As I could relate with the age, time and place of the main character's life, I took a ride on the depth given to her by Jones. What a trip! I'm still sitting at the table with them over cioppino wishing everyone would come home again. Well, things surely change as California's Over reveals. I'll have to accept this and jump into another ferment of this writer's cast of characters.

A gifted, stylish writer with something new and original to say. Even though the time (1973) and place (Marin County California) and subject (family of a deceased late Beat/early hippie writer) are far removed from my own experience, Jones has the gift of taking you there, spinning you around, getting you interested in the characters and leaving you delighted and enlightened.

I read this in hardcover, and it's amazing. Jones is the only fiction writer I know of now who is truly driven to poetry, that is necessary poetry, not vague lyricism. Every line matters. I live in Saint Louis, MO, and Jones is here at a university to be a visiting writer and just gave a reading of his newest work, about Alaska in 1970, and it heads off in a totally different direction. There's no one writng today with his sincerity and poetry.

This is a novel in which questions that are literally meta-physical (the protagonist is an acclaimed physicist who feels, despite his youth, like he has been put out to pasture after one phenomenal paper) seem unpretentious and accessible because of the humorous contexts in which they arise. Author Jones has very smartly composed a spiritual novel as a domestic farce. It works beautifully.

Jones makes it look easy. He writes with remarkable insight about every little detail of moment-to-moment interactions with time, place, and other people. The character of physicist Mark Perdue and the condo he shares with his new wife (still permeated with "new Mazda" smell - the condo, that is) is beautifully wrought, with conflicting desires and interests, an infantile boredom sitting on top of a metaphysical question which begins to find expression after a sleepless night defending property lines with his unlikely neighbor, Roger.

The novel bravely walks a line with its satirical view of NoCal suburbia, and the beer-lubricated choices made by two very different, rather eccentric men in a backyard that is still a dirt-covered lot scored by tractor trails; and it takes us into some truly farcical territory without losing its credibility or Mark Perdue's hidden longing. Recommended.

I haven't read Jones' other novels, but my experience with "Particles and Luck" has certainly piqued my interest enough that I will look for his other work. This book reminds me of the dreamy, minutia-obsessed work of Nicholson Baker, combined with the anti-heroic, alienated protagonists of Phillip K. Dick. I found the novel less than captivating because of it's rather thin and filmy plot. We are treated to a comprehensive look at one day in the life of physics teacher Mark Perdue who's claim to fame- a paper about epistimology, has both raised him into the public realm, and made him doubtful of his ability to produce further work of the same trenchance. The trouble here is that Mark's life is in some ways too like our own; filled with doubt and useless activity. In the end, the work becomes a "Seinfield" novel --about nothing. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and fits the subject matter well (particle phyisics is often the study of how nothing is, in fact, something), but does this make for exiting reading? The end of the book does tie some of the vagueness together and leaves the reader with a feeling of satisfaction

and how I talk (except for the physics). He brings semi-poetic insight into science, math and even marriage. His explanatory, endearing, often hilarious writing style gives the book a rhythm and a psychic pull. In just one day everything changes, except for routine. I am excited to read his newest book when it is a more affordable paperback.

Jones's first novel is a delight--the cleanly-told and poignant story of two friends and a huge amount of money that may or may not be counterfeit. It is at once a classic meditation on the ancient theme of temptation and poisoned fruit, and a near-perfect gem of a study of (somewhat downwardly mobile) suburban life in Marin County.Jones gives us vivid, endearing characters, high and low comedy, and a richness of compassionate observation. The book's deep affirmation of the ordinary--the money we sweat to make, the love we earn through faithfulness and endurance--is deeply felt and resonant. A gorgeous book--well worth scouring your local used bookstore for (though you may have to look hard and long...).