Book Review: "Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch
Synopsis: “Are you happy with your life?” Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.
Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.
Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”
In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.
Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe. - Ballantine Books
Rating (out of 5): 4
Trigger warnings: drug use, murder, kidnapping, men with superiority complexes
Review: I feel like I’ve said this on every review I’ve written recently, but wow, have I found it hard to focus on a book. I either need something easy with a happy ending, or something so batshit crazy that it keeps my attention. Can you guess which category “Dark Matter” fell into?
In the first twenty pages of the book, Jason Dessen — a physics professor at a middling university in Chicago — has happy hour with his wife and son, drinks with an old classmate, and is abducted and sent into a different timeline by a mysterious assailant. He’s obviously confused, and while he gets answers, he doesn’t trust them.
Instead of bring a happily married family man, he’s leaned into his scientific talent and built a machine that I am not even going to attempt to explain — all because of a single choice made 15 years earlier. I am a glutton for punishment, and I frequently torture myself by asking “what if I had done this,” so this conceit taken to a higher level is right up my alley. The premise of the book is centered on string theory and the multiverse, but don’t worry, Blake Crouch just uses that as a framing device for a familiar story: a lost man, trying to get home.
Jason eventually realizes what needs to be done to get back to his family, and most of the book is going through how he does that — hundreds of alternate roads not taken, until he finds the right world. And of course, when he finds the right world, things aren’t super easy to get back to his status quo.
I’m not going to spoil anything, but I will say that it took me by surprise at the very end. The last bit felt like an action movie plot, and I appreciate how vivid the writing was; I felt like I was there with Jason, Dani, and Charlie. I wasn’t sure how Blake was going to be able to wrap it up in a way that felt appropriate and complete, but of course, the ending was perfectly satisfying.
I read and loved “Recursion” last summer (my review here!), and I know you really shouldn’t compare two books by the same author, but there are no rules anymore, so I’m going to! They are similar in that both are mind-bending and engaging and make you feel simultaneously brilliant and very dumb. I personally liked the story line in “Recursion” more - I love a strong female protagonist - but by no means did I dislike this one.
TL;DR: A quick but by no means easy read about the nature of the multiverse, ambition, love, and what it means to be human. Not the lightest of reads for this time, but it’s definitely one that will capture your imagination.
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