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Overview
A brilliant philosopher with a talent for self-destruction, Mason Ambrose has torpedoed a promising academic career and now faces a dead-end future. Before joining the ranks of the unemployed, however, he's approached by a representative of billionaire geneticist Dr. Edwina Sabacthani, who makes him an offer no starving ethicist could refuse. Born and bred on Isla de Sangre, a private island off the Florida coast, Edwina's beautiful and intelligent adolescent daughter, Londa, has recently survived a freak accident that destroyed both her memory and her sense of right and wrong. Londa's soul, in short, is an empty vessel—and it will be Mason's job to fill it.Exploring his new surroundings, our hero encounters a lush Eden abounding in bizarre animals and strange vegetation engineered by Edwina and her misanthropic collaborator, Dr. Vincent Charnock. And Londa, though totally lacking a conscience, proves a vivacious young woman who quickly captivates her new teacher as he attempts to recalibrate her moral compass with the help of Western civilization's greatest ethical thinkers, living and dead.
But there's trouble in this tropical paradise. Mason soon learns that he isn't the only private tutor on Isla de Sangre, nor is Londa the only child in residence whose conscience is a blank slate. How many daughters does Edwina Sabacthani really have, and how did she bring them into being?
Undaunted by these mysteries, Mason continues to instruct Londa, hoping that she can lead a normal life when she eventually ventures forth into human society. His apprentice, however, has a different agenda. Her head crammed with lofty ideals, her heart brimming with fearsome benevolence, and her bank account filled to bursting, Londa undertakes to remake our fallen world in her own image—by any and all means necessary.
Synopsis
A brilliant philosopher with a talent for self-destruction, Mason Ambrose has torpedoed a promising academic career and now faces a dead-end future. Before joining the ranks of the unemployed, however, he's approached by a representative of billionaire geneticist Dr. Edwina Sabacthani, who makes him an offer no starving ethicist could refuse. Born and bred on Isla de Sangre, a private island off the Florida coast, Edwina's beautiful and intelligent adolescent daughter, Londa, has recently survived a freak accident that destroyed both her memory and her sense of right and wrong. Londa's soul, in short, is an empty vessel—and it will be Mason's job to fill it.
Exploring his new surroundings, our hero encounters a lush Eden abounding in bizarre animals and strange vegetation engineered by Edwina and her misanthropic collaborator, Dr. Vincent Charnock. And Londa, though totally lacking a conscience, proves a vivacious young woman who quickly captivates her new teacher as he attempts to recalibrate her moral compass with the help of Western civilization's greatest ethical thinkers, living and dead.
But there's trouble in this tropical paradise. Mason soon learns that he isn't the only private tutor on Isla de Sangre, nor is Londa the only child in residence whose conscience is a blank slate. How many daughters does Edwina Sabacthani really have, and how did she bring them into being?
Undaunted by these mysteries, Mason continues to instruct Londa, hoping that she can lead a normal life when she eventually ventures forth into human society. His apprentice, however, has a different agenda. Her head crammed with lofty ideals, her heart brimming with fearsome benevolence, and her bank account filled to bursting, Londa undertakes to remake our fallen world in her own image-by any and all means necessary.
The New York Times - Siddhartha Deb
Morrow's inventiveness is beguiling, as are his delight in Western philosophy and his concern for the sorry state of the world. Yet there's also something comic-bookish about his novel, with its rapid succession of climactic moments, its abundant references to pop culture, its reliance on the strikingly visual and its first-person narration, which has the inflections not of a failed graduate student but of a Los Angeles gumshoe…
Editorials
Gary K. Wolfe
"Morrow is a good as anybody at dramatizing the notion that ideas can both kill us and save us, and THE PHILOSOPHER’S APPRENTICE may well offer about as many provocative ideas per chapter as we’ll see in any novel this year."Nick Gevers
"This novel [is] one of Morrow’s best . . . the creative exuberances of THE PHILOSOPHER’S APPRENTICE are easily justified by the wisdom they support. For a wise novel, then, wittier and better proportioned than most of its predecessors, due praise.""[A] hyperkinetic mishmash of horror story, sci-fi yarn, Renaissance allegory, Greek myth and modern morality tale…rollicking…ingenious…it’s the fiction equivalent of a roller coaster ride, where readers are meant to hold on tight and enjoy the giddy thrills of an over-the-top and overeducated plot."
