Shine Shine Shine

How I adore Sunny and Maxon. They are unusual people trying to make their honest way in a world that puts them at outs with ‘normal’ people. Sunny’s observations are devastating and Maxon’s are robotic and mathematical. They harbor an unconditional love for each other that supercedes all lies, decisions, secrets, and events. I have no doubt that they will make it.

The backstory comes out gradually and not sporadically, with the deep and dark secrets only revealed grudgingly, almost glancingly. Telling it any other way would have given it more importance than it needed, the secrets would have overshadowed what Sunny and Maxon are making of their lives.

How could Rache know anything, when Sunny had been lying to her from the start? show more But she put that thought in the box, and she closed the box. And the screaming, and the tearing at herself, and the crawling under her bed to wait for death, was packed into the box, and the box was shut, and taped shut, and she would not open the box, or think about the box. p. 187

Every page is lyrical, every page presents things in a new or additional light. Mistakes have been made, lives changed by dramatic decisions, but everything is going to be okay.

I found this book amazingly hopeful in a very crazy world. show less

This unusual novel, Shine, Shine, Shine, features a Nobel-winning scientist, his wife who is torn between her exquisite eccentricity and her desire for normalcy, their brilliant, autistic son, and a baby on the way. The husband Maxon is clearly but cheerfully on the spectrum himself, and is the key to colonizing the moon. Somewhere around 29 years old, he is an artist when it comes to robots, making them able to cry, laugh and dream - and make more robots.

"There are three things robots cannot do: . . . Show preference without reason (LOVE) . . . Doubt rational decisions (REGRET) . . . Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE)".

Maxon has preference without reason for childhood friend Sunny, and she reciprocates. There are show more some concise mathematical analyses of human behavior in the book (created by the author's coder husband and a mathematician friend), as Sunny and her brave mother Emma educate neglected Maxon on how to interface with the world. Maxon is tall