Rating: 
Summary: Starts Fast , Ends Slow...
Review: ...much like the protagonist of the novel. The opening chapter is fantastic but the book seems to stall after Chalmers is released from his job. I like the jabs at technology and society and the idea of the human machine failing while the electronic revolution keeps moving forward but I thought that the e-mail sections of the novel were a bit tedious and the internet affair of Bill's wife just disappears. I agree that not all questions should be resolved in a good novel but this one left too many. Buy the book if you don't need a feel good ending (sorry!) and enjoy reading Kafka.
Rating: 
Summary: a disturbing masterpiece
Review: A profoundly beautiful book of masterful detail and nuance, "The Diagnosis" is nonethless painful and disturbing in its relentless candor about the absurdities of modern life. The mental and physical decline of Bill Chalmers and his world is haunting in its vivid sadness. Alan Lightman is a masterful writer of the greatest skill. This is a truly memorable book.
Rating:
Summary: Thanks God I am no longer in America
Review: Did you know?The Moscow Metro system is designed a way that makes a person want to ride it to work, and then makes him want to go back. Of course America has its equivalent, which is the largest highway pullution system in the world. If you haven't yet, read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I agree with another reviewer who says this book started strong but then lost momentum. I finished it to keep my word, having told someone I would read it and share what I think ... which is the following: there is no resolution to the conflict (it is left hanging, abandoned); characters are not fully developed; and the juxtaposiiton of Anytus's story is more irritating than illuminating. The story could have been rendered more effectively as a novella. The theme, though compelling certainly in this information and computer age, becomes cloying by the end of the book. We get it, Mr. Lightman. Human health and personal interactions are more fragile, indeed, than man's creations to improve both. They flourish while we founder. What we don't get is the engaging storyline, the simple "what's-going-to-happen-next" delight in reading a story that entertains as it instructs, and reassures as it reveals. On this count, the novel fails committed readers who read on, faithfully, watching Bill Chalmers' mysterious condition deteriorate, undiagnosed. Then the book ends.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I agree with another reviewer who says this book started strong but then lost momentum. I finished it to keep my word, having told someone I would read it and share what I think ... which is the following: there is no resolution to the conflict (it is left hanging, abandoned); characters are not fully developed; and the juxtaposiiton of Anytus's story is more irritating than illuminating. The story could have been rendered more effectively as a novella. The theme, though compelling certainly in this information and computer age, becomes cloying by the end of the book. We get it, Mr. Lightman. Human health and personal interactions are more fragile, indeed, than man's creations to improve both. They flourish while we founder. What we don't get is the engaging storyline, the simple "what's-going-to-happen-next" delight in reading a story that entertains as it instructs, and reassures as it reveals. On this count, the novel fails committed readers who read on, faithfully, watching Bill Chalmers' mysterious condition deteriorate, undiagnosed. Then the book ends.
Rating: 
Summary: ugh
Review: I listened to this book ( 10 Cds!) waiting for something to happen.... waiting, waiting, ( does this sound like the book) and was just totally disappointed in the book. It went no where after a very exciting beginning and left me totally cold. If you are thinking of reading it, don't.
Rating: 
Summary: An Angry, Intelligent Attack on Our Culture
Review: I want to begin on a note of cynicism -- if, in fact, we live in a morally bankrupt society that becomes less intelligent each year, why is the market for highly-literate novels, plays and films about our corporate dystopia so sizeable? "American Beauty" was a surprise hit and it seems that every young novelist in America has been influenced by Don DeLillo. For all the talk about our smothering popular culture, we seem to have ample wriggle room to escape into intelligent critiques of that culture. Is it that we cultural elitists just want to tut-tut those who can't see through the most shallow features of our culture? I hold none of this against Alan Lightman or his fine book. "The Diagnosis" begins with, in my opinion, the best first chapter of the year, a Kafka-esque nightmare of lost identity amid technological chaos. From there, the book deftly changes tone several times, alternating between medical drama, corporate satire, domestic soap opera and philosophical treatise. "The Diagnosis" lives in the same moral universe as Don DeLillo's "White Noise" and even includes two veiled references (one would have been sufficient) to that book. It falls short of DeLillo's greatness because it lacks his humor and keen social insight. Lightman's anger at contemporary America is sometimes suffocating -- every character in the book becomes a victim of his wrath. But taken as a work of philosophy and a snapshot of our times, "The Diagnosis" is effective and (in a strange way) entertaining. Lightman gives no easy payoffs and is completely willing to leave his reader on a down note. But somewhere in this jungle of despair is a glimmer of hope ... if we can just see, feel and hear the real world beneath our virtual creation, there is salvation. Maybe we, the great anti-consumer consumers, are the hope. Even if we aren't, thinking so makes us feel good.
Rating:
Summary: Multiple Narratives and deep meanings
Review: In response to Tim Appelo's review. - Great Review, just to add: Bill's paralysis: (caused by) (smymptom?)His innability to do anything about his situation, his life, the speed car that got him to where is today. Also: Both Socrates and Bill were put in a "Cage"...(but an individual's mind can never be caged..)
Rating:
Summary: Dreary and confusing
Review: The opening chapter is frightening and compelling, but beyond that it was, for me, a tough read. The author doesn't seem to have much sympathy for any of his characters. I didn't either. The wife, Melissa, seems real if not appealing and the son is appealing but not very real. Bill seems to have no personality, no inner drive except to keep going, no moral center, no core of any sort. Is that the point? In my experience most victims of modern society, business, technology, whatever, have a stronger core (often badly flawed) than Bill. Bill doesn't seem to like his meaningless job, but that hardly differentiates him from millions of others and hardly makes him sympathetic. I felt as if I were watching a robot melt down -- fascinating in its way but hardly the subject of great fiction. My curiosity in finding out Bill's ultimate fate was more idle than fueled by any interest in Bill. I really don't think you need to suffer a debilitating illness to figure out that your life is dull and silly.
I got tired of reading his e-mails long before he did, and I guess his high-powered business colleagues had not discovered spell checking -- the misspellings were irritating and a stupid device (to indicate what?).
I actually found the Plato material far more interesting than Bill's story but found only superficial parallels with the main story. It's a relatively short book, but it took me forever to get through it.
Maybe it's time to call a halt to fiction based on "life in modern society is hell and technology rules." It is and it does, but been there, read that.
Well written, I must say.
Rating:
Summary: A book out of its time?
Review: The reviews of this novel have seemed mixed, and that caused me to re-analyze the book prior to writing a review. My initial reaction to The Diagnosis was very positive -- I found the characters were very realistic depictions of the classes of people we see every day. The fictional dialogue of Plato, evidently causes most readers to search for some connection to Bill and his story. I think the connection is there (esp. in the relationships between fathers and sons), but the more important point seems to be the very ambition of Lightman to attempt a connection. In rethinking the book, I began to imagine that this novel was being read by someone in the year 2020. From that perspective, how would it be viewed? It seems that as an allegorical tale that ties the problems of the present to the lessons of the past, there is some significant substance here. The reader of 20 years from now would probably wonder why so much time was spent on useless email (since they will only have useful email in the future, I am sure) and why no accurate diagnosis could ever be found. Surely, then, it is all metaphor and there is no diagnosis for what afflicts us as a society now -- for we are in the middle of it and don't have the perspective of time or distance yet. My bottom line is that The Diagnosis is worth reading now, and may be worth even more to your children.
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