Rating: 
Summary: skip the movie A.I. , read this book instead
Review: Granted, I'm a fan of David Lodge, but after finding his last novel, Therapy, disappointing I approached Thinks... hesitantly. I didn't need to. His work has become less spectacular since Small World but more subtle, and Thinks... delivered all that Therapy withheld. Part of its brilliance is how the characters' belief in computers or literature interplays with science or the humanities' own power in the story. His middle-aged characters are properly weathered versions of the 20-somethings he wrote about in his earlier books. Part of the pleasure is in seeing how his concept of characters has aged. Another is the sheer joy of reading an author who can turn a phrase so well, so competently, wring so much out of an economically described scene, person, situation. And just for fun, the sample student essays written in the style of other authors are terribly clever. A Martin Amis version of life as a bat had tears streaming from my eyes. A good book to bring lapsed Lodge fans back to the fold; a subtle, seasoned novel to make converts of new readers.
Rating:
Summary: Blew my mind away ... really
Review: Having no prior knowledge of David Lodge and his works, I bought this book as a "time killer" at the Munich Aeroport, being one of the few books not in German. To my surprise, I was blown away at the depth in which Lodge discussed various technical topics so accurately. I can at least say, what he said about AI and cognitive science is much more accurate than in a science fiction novel. From time to time, I return to the first chapter to see how brilliantly Lodge, through the voice of Messenger, argued against Native Indians being more ecologically conscious than their European counterparts. It reminded me of the Picture of Dorian Gray.
The rest of the novel is written in shifting perspective, mainly between Messenger and Helen, in various media formats (journals, dictaphones, even electronic documents). This is not unlike Dracula (not sure if Bram Stoker first introduced this style of writing, but the Dracula was certainly the first I have read). Lodge scored points on style, cleverly using devices (for the lack of better term) "voice testing" and typos to add to the atmosphere and realism.
As much as Thinks being a captivating novel, the premise does break down near the end, the novel lost its momentum slightly. I think the problem was due to a number of new but somewhat irrelevant subplots introduced near the end, that ended up being distracting (at least to me).
Despite the flaw, I think it is a very well written book, with lots of experiments which turned out to be quite charming. The essay assignments written by Helen's students are simply amusing to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Less substance, more cheap stylistic and prurient tricks
Review: Here Lodge uses so many standard tricks that you could almost say he was parodying himself: university setting (Small World, Nice Work, Changing Places); a writer as persona (Therapy); parodying other writers (The British Museum Is Falling Down); an incorporated lecture (everything) - this time on consciousness, particularly as it relates to cognitive science and AI; altering perspectives (Therapy); altering styles (Changing Places, How Far Can You Go), particularly diarising (Paradise News, Therapy), lapsed Catholics (several), explaining/defending his writing technique to the reader as part of the text (most overtly in How Far Can You Go), oh, and, of course, fornication and/or adultery (everything). Maybe it's a conscious thing and trainspotters like myself are supposed to pick the deliberate references to all his other novels along the way: Robyn Penrose drops in; Keirkegaard is mentioned; Catholic birth control gets a cameo (although that's pretty endemic) etc.
As ever he's researched his topic thoroughly and made it palatable. There are passages of his bravely incisive honesty - as when he really gets down to the bones of what Helen (his lapsed catholic novelist/academic lead character) wanted out of her children's catholic education: a mild and conveniently temporary faith, and enough bible knowledge to appreciate such a rich store of literary allusion - something she probably couldn't admit to herself at the time. His settings generally feel authentic - he has the sense to depict the sort of places he's actually been, or to get good advice. Moreover his novels are tailor made to be discussed: glancing at the opening paragraph in this review, give me 2500 words on similarities and differences in this and any other of his books; here he gives Helen some perfect lines to lift to explain why a novelist (himself) would construct a book in a certain way. There are many pleasures in reading him.
