of people's thoughts on this novel and many...more

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Nov 24, 2008

Sandra rated it

I was intrigued with the synopsis of this book. A book about a mathematical genius. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that I knew what was being talked about most of the time. Means I didn't spend all that money on a degree in mathematics for nothing.

At first, the book was a little awkward to read. I found myself relating a lot with the main character, Mead, in that his mom is a bit overbearing. Though my mom isn't as overbearing as his mom is, I did see some similarities. And I have a hard...more

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Nov 03, 2011

Jennifer Defoy rated it

Shelves: 2011-reads

This was a weird one for me. I liked the story, even though it was a bit odd, but I didn't really connect with the main character. But the mystery of why Mead came home was pretty engaging. I just wanted to know why. The story jumps around through different times in Mead's life. It got to be a bit confusing at times, as Mead also seems to be having a bit of a nervous breakdown throughout the story. But the jumping around really adds to the mystery of what happened and if Mead really is starting...more

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Jun 09, 2011

Jeruen Dery rated it

Awesome book this truly was. Oops, time to switch to the non-Yoda dialect.

Anyway, I should say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was very interesting and captivating that I blasted through it in just a couple of days.

So, this is a book that revolves around Theodore Mead Fegley, who is a math genius, genius enough to skip several grades in elementary, middle, and high school, and enters college at 15, and finishing his undergraduate in less than three years. Almost, since the book begins wh...more Awesome book this truly was. Oops, time to switch to the non-Yoda dialect.

Anyway, I should say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was very interesting and captivating that I blasted through it in just a couple of days.

So, this is a book that revolves around Theodore Mead Fegley, who is a math genius, genius enough to skip several grades in elementary, middle, and high school, and enters college at 15, and finishing his undergraduate in less than three years. Almost, since the book begins when he walks out of college a week before graduation, without delivering his senior thesis.

Several characters revolve around Theodore. His father, Lynn, is an undertaker, very quiet, refuses to accept a scholarship for his son and instead insists on paying for his college education on his own. His mother, Alayne, is this control freak, who thinks that Theodore is different from his father's side of the family, and dreams big for her son. She basically is the typical parent who wants their kids to do the things that they were unsuccessful in accomplishing. Theodore's aunt Jewel, used to be a very caring aunt, but now, after the death of their son Percy, she went into catatonic depression. Uncle Martin on the other hand is a fellow undertaker, managing the family business of a funeral home, and is harsh and cruel on Theodore, because he blames him for Percy's death. In short, every character in this book has their own skeletons in their closets.

I suppose it is difficult to recreate the conflicts that this book presents, as everyone seems to be blaming everyone for the existence of their skeletons. Theodore decides to have a new life once he enters college, so he wants everyone to call him by his middle name now, which is Mead. This creates a divide in the arenas in the book: his family members still call him Teddy, his school associates call him Mead, while his arch-nemesis calls him Fegley.

Growing up, he battles the bullies, destroying his science project, embarrassing him to various degrees. He also battles the cutthroat people in college, people who would go into depths of crime and bribery just to get an A, like his "friend" Herman Weinstein, who turns out to be the person that he battles the most in the story.

The book presents a very good scenario for several psychological conflicts. It indeed is psychological fiction at its best, although I think it may have been a little over the top. There are too many abnormal people in the story, which I think is the only bad element of this book. But then again, who in the world is normal? We all have skeletons in our closet.

I have to say that I liked this book a lot, and found plenty of things in which I can relate. Mead has conflict with his parents: her mom only wants one thing, that is, to get him out of the small town of High Grove, Illinois by means of his genius. His father on the other hand secretly desires his son to be an undertaker like him and continue the family business. So there's the overprotective mother and the very impassive father. Their family dynamics are so extraordinary that I feel pity for Mead. It also made me appreciate the value of openness, and listening. Mead's parents didn't even listen to him, only insisting on what they think was best. Never did they realize that they had to listen to what Mead had to say as well, they only realized that late in the game, when their kid is all grown up. In the beginning, they were more willing to think that Mead was simply hallucinating instead of taking his word for the truth.

