Ponder: The Solitude of Prime Numbers

The Solitude of Prime Numbers, written by twenty-seven year old physicist Paolo Giordano, is the second book I have read by this author. It is copyrighted in 2008 in its original language of Italian and translated to English with a 2009 copyright. I was surprised with the eloquence of the language, not anticipating such verbal and emotional acuity from what I assumed to be a predominantly a left-brained author. It was hard to believe that the book had been translated from Italian to English. It exhibited a nuance of word choices that exquisitely drove home a sense of solitude that coexisted within the unique relationship between loners Alice and Mattia. Anyone with an ounce of nerdiness within his being can relate to parts of this book, at least to some "cringe" level. The description on the back cover drew me in.

The first two chapters of this book each deal with a trauma in the childhood of Alicia and Mattia. Alicia experiences a physical accident and Mattia experiences a loss of a family member. At this point I considered setting aside the book as too depressing, but instead I forged ahead. I wondered how these events would form the life attitudes and social adjustments of Alicia and Mattia. Alicia and Mattia met each other in their teen years at school. As I read further along though, I began to believe that their innate personalities, rather than early life traumas, determined who each was and how he/she reacted to social situations. The title of the book is explanatory, alluding to the lives of the two main characters, but this passage from chapter 21 fascinated me.

Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in an infinite series of natural numbers, squashed like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all the others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason, they couldn't do it.   ... In his first year at university, Mattia had learned that, among prime numbers, there are some that are even more special. Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43.   ...when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. 

The Solitude of Prime Numbers is the debut novel of Paolo Giordano. I sought out this book after having read and being impressed with his essay-length non-fiction book, How Contagion Works. Giordano won the prestigious Italian literary award, the Strega Prize for The Solitude of Prime Numbers, impressively being the youngest author ever to do so. This author delivers a unique blend of science and relationships, in a style peppered with eloquent, yet precise, language that qualified the young author as a winner. The judging process for the award decision is described in the Wikipedia Strega Prize article

The Strega Prize (Italian: Premio Strega [ˈprɛːmjo ˈstreːɡa]) is the most prestigious Italian literary award. It has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction written in the Italian language by an author of any nationality and first published between 1 May of the previous year and 30 April.

Giordano wrote How Contagion Works: Science, Awareness, and Community in Times of Global Crisis in 2020 when Italy was in the depths of suffering during the early learning stages of the COVID-19 epidemic. See my 4/24/20 post for my review of that book. It focused not just on the science of the world but on the humanity of the world.

In times of contagion, therefore, what we do or don’t do is no longer just about us. This is the one thing I wish for us never to forget, even after this is over.

I feel like this author is able to cross the divide that is sometimes perceived to exist between science and art, left-brain dominant people versus right-brain dominant people. I am reminded about a demonstration I once experienced in a lecture. A classic optical illusion was displayed, that of the Old Hag and the Fair Lady – which do you see? The audience was asked to stand initially, and then to sit down once they were able to see both images. Those that remained standing, fell either into the "old hag" or the "fair lady" camp. The audience was then told that further communication – and hypothetically, compromise – was bordering on futile, since each side could see only their own point of view. 

This author bridges the science/art chasm and speaks to each side, a rare talent indeed. I will be seeking out his other books; I really like his style and topics. I rate The Solitude of Prime Numbers five stars. ★★★★★  Great! Read it!