That being said, however, the novel as a whole felt a bit hollow. I suspect its greatest weakness is the great morass of sex and talk about sex that you have to trawl through along the way. Extra-marital sex isn't quite the utter redemption/salvation it is of Out of the Shelter, Therapy and Paradise News - for a change bonking is not the climax and unequivocally happy resolution - and while Helen's affair does initially appear to do her a power of good, there's no future in it, and she actually begins to look quite foolish. However there are just too many pages devoted to the bedroom for Lodge to be merely offering mature analysis of an interesting topic without being overly coy. At some point it becomes gratuitous, just as Tom Clancy will gratuitously throw in car chases and flying bullets to distract us from his lack of insight. It's not quite erotic literature, but it's definitely voyeuristic - sort of a gossip novel, not getting carried away with detailing pulsating members and the like, but relishing just who's doing what to whom for just a bit too long and a bit too frequently.
And I really thought Lodge would be over this by now - I'm reminded of the fool chiding King Lear, something about how he couldn't be old because he's clearly not yet wise. When is he going to get this sex thing into perspective? It's not nothing, but it's not everything either. A while ago Lodge did pick that his local bishop may not have had all the answers, but doesn't appear to have lost faith in the philosophy of something as juvenile (and stupid) as Pretty Woman. The writer of Ecclesiastes gave it a fair burl, but did eventually work out that among other things sex wasn't the ultimate place to find meaning. Lodge does at least seem to be self-aware enough to realise that sex does seem to dominate the book to an obsessive degree so, through mouthpiece Helen, he offers a defence. When she is questioned about the sex in *her* novels she explains that of course the frequency and deviancy is exaggerated, but more standard monogamous relationships just aren't interesting enough for the reader. This lame defence really isn't worthy of a writer who:
a) has the skills to write about a range of issues, characters and experience without needing to fall back on titillation - as if it's the only possible subject that can sustain interest (he might as well endorse Clancy as writing the only readable fiction - readers can't cope unless there's a bomb about to go off somewhere and some macho posturing and biffo every few pages);
b) has literally read thousands of good novels where titillation isn't used at all;
c) has read myriad others that don't shy away for a moment from dealing powerfully with issues of fidelity and sexuality, without crossing the line into prurience (Lodge, in contrast, rushes over the line and can only manage to drift back again now and then).
The irony for me (and I suspect many others) is that what is inadequately explained as a concession to entertain readers actually makes the novel more tedious. I don't read Lodge for seedy revelations, and I suppose if that was what I was after I could find better elsewhere anyway. He can write with passion, humour, insight and wit - but you have to endure a lot of other stuff to get there in this book.
So, a bit of a blast for one of my favourite writers - I'm more aggrieved I suppose because I hope for more - definitely more than just playing with styles almost as a student exercise and thinking lashings of sex can cover paucity of substance.
Rating: 
Summary: Cool, David!
Review: How can some people criticise Lodge's latest I really don't know. This is definitely one of his best books and it mixes perfectly humour with some pretty serious stuff, plus it once again shows Lodge as being the most entertaining and experimenting narrator. For me, 'Thinks' is the best novel of 2001. Easily. And I do read a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Yet another interesting work from Lodge
Review: I read all of David Lodge's works of fiction when I discovered him about 15 years ago. Thereafter I read the odd one, but it's been nearly 5 years since I last read anything of his. I found this different from the others, yet not disappointing. I could relate to most of the characters, and the story was believable, as well as containing a couple of twists that I didn't see coming. The scientific research on Artificial Intelligence was well-covered, so much so that I stopped after chapter 3 to see in the Acknowledgements where he had got his material from? The parodies of Amis, Welsh, Beckett, Stein etc were excellent!
Rating:
Summary: no action and the thinking isn't fresh
Review: I used to be in this field, or near it, and I was prepared to be
amused if nothing else. I was, a bit: I know some people like Ralph
Messenger and certainly his style of thinking and argumentation is
familiar, although his real-world counterparts probably spend more
time worrying about funding than sex. However, I didn't care for the
novel very much. The philosphical ideas are old hat, and the rest of
the novel is just boring: there's nothing significant at stake for any
of the characters, and not much really happens except for the
protracted preliminaries to an affair. The subtext of the novel would
seem to be Lodge's own seduction by the new (to him) ideas of
cognitive science, and his bemused reactions from the perspective of
the humanities. There's been much better novelistic depictions of
interaction between the two cultures (ie, in the work of Richard
Powers).