With respect to the structure of this book, I highly took a liking to it, since it wasn't the traditional chronological narration. Every chapter was dated, as to how many days or years it was before graduation. Thus, the chapters were in different time periods in Mead's life. It was presented based on content, and not based on the date. One chapter can be 8 years before graduation, when Mead was just 10, and the next can be 3 weeks before graduation, when his parents were in town visiting the university. In this way, I believe the author had trusted her readers that her readers would be smart enough to reconstruct the missing links in between the episodes. I liked that factor, since it needed use of my brain by requiring me to read between the lines.

I also liked the ending. The conflicts were slowly being resolved, one by one. One by one, Mead's family members get normal, and finally sees the light, in a way. However, the good thing is that the author did not fully end the story. The main conflict is between Mead and his relationship with Herman Weinstein, and the ending leaves it hanging, welcoming the reader's imagination to fill in the blanks.

Overall, a very awesome novel. 5 out of 5 stars. (less)

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Apr 22, 2009

Francis rated it

This book is a coming-of-age story about a boy, Mead, who goes off to college at 15 after enduring a childhood of ostracism in a small town and an overbearing mother who demands that he rise above the mediocrity of his father's family, and it is also a story of academic, professional, and personal betrayal, written in a mixed-chronology suspense format, to gradually unveil the characters' backstory and motivations.

The book appears to be the author's first, and I felt it was rather rough around t...more This book is a coming-of-age story about a boy, Mead, who goes off to college at 15 after enduring a childhood of ostracism in a small town and an overbearing mother who demands that he rise above the mediocrity of his father's family, and it is also a story of academic, professional, and personal betrayal, written in a mixed-chronology suspense format, to gradually unveil the characters' backstory and motivations.

The book appears to be the author's first, and I felt it was rather rough around the edges. In my opinion, most of the characters were caricatures: the overbearing mother in a chair scolding him for not being good enough "the six-legged monster", the flamboyant spoiled rich kid upstairs who becomes his best friend and ultimately betrays him, the haughty academic who passes Mead up at first but then needs his brilliant work later, the elderly, eccentric genius professor who takes Mead under his wing, etc.

Also, I felt that the mathematical and academic dialogues were rather stilted. She said that she was inspired by Derbyshire's "Prime Obsession" and I am surmising that she did not have much mathematical training beyond that. I think it would have beneficial if a someone with more mathematical training had copyedited the book to enhance the authenticity of the technical details, which included rather odd course names like "Theoretical Geometry" and a dialogue that appeared to be an attempt at "testing" Mead's mathematical skill using the Sieve of Erathosthenes. (Something like Paul Erdos' quizzing of Lajos Posa with the question of why n+1 distinct integers between 1 and 2n must include two that are relatively prime would have been much more authentic in my opinion.)

I also felt like the resolutions of the various central conflicts by revealing the traumas that motivated the respective characters to behave in their irrational manners was predictable.

The subject matter was interesting but I felt that the book was a little too trite to be very engaging, and I was distracted by the technical inadequacies.
(less)

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Dec 29, 2011

Katherine rated it

· review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A coming-of-age story, if anything, is what Life After Genius develops into as the life of Mead Fegley unravels and re-ravels as he struggles with choices he makes in his final year of college. Mead, a childhood genius who, quite easily, is accepted into college at the age of 15, and is set to graduate at 18 decides, willingly, to throw away his entire education. His reason to do this? To give up possible fame of becoming the closest person in history to get anywhere near disproving or proving t...more

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Nov 03, 2009

Laura rated it

Shelves: fiction, review-copy, mcbook

As I said in another review, I enjoy books about precocious kids. What's interesting here is that at18, Theodore (or Mead, as he prefers to be called) isn't really a kid anymore. He's transitioning from childhood to adulthood with some big issues to face.

It took me a little while to get into Life After Genius. I found Mead hard to get to know, and for the first few chapters, the skipping around in time got in my way.

About 1/3 of the way in, the book clicked for me, and I wanted to get to know Me...more

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Jul 29, 2008

Miriam rated it

Recommends it for: Myfanwy, Sarah

Totally great, almost surreal story about a boy genius who loses it six days before he is supposed to graduate from college (at age 18). I'm totally fascinated by extraordinary minds and this book really captures the anguish that can go along with being just a little bit different.

