The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Paolo Giordano

The title was fascinating enough for me to take the book in hands. The backdrop was sufficiently intriguing to buy it. The engrossing prose of the first few pages was enough to hook to the book till I completed it. This is one of those books, which isn't part of my favourites list, but still has tugged my heart's strings.

Any story, in particular love story, has to have enough stuff in it to engross the readers. At rare instances though, the story in itself has nothing great to offer, if not for the narration and presentation of it. Two lines about the plot of this book would only have that this a story of two not-so-normal people getting involved with each other right from their teenage, yet can't express themselves clearly to the other and in the bargain lose the love of their lives while having them in proximity.

As I was reading through, I was completely engulfed by the prose used for narration and characterization of the lprotagonists. It was hard to stop by. The real beauty of the work though, is the conceptualization of an idea and the execution of it.

The uniqueness of Prime numbers is their specialty not (or inability?) to be divisible by another number, except for themselves and one. Co-existing with a whole lot of other numbers, prime numbers still remain distinctively different. There isn't chance of two prime numbers next to each other.Twin primes, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43 - which are belonging to the same category are so close by, but are never next-to-next. They've just a single number between them (very near), but they still have a number between them (yet very far). For a moment, let's assume that there are two souls metamorphic to prime numbers, in the sense that they stand out from the usual crowd because of their genius or unusual traits or inabilities or whatever. A series of incidents happen with them individually and in togetherness, that despite the proximity they share they end of being distanced by an eternity. And through that distance runs a delicate string that still bonds them together. Though I wouldn't be carried away to call this piece of work a masterpiece, I'd still say, the attempt and the execution was laudable.

I found the choice of narrating the story in third person, very interesting! While the story is not about too many things happening around, but instead how one wrestles with the inner self with very happening, the author doesn't get into too much introspection of the characters and their mind. Say, for instance, the guy has the gal next to him with the scene aptly suitable to express his love for her. There is neither melodrama nor prolix detailing. All it has is - the guy knowing what to do and the guy not able to do it. Simple and elegant! Even the climax of the story has impressed me. Over all, I was looking for bit more mathematics involved in the story, I was let down.

This book isn't for people who can look / feel and sense love only in the bollywood boisterous ways. This book is for people who are or who can empathize that love can happen to the not-so-normal people and expressing it can also be in not-so-normal ways. (not-so-normal only means that anything / anyone not belonging to the most conventional ways, not that they are aliens, though are treated that way.)

When every single step taken towards someone draws you away from them and that very withdrawal pushes you closer to them, the distance between always remaining the same, the other earthly matters really don't matter. If you wanna know such a story, read this book.

"The Solitude of Prime Numbers asks, can we ever be whole when we’re in love with another? And how much of ourselves do we give away?"

I've got my answer. You find out yours. :)

(Googling for this book after I had read through the initial chapters, I came across an interesting blog, which categorizes book musings into fore-thoughts (musings after knowing the book and before reading) and after-thoughts (once done with the book). I liked the idea, that I'm tempted to write that way. Would give it a try, soon!)