HOW I WON A NOBEL PRIZE by Julius Taranto

The Rubin Institute is a haven for researchers, scientists, and professors with skeletons in their closets.  Helen, a very talented physicist whose specialty if superconductivity, does not have a sketchy past, but her mentor/collaborator is now a persona non grata as far as Cornell is concerned. In order to continue her research, she and her husband, Hew, relocate to the island where the Institute is located.  Hew’s liberal political slant makes this move really distasteful for him, and his and Helen’s marriage becomes somewhat rocky.  Helen suspects him of having an affair with a woman who was raped by one of the Institute’s residents, while she contemplates her own affair with her father’s favorite author.  I am not a physics person, and I found that the narrative having to do with Helen’s work was way over my head, but I learned something in the process.  I enjoyed the marital strife aspect of this book as well, since I could definitely see both sides of their argument.  Hew thinks that Helen should be more appalled about the crimes that the Institute’s residents have committed, whereas Helen contends that she really cannot do anything about it.  In any case, the concept of banishing misbehaving intellectuals to an island where they can continue to be productive without being policed or held accountable is intriguing but also alarming.