It's an adult book, but I think it would appeal to fans of YA as well.

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Jul 16, 2011

Nikki rated it

I'm a fan of nonlinear storytelling and I'm a fan of mystery/secrets and their drawn out reveals; combine these elements and I'm sold. But here, things were done in a way that I almost didn't care if I ever learned the details behind this huge upset in Mead's life. One reason why this didn't work for me is likely due to the nuggets of repetition in places where we should have been getting more clues to lead us along. The sort of clues that, no matter how simple, intrigue us and make us eager to...more

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Dec 08, 2009

Gaby rated it

· review of another edition

When we first meet Mead, he's just turned his back on college, fled, and returned to his hometown where he's regarded with as a genius and an oddball. His family is disappointed and puzzled at his reappearance. As Mead works at the family businesses, we slowly see the sacrifices that his family went through to help him succeed at University of Chicago as well as the adjustments and cost that Mead paid in his search to succeed and to stand out.

Life After Genius is a fun and interesting read. At t...more

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Jan 05, 2009

Lolly LKH rated it

I felt that more could have been done. The story thinned out towards the middle and the ending left me feeling a bit let down. I think the genius struggling with adult eye opening experiences (that hey the world and the people in it can be truly crappy and take advantage) was spot on. His naiveity really made sense as did the fact that being a genius doesn't bestow upon a young boy social know how nor the wisdom age and the hardknocks school of life gifts us with. But the author could have explo...more

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Feb 06, 2009

Ken rated it

Shelves: x-d-out-books-never-finished

I got about 20% into this book--about up to page 60. The book begins by setting up conflicts and plot points in three different timelines for the hero. Chapter 1 begins 4 days before Mead, the genius of the title, is supposed to graduate from a university in Illinois. Chapter 2 begins 8 years before the same graduation when Mead is in grade school, and Chapter 3 begins 3 years before graduation when Mead begins his university career. None of the narratives in any of the three time frames engaged...more

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Jun 02, 2011

Rose rated it

Interesting coming of age story told in a present & past tense format. Mead's a genius whom at 18 is graduating from university but flees home to Illinois a week before the graduation ceremony. I wanted to read this to find out what traumatic thing could have caused this guy to leave his precious studies to go back to an undertaker father, a nosy overbearing mother, & a hateful uncle. The overall story was a good one, though Mead's above average intelligence bodes well in school, it does...more

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Feb 19, 2010

Thorn MotherIssues rated it

Shelves: read-2010

Teen reading challenge. I'm always skeptical about books about geniuses and this one didn't really overcome my qualms. Mead corrects other people's grammar but makes grammar mistakes himself (maybe that's intentional) and there's a "your"/"you're" problem and so forth. The voice and characterization were just never convincing. I didn't buy that Mead actually knew math, that any of the people would act the way they did. If it had all been written from Mead's quasi-autistic perspective, maybe it w...more

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May 28, 2009

Cynthia rated it

Loved this book -- a great coming of age story, with plausible, complex characters, an intriguing plot, and a lot of interesting things to say about family, friendship, and belonging. The way the non-linear storytelling circles around the central incident of the plot echoes the protagonists confusion, without itself confusing the reader.

My only complaint -- if you're going to disguise the University of Chicago so thinly, why not just call it U of C and be done with it? Every time I read "Chicago...more

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Jan 09, 2012

Sara rated it

I lied a little bit. I haven't actually finished reading this book, but at page 110 I have grown so tired of it that I thought I'd read the reviews here to see how it all plays out. Unfortunately, no spoiler alerts, so I might never learn what the mystery is and if Meade ever gets his young life together. I couldn't help thinking that the author was trying desperately to write Catcher in the Rye for the 21st century. The writing is so self-conscious, contrived and clichéd, and I just hated to se...more

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Apr 11, 2011

Joann rated it

· review of another edition

This was the best novel I read in 2011, and maybe a few years before and maybe after. I couldn't put it down and I didn't want to. I read most of the reviews, and agreed with some, and was completely confounded by the person who didn't like it because he didn't agree with the math...um, this is a novel not a text book.