"Morrow’s world is one where ideas matter so much they come lurching to life as intellectual Frankenstein creatures. In The Philosopher’s Apprentice, they are wickedly hilarious and then they can break our hearts and scare us silly."
"[I]nventive, entertaining . . . fantastic images and ideas . . . Morrow’s inventiveness is beguiling, as are his delight in Western philosophy and his concern for the sorry state of the world."
"[Morrow’s] valorization of reason together with his acute sense of comic absurdity have long made him a favorite of intellectuals . . . who see him in the tradition of Twain and Vonnegut."
"In some ways, [Morrow] reminds me of Mark Twain after the mid-1880s, and even more of Kurt Vonnegut. Like them, Morrow writes with a penetrating moral vision."
"[James Morrow] is an original—stylistically ingenious, savagely funny, always unpredictable."
"Morrow addresses controversial topics without being heavy-handed, and infuses the narrative with a wit that pragmatists and idealists alike will appreciate. A-"
“Morrow has produced an exemplary novel, one that explores a question central to the human understanding of self...THE PHILOSOPHER’S APPRENTICE is thought experiment as heartbreaking drama–this is what science fiction at its best does.”
“Morrow has produced an exemplary novel, one that explores a question central to the human understanding of self...THE PHILOSOPHER’S APPRENTICE is thought experiment as heartbreaking drama–this is what science fiction at its best does.”
Morrow's inventiveness is beguiling, as are his delight in Western philosophy and his concern for the sorry state of the world. Yet there's also something comic-bookish about his novel, with its rapid succession of climactic moments, its abundant references to pop culture, its reliance on the strikingly visual and its first-person narration, which has the inflections not of a failed graduate student but of a Los Angeles gumshoe…
—The New York Times
Aristotle is referred to so often in this brilliant comedy of manners as to seem to be alive. Also present are Plato, Lawrence Kohlberg, Kant, Sartre, Heidegger, Gadamer, Rawls, Piaget, Captain Kangaroo, and Mister Rogers. How can a novel so loaded with ideas be so funny and consistently engrossing? Missing in this hilarious send-off on Pygmalion are Rousseau and Locke, although it could be argued that the book is an extended riff on their ideas about how we acquire our moral sense. The premise is not new: a philosopher-tutor is given the opportunity to impress ethical ideas on a first-class mind that is, in matters of morality, a blank slate. But Morrow (The Last Witchfinder ) is an inventive writer possessing a fine comic sensibility; the story is infused with wit and brio. And that brings one more name into the mix-Diderot. Morrow may not mention Diderot, but in many ways Morrow is a successor to that finest of Enlightenment thinkers, a man who believed that literature and philosophy marched hand in hand and who was not afraid to discuss serious matters in a comic tone. Enthusiastically recommended for all libraries.-David Keymer, Modesto, CA
Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Arch-satirist Morrow (The Last Witchfinder, 2006, etc.) turns in a tumultuous take on humanity, philosophy and ethics that is as hilarious as it is outlandish. The narrator and central figure of this classically inspired comedy about twisted science and bent beliefs is long-winded, self-centered philosophy student Mason Ambrose. To his dismay, Mason is at wit's end after his life's work, Ethics from the Earth, is torpedoed by an embittered rival. Offered a teaching position on an offshore island that would do Dr. Moreau proud, the good doctor is soon verbally jousting with his student, a damaged but headstrong savant named Londa, to whom he is supposed to impart no less than a functioning conscience. Though ferociously stubborn, Londa responds with verve when Mason presents her with manufactured philosophical conundrums. It turns out that the island's matriarch (and Londa's mother), geneticist Edwina Sabachthani, has been dabbling in genetics testing, producing breathing trees, a talking mutant iguana and other freaks of nature to be named later. To their peril, Mason and his fellow tutors agree to keep the secret of Londa and her aberrant siblings following Edwina's early demise from a blood disorder. After escaping, Ambrose tries to settle into domesticity with a striking young English student but is completely unraveled by the abrupt appearance of a man calling himself John Snow-and calling Mason "father." Meanwhile, Londa has abandoned science to become something of a celebrity a la Oprah, but on a grander scale and with a darker, gospel-inspired vision of a new golden age for humanity. Hurtling towards his destiny aboard a resurrected Titanic, Mason must choose between consummationand annihilation of his first love. "Try withholding your judgment till you've grasped the broader picture," Londa advises him. A salutary caution for readers of this wildly ambitious morality play, a shrewd amalgamation of the sacred and the profane. Tips its hat with style to Mary Shelley and George Bernard Shaw.