A Certain Ambiguity

Kissel Cablayda                                                                                                                      

A certain ambiguity is a novel that tries to lure the audience with mathematical and philosophical ideas through tailoring it into a not so dramatic story. Suri and Bal’s serious attempt to bombard the story with the different notions about math connecting it to a story of a grandson trying to search for the reason for his grandfather’s imprisonment is not a very persuading strategy. Thus it just made the story a long and dragging presentation about math. Hence the value of art and making a story was compromised.

The story revolves around a grandson, Ravi, who was inspired by his grandfather to pursue a mathematical dream they both love. A few years after his grandfathers’ death, he flies to from India to America and pursued his study. He takes up a liberal arts mathematics undergraduate course at Stanford, where he meets friends and teacher who shares the same interests in mathematics. And there the search for so many mathematical ambiguities starts to developed through a long and uninteresting discussions about infinity, cardinality, power sets, Euclidian geometry and etc. In the middle of his search for mathematical enlightenment he finds out that his grandfather was jailed and there he tries to find out why.

The part where the story turns out to be less interesting is at the classroom setting, where they talked and debated about infinity with his friend, his professor and his classmates for a very long period. This is the part where the readers are starting to have that “ooops! Nerd alert!” feels. Those endless dialogues can convince the readers to put down and shut the book close.

However, the grand attempt of the writers to have a unique novel didn’t lure much of the in depth interest and thus making the readers disappointed. The fact that they came up with a unique idea to connect math and literature is smart. It is enough to take the attention of the readers to buy and avail the book. However, this is not enough for the readers to engage and to scan the book up until to its last leaf. Its sound and innovative attempt is just a disparity to produce a sophisticated story and an in depth presentation of mathematical concept.

What makes it so dragging is that after a short introduction of a story setting, the overused pattern of which they talk lengthily and presenting an investigation of mathematical in long pages makes the reader to have an information overload and a tardy digestion of the mathematical ideas.

If it were presented in a way that there has a balance among mathematics, philosophy and modern literature, the story might not compromised the story and thus leaving the readers less disappointing.

            If the authors would have sustained the same feels in the introduction part, were math and drama somehow fits perfectly, especially on the part of Ravi’s mourning of his loss of a grandfather, then the story would be more interesting and thus they would have achieved the kind of novelty they attempt to produce.