Rating: 
Summary: Mind bending and amusing: 10/10 for memorable endings
Review: (We're a London-based bookgroup of science editors/publishers; these are comments from several of the members)1) As She Climbed Across the Table is a rather unusual book. I think I was taking it too seriously for at least the first half of the book and didn't really look at it from the right angle (but then I didn't expect it to get so surreal). In general, it investigates people's realities and how their reality may change through the eyes of others. It's all about perception. A very interesting end indeed, and I thought for hours about what it might mean and how it might change how I look at my life. The thought that I could quite easily not exist blew my mind. The Blind Men drove me totally mad, as did Alice, for a lot of the book. But the Blind Men's parallel world at the end of the book, and the way Alice's Lack turned on its head near the end, was fabulous! Suddenly I really got it - even if we were talking about three realities (and more), which hurt my brain to contemplate. Mind bending and amusing, there's never been a book quite like it.
2) I liked the way the chapters were so short that they enabled you to get snapshots of what was happening in the narrator's life without getting bogged down in lots of descriptive detail. I thought the descriptions of the different disciplines within the university, and how they interacted, very interesting, and I liked the way the narrator used his abilities to cross the interdisciplinary barriers to make ideas comprehensible to the others (not just to characters in the book). I found the ideas presented in the book very thought-provoking and would be interested in reading further work by the author. The physicist was irritating to me but well presented in terms of character, as were the two blind men. 3) I really didn't enjoy it all that much. It's not that it was too weird for me, more that I really didn't see the point to it. The basic idea was interesting but I don't feel he developed it particularly well. I couldn't care about the characters and so I had little interest in knowing what was going to happen to them. That said, it gets 10/10 for memorable endings (it's up there 'Perfume' and 'After many a summer dies the swan' on that score).
Rating: 
Summary: I laughed, I cried, I bought two more copies for friends.
Review: A fresh, original look at boy-meets-girl, deconstructionism-meets-particle physics, the animal rights movement-meets-the black hole. I'll never again be able to look at Schrodinger's cat with a straight face.
Rating:
Summary: Catching, especially for scientist...
Review: A friend of mine who is a writer slide me the book to read... He said at the time that it was one of those books that people like myself (A chemist) could really appreciate. I took his word for it and dove in... I won't give a synopsis, since that is above, but I will say that the book paints and interesting portrait of what it means to be in a relationship in "modern" times. At times very funny, at times very emotional, but always profound in an introspective sort of way... Writen in a very clear concise style, I would really say read this... I have yet to pick up any of his other books, but I am now very curious about Gun, With Occasional Music...
Rating:
Summary: ROMANCING THE VOID!!
Review: Again, I must state: Lethem is a god! This book is a recipe,, honestly. Add a romance plot with generous helpings of science. Add a layer of a great narrator who is prone to excellent self-observations and all the doubts that a modern, intelligent male may posess. Pepper it with a great cast of supporting characters (including two blind guys with very interesting theories) and add the final ingrediant: an excellent foe named Lack. Stir this all up and you have a wonderful novel that reads like a cold drink on a hot day. You won't put it down until the end, and OH what an end!
Rating:
Summary: this book will redeem itself, don't give up!
Review: At the biginning of this book I thought it was not very well written, and that there must be some mistake- could this book have been a "brilliant" bestseller? But Lethem's books are an aquired taste, and the end of this book is spectacular! I would hate for someone to miss out on this masterpiece just because they lost patience.
Rating:
Summary: See, it was all about the title
Review: Being a big fan of titles, I was suitably impressed with this one. *As She Climbed Across the Table*--I thought, what could this possibly be? It's here, in the sci-fi/fantasy section, so how is the author going to make it apply? And so the title having attracted me, I picked it up and low and behold, the plot sounded really interesting as well. I can't say that I was disappointed with the novel. That wouldn't be entirely true. But, well, the narrator was just annoying. He comes off as a really engaging, quirky type of guy, but his tenacity is just...unbelievable. I found myself getting frustrated with him. And what that boils down to, and it's true of the other characters as well, I just didn't particularly care. I felt...nothing. However, the one remarkably redeeming quality of this novel comes back to the title. The moment of realization, when you see its purpose, now that is a great feeling. So, overall, little emotion, but a nice and suitable ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Send Up of Academia
Review: Both a send-up or parody of academia as well as a take on observer bias, the idea that we only see what we want to see, in science or in love. As She Climbed Across the Table is a love story with a big, literal hole in the middle of it. In the novel, physicists create a void, a little hole in the universe in the lab, and every character in the book sees in this void only what they want to see. Alice, the particle physicist, becomes entranced by the void, and her former love, Philip, finds himself competing with literally, nothing at all. There is great dialogue and anyone who's been in academia will laugh outrageously.
Rating: 
Summary: Jonathan Lethem Feature
Review: Check out the feature in Bold Type (www.boldtype.com) on Jonathan Lethem that includes an excerpt, exclusive audio readings, original author essay, and an interview with the author's editor
Rating:
Summary: Sharp and witty
Review: Don't be fooled by suspiciously similar 1-star reviews! This is a very good book. Lethem collides the worlds of poststructuralist metaphysics and physics in a very entertaining and thought-provoking way, and manages to be quite funny in the process. I thought his style is a little derivative of Don DeLillo's (minimalist observations hinting at much deeper resonances beneath the mundane), but I didn't mind since the whole thing was so well done. Contrary to what an earlier reader said, Lethem clearly knows physics--and philosophy--quite well, and if you have any interest in either of those subjects, you should consider this book. It is short but very tasty.
Rating: 
Summary: Clueless
Review: I don't know whether it's the writer or this reader who's clueless. But this book left me completely cold. The physics experiment at the heart of the plot is so laughably non-scientific that it threw the whole thing off for me.
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