The moment he spots Irene, “every electron in every atom in the universe paused, breathed in deeply, assessed the situation, and then reversed its course, spinning backward, or the other way, which was the right way all along. By contrast, George, who was given a description of his future beloved by an astrologer, has been desperately auditioning every woman who fits the bill, to no avail. Irene is deeply skeptical of love and, despite a live-in boyfriend, steers clear of emotional and sexual intimacy. Her new colleague, George Dermont, a cosmologist and professor at the fictional institute, is also on the brink of revealing his revolutionary theory - it involves a gateway to a parallel universe - but has yet to prove it. Astrophysicist Irene Sparks has been recruited by the prestigious Toledo Institute of Astronomy because of her research into black holes, and she moves to take a position there. We don’t know much of this when the novel opens 29 years later. Thank goodness, before that can happen, something ruptures the mothers’ friendship, and Sally orders the whole wacky idea scrapped.

But these two grow up to carry out their scheme, right down to separating their twin toddlers so they won’t remember each other when they finally do meet. Like my tweenage plan to marry Ringo, it’s a fantasy most kids would abandon by about age 15. “Think what you could do for them,” Sally says to her best friend, Bernice, “to make that marriage awesome.” It all starts with two precocious 12-year-old girls who think it would be cool to have babies born on the same day, then groom them to eventually marry each other. Now, Netzer asks if people can be similarly encoded to fall in love - in a match made not in heaven, but on earth. In “Shine Shine Shine,” a feral child was taught to understand facial expressions and how to make conversation in later life, he became a robotics expert who engineered robots to be more life-like.

Shine shine shine by lydia netzer