This is a book that is so easy to read and very hard to put down. Bill Chalmers, the main character, is an upcoming junior partner, in a very modern Boston technology company. Bill seemingly has it all, family, suburban house, money, career etc.

Suddenly Bill Chalmers encounters progressively bad and mysterious health problems. A weird episode at the hospital emergency ward is the weakest part of the book. Two physicians, with no proper authority and without following any sort of a standard protocol, experiment on Chalmers. Many critics and reviewers have quite rightly, slammed this part as far-fetched and comically unrealistic. However, it does not really detract from the over all book and at times it may even add a little suspense as the search for a diagnosis moves on.

E-mails and Instant Messages, and the way they have totally affected everyday life for a part of the American society is so well portrayed. In fact, after your read Lightman's Diagnosis, books that deal with the same type of people in 2001 USA seem to be missing out on parts of their lives. From their on line life, we get to know more about Bill's family. The closeness Bill and his son share in real life is also extended to their on line life,

Melissa, who mostly stays by Bill through his illness, is full of the stereotypical affluent suburban wife contradictions. On line affair with a stranger, runs a business that has no hope of making money, yet annoys Bill with the constant change in his home furniture and a sense of climbing up the social ladder along with an on going tension with her Southern roots. Melissa's relationship with the son was practically non-existent in the book. In all, Lightman did not really want us to like her much.

We also get to meet some of Bill's work colleagues neighbors, old school friend, his mother and sister in law. This all takes place as Bill's condition deteriorates. Lightman's portrayal's of Bill's doctor and shrink and Bill's dealings with the whole health care world were fascinating and well done. You do really get a very clear sense of the world Bill comes from and lives in.

A major part of the book, perhaps over a quarter of it, is an ancient Greek story fictionalized by Lightman. This is so well written and gripping in its own right. It takes us to a whole different world with Socrates and his contemporaries. The symbolic link between the two stories is not immediately obvious; it does not jump out at you. The Greek tale can really provoke lots of thoughts, the self assured Athens of Socrates days does in ways compare with our own self assured society of 2001, or does it not? Is Chalmers more of Socrates rejecting the society by his body then by his brain too, or is he more the society itself. You can, if you wish, enjoy yourself seeking out the symbolism, or just ignore it and enjoy a short Greek tragedy within a contemporary "hub" tragedy!

As Chalmers condition deteriorated, he spent more time reflecting on little things. A most beautiful, yet sad, part of the book is Chalmers getting obsessed with a leaf. Chalmers entertains himself for hours tracing leafs. Lightman does a very convincing job in presenting the mind of man gradually coming to terms with the hopelessness of his position, eventually losing hope.

The quotes from Norman Mailer and Annie Proulx on the back cover of this book are so very accurate, enjoy!

I want to begin on a note of cynicism -- if, in fact, we live in a morally bankrupt society that becomes less intelligent each year, why is the market for highly-literate novels, plays and films about our corporate dystopia so sizeable? "American Beauty" was a surprise hit and it seems that every young novelist in America has been influenced by Don DeLillo. For all the talk about our smothering popular culture, we seem to have ample wriggle room to escape into intelligent critiques of that culture. Is it that we cultural elitists just want to tut-tut those who can't see through the most shallow features of our culture?

I hold none of this against Alan Lightman or his fine book. "The Diagnosis" begins with, in my opinion, the best first chapter of the year, a Kafka-esque nightmare of lost identity amid technological chaos. From there, the book deftly changes tone several times, alternating between medical drama, corporate satire, domestic soap opera and philosophical treatise.

"The Diagnosis" lives in the same moral universe as Don DeLillo's "White Noise" and even includes two veiled references (one would have been sufficient) to that book. It falls short of DeLillo's greatness because it lacks his humor and keen social insight. Lightman's anger at contemporary America is sometimes suffocating -- every character in the book becomes a victim of his wrath.

But taken as a work of philosophy and a snapshot of our times, "The Diagnosis" is effective and (in a strange way) entertaining. Lightman gives no easy payoffs and is completely willing to leave his reader on a down note. But somewhere in this jungle of despair is a glimmer of hope ... if we can just see, feel and hear the real world beneath our virtual creation, there is salvation.

Maybe we, the great anti-consumer consumers, are the hope. Even if we aren't, thinking so makes us feel good.

As is often the case with writers of the magnitude of Alan Lightman who set a benchmark such as his "Einstein's Dreams" early in their writing career, subsequent novels are placed under such intense dissection that they can fall by the wayside, establishing the author as a "one note song" man. Reviews that disparage "The Diagnosis" can prevent many readers from the pleasures (?) to be found in this book.

Lightman has chosen a theme that is terrifyingly real in 2001: what happens to the cloned automatons that have been produced by this age of information? The main character starts out as being very familiar to us all - a man driven by exacting time frames, scheduled advances in a competitive career involving computer inormation, depersonalization to the point of communicating with his son by email, subject to his wife's infidelity via an online romance. In his highspeed race to continue competing he suddenly confronts nature in the form of a mugging with resultant amnesia and deterioration of his nervous system (his prior overactive network of neurotic adaptation) and gradually the complete deterioration of his physical body. Forced to confront all the demons created by his parental Information Age Wizardry (organized Healthplans, physicians who realte to computer screens rather than the patient, colleagues who are quick to point out his diminished productivity, etc.), he liquifies into an angry helpless drooling and empty man. His only real conection to the son he "loves" is via an email pirating of a Plato Online course.

This is a sad but too true evaluation of where we happen to find ourselves in this cold, distant world of instant information and gratification. Lightman writes beautifully and many pages of this novel read with fine poetic perception. But the main reason to read this excellent book is to become aware of just how much damage we have done to our spiritual life - before we each step into the shoes of Lightman's characters. Sobering and insightful.