What I liked best: The characters and their fully realized development and presentation. Theodore Mead Fegley, his consistently annoying mother, his father, Aunt Pearl, Herman Wein...more

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Oct 30, 2008

Kelly rated it

Shelves: reviewed

I finished Life After Genius this afternoon while waiting for the freshman football game to start. Thank goodness for mandatory time spent sitting in the car, it allows me reading time!!

I think we've all known some people that are just a bit..well...different. In fact, I think that there is a little bit of Mead in all of us. We all feel like we're just a little peculiar sometimes. It's been very easy to empathize with Mead, and as the book drew to the conclusion, I found a deeper understanding o...more

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Oct 29, 2008

Carey rated it

What could drive a brilliant young man to leave college eight days before graduation, without his degree, and return to his hometown to work in the family Mortuary business?

Being a genius is a difficult thing. For Theodore Mead Fegley, it has brought him nothing but grief. He started high school at the age of twelve, finished in three years, and started college at the age of fifteen. He has always been younger and smaller than everyone else. And, of course, the victim of taunts, ridicule and pr...more What could drive a brilliant young man to leave college eight days before graduation, without his degree, and return to his hometown to work in the family Mortuary business?

Being a genius is a difficult thing. For Theodore Mead Fegley, it has brought him nothing but grief. He started high school at the age of twelve, finished in three years, and started college at the age of fifteen. He has always been younger and smaller than everyone else. And, of course, the victim of taunts, ridicule and pranks for his entire school career. He is thrilled to go to college, where he thinks he will be among equals, learned individuals who will value his intellect. Poor kid, how wrong he is.

To facilitate the brand new start Theodore feels he is getting with college, he starts to go by his middle name, Mead. Unfortunately, the very first day he is reminded, yet again, that he is different from everyone else and does not fit in. Girls are too old for him, he is too young for drinking and partying, he has little in common with other young men on campus. His life is lonely and friendless. His only real friend, his cousin Percy, is off pursuing his dream of baseball glory. Percy sends a constant stream of postcards to Mead, letting him know what is going on in his life. But since Mead has no friends he doesn't really know how to BE one, so he never responds to Percy's postcards.

Mead excels at mathematics and spends his college career working on solving the Riemann Hypothesis, a 150 year old mathematical theory. When Herman, a wealthy and attractive fellow math student, befriends Mead it seems a little strange to him that this guy would want to spend time with him. But Herman offers to help Mead on the Riemann Hypothesis so, against his better judgement, Mead allows himself to go along with Herman's schemes. The results will force Mead to change, come to some important realizations about life and to see his parents and family through new eyes.

With Life After Genius, M. Ann Jacoby has written a wonderful story about the process of growing up. It is not enough to be smart, maturity lies in the ability to put aside your selfish concerns and do what is better for others, both people you love and people you may not like very much. She reminds us all about the discomforts of our school days when all we wanted was to be included, be liked, be part of the "in" crowd. You will fall in love with Mead Fegley, a sweet and awkward boy who learns the most important part of being a man.

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Oct 27, 2008

Serena rated it

Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby is a book that examines one young genius' struggle to find himself and his place in his own family and society.

Theodore Mead Fegley's father runs a furniture store and funeral home with his brother Martin, while his mother's main goal in life is to push her son to achieve as much as possible and not squander his intelligence. The pressure mounts for Mead as he speeds through his elementary and high school years, reaching the University of Chicago at age 15.

The...more Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby is a book that examines one young genius' struggle to find himself and his place in his own family and society.

Theodore Mead Fegley's father runs a furniture store and funeral home with his brother Martin, while his mother's main goal in life is to push her son to achieve as much as possible and not squander his intelligence. The pressure mounts for Mead as he speeds through his elementary and high school years, reaching the University of Chicago at age 15.

