Baird can never quite transcend his academic way of framing and relativizing experience. The writing is thoughtful but wordy and diffuse. One wishes more poetic pressure had been brought to bear on the scenes. Some kind of revelation is at hand, but none of the characters in this tantalizing novel seem able to focus on it.
As a satire...uneven ... Baird admirably creates tension between the weighty metaphysical questions to which his characters have devoted their professional lives and the way they actually confront the mystical ... But as the scholarly arcana pile up, their function becomes muddied and ambiguous. The Nimbus is so intent on skewering its infinitely skewerable protagonists that they feel more like ciphers than fully developed characters. The satire loses complexity along with them.
Baird’s deconstruction of the reigning misogyny in higher education is salient, but his prose — for all its wit and self-awareness — ultimately feels like an intellectual exercise about the sexist and racist perils of academia rather than an immersive representation of them ... For all the lofty talk of religion and faith and academia, this is a novel about dirty work of parenthood — or rather, how parenthood collapses the binary of sacred and profane.
Far from a doctrinal slog ... Baird does not deliver easy answers, nor imply simplistic morals. Instead, he lets uncertainty linger, particularly through the novel’s unusual preface ... Smart, smooth.
Intriguing, entertaining, and often searing in its critiques of academia, this is also a fascinating portrait of a family pulled apart by ambition and unexpected events.
A caustic send-up ... Baird’s satire takes no prisoners in its unflinching condemnation of those who hope for miracles while evading their day-to-day responsibilities. This packs a stinging punch.
