Bellwether

A book review.

Bellwether

by Connie Willis

published: 1997.07.01

ISBN: 9780553562965

genre: Fiction

reviewed:2004.03.26

👍🏼 recommended

This is a light read, a story that follows a sociologist who's researching fads and how they're started. It's set in an academic setting, naturally, and has the interesting quirk of starting each chapter with a research note on a fad. The heroine's got a new assistant who seems to act without care or causality, who does things like "cleaning up the research documents left in piles" and branding her own forehead. Our heroine has to contend with the research granting program and the fallout of her assistant's many wire-crossings. One of these leads to a connection with a chaos theorist who is also a contender for grants but maybe also attractive. This is more of a "madcap" sendup and a bit of a romantic comedy than my usual fare, and I'm glad I picked it up on the recommendation of a staff review in the book store - it doesn't always have to be gloomy Ian Banks or dystopian Mick Farren!

Given that this came out a couple of years before Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point, it's interesting that the story pins fads on certain influencers. Of course in this case it's the lunatic assistant herself that leads to the breakthrough.

I enjoyed the story, it left me feeling up-beat and amused.

(One of the depressing things about maintaining a website over many years is that very occasionally something goes wrong and I lose my originally-published version of a review. This was one of those!)