Rating:
Summary: another standard david lodge novel
Review: I used to love reading David Lodge's novels. This one tires me. I got half way happily enough, but I can't find any reason to keep reading. Predictably enough there's a promiscuous professor and a glamorous lifestyle and vaguely interesting light philosophical questions to be discussed. There's a woman character who is given as much time to narrate as the protagonist (the novel alternates between diary entries and an omniscent third person narrator) but she is so annoyingly portrayed. There is such a consciousness of her being a woman and it just reads false. For instance buying a bathing suit, Lodge has her complain about how hard these things are for women, having to choose a suit to show your body attractively. Perhaps it rings so false because of the continual obsession of the much more convincing (though obnoxious) male protagonist with female bodies as objects. I'd recommend some of Lodge's earlier novels instead. Small World has the same theme in many ways (academics, sex and conferences) but it's so much more lively.
Rating:
Summary: Polite construction
Review: Now and then Lodge treats us to moments of great poetry, such as when the lonely Helen tries to evesdrop her neighbours:
"Once I pressed my ear to the wall and listened for the sounds of sexual congress, but heard nothing except the beating of my own heart". This book is like a ship in a bottle, exquisitely constructed, each piece lovingly created, with the finest tweezers adjusted,
polished... one pulls the strings, and the complete ship is somhow disappointing, after all. His personae are all so well constructed, the book follows a winding course of philosophy, theory, humor, plot twists, will they or will they not gossip and very amusing observations (such as the campus with the absurd arts building built as far as possible from the science one). Yet at the end the figures are forgettable... one is lured in by one's own instinct to evesdrop and pry (the book is told mostly through diary or private recordings). But these 40-something hover near the treaded not to say clichee, and the overall politeness to the reader as well as his personae, keeps the author at a distance somehow. One can also suspect that this book was constructed with an ever so slight leer at the academia, it lends itself too easily for analysis and commentary. But I, for one, after the entertainment, wish to fall in love, and it did not happen this time.
Rating: 
Summary: Blech! Irritating and pretentious, and usually I love Lodge
Review: The characters were flat, had nothing interesting to say, and even pretty reprehensible in my opinion. Ralph (50-yr old uni professor) came across as pre-pubescent in his ridiculous oversexed drooling idiocy. I can appreciate a story about a randy uni professor, as I have appreciated Lodge's past books in that vein. But Ralph's motivations were so cliche...how he talked about the experience, including the adolescent terminology, resulted in a bunch of out-loud groans and eyeball-rolling from me.
And Helen. Useless. One-dimensional. I think her character would have made more sense if some of the things that happened to her had happened in a different order. But as it was, she only rarely made any sense.
All of the blah-blah-blah about consciousness theory and AI was utterly boring and even Lodge didn't seem interested in it.
This isn't my most thorough review but I'm pretty disgusted.
This book showed such a lack of polish and finesse, that I even mentioned to my husband at one point that I wondered if it would turn out to be some kind of exercise, like the exercises Helen made her grad students do. Any thoughts on this, other dislikers of this book? Anyone think it's possible Lodge was writing in the style of someone not himself, as Helen asked her students to write in the style of Rushdie or Irvine et al? It seems ludicrous, but at the same time, this book is so much less than one expects of Lodge. It seems like Lodge imitating Jackie Collins or something.
Rating: 
Summary: I really don't think this is Lodge's best
Review: The David Lodge of Changing Places and Small World was great.These books are among my favourites. But THIS book...Pretentious,mawkish,boring and absolutely devoid of charm.
An exercise in tabloid psychology. I've read the works of Damasio and Pinker, among the others brain researchers mentioned by Lodge as inspirators for this book, and, believe me, if you want to know about human nature, you'll better read them.
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