The narrative easily shifts from the present to the past, and the chapter breaks make it easier to keep the timeline in perspective with details about what period in Mead's life is witnessed and what location he is in. Mead is a young teen thrust into academic life with peers who are much older and experienced. Mead's life takes a stark turn when he meets Herman Weinstein, a fellow mathematics student at the university. Mead's pushed aside as his faculty advisor chooses Weinstein over Mead after the professor is offered a department head position. Mead is angered by the turn of events, but only until he finds a new mentor, Dr. Alexander. Mead throws himself into the Riemann Hypothesis, and he hopes to either prove or disprove the hypothesis, which has been debated for more than 100 years.

Jacoby easily weaves in events from Mead's past into his present and how those events shape Mead and his actions at the university. Herman insinuates himself into Mead's life, and tensions rise until Mead finds himself running home to rural Illinois before graduation, his major mathematical presentation, and his valedictorian speech.

While math problems make me cringe, this story brought me back with the discussions of matrices--math I actually understood at one point--but Jacoby does a great job of including this information without burdening or boring the reader. As Mead's life unfolds and the mystery grows more intense, the pages flow quickly as the reader grows more anxious to find out why Mead left the university. This novel is dubbed as an academic thriller, but it is more like a coming of age story. Mead finds himself, what's important to him, and how to cope with his reality.(less)

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Oct 14, 2008

Corinne rated it

Shelves: advance-reader-s-copy

Mead is one of those boys - the ones who keep skipping grades because they are so smart, the ones that everything academic comes easily to, the ones who are destined for great things. If only it was that easy for Mead. Growing up the "genius" in his town was a pretty harrowing experience. Combine some worse-than-usual bullying with a kid who has a lot of brains but virtually no social skills and an over-the-top mother and you get: a pretty traumatic childhood. Mead hopes that all this will chang...more

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Oct 29, 2008

Tricia rated it

This book is very different from other things I've read lately. Part academic thriller and part coming-of-age story, this novel explores the world of an 18-year old math genius at the cusp of graduating from college when he shows up at home 6 days before graduation and he won't say why.

Mead Fegley has grown up in a small midwestern town, the son of a furniture store owner/undertaker. His whole life he has been picked on, singled out, and alone. His thinks his luck will change when he enrolls at...more

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Feb 14, 2009

Sara rated it

Shelves: general-fiction

This was an intriguing book about a young mathematical genius and his life experiences on an accelerated academic schedule. Mead, the genius, suffers greatly from being younger than his peers. What makes his story so interesting is that the characters are real and emotionally complex. You also wonder all along what exactly happened to make Mead run home from college a few days before graduating. The book is written in a style that jumps around in time quite a bit, so it can be somewhat confusing...more

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May 10, 2011

Erin S. rated it

After being in somewhat of a reading slump, I picked up this book at the going out of business sale at my local Borders and never put it down. The driving force behind this novel is the mystery Jacoby creates with regards to Mead's sudden departure from school. It's a lesson on family, history, and personal expectations and a wholly enjoyable read.

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May 18, 2011

Evelyn rated it

truly terrible. written by someone who has clearly no relation to genius as the prose and plotline was formulaic and uninteresting. this is fiction. come on! have some fun. make something actually happen. i read to the end in hope that the conclusion could somehow justify the terribleness of the writing but found no such relief

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Jan 28, 2009

Kerfuffle rated it

Mead is the mega-version of that odd person/geek many of us know, and it's fascinating to see inside a mind such as his. One has to concentrate to keep track of the time line, but it's worth it. The author has a wonderful way with very evocative phrases, and the ending kept me pondering for a long time.

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Dec 29, 2011

James rated it

While I enjoyed this book, I never made friends with any of the characters. There was no shortage of details about each character but I never felt like I knew them, only about them. There was something that I never overcame that was keeping me from becoming immersed in the story. It was still a really good read and I enjoyed every moment of it.

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Jul 08, 2010

Lynn Pribus rated it

Interesting book. Not a great book, but one I think I will recall a year from now, unlike one I read last month....

The difficulties of being a "genius" kid persisted through college for the protagonist and were, perhaps, a bit overdone, but the characters were almost Greek tragedy characters, set on an irreversible path.

Except it was a lady-or-the-tiger ending....

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Life After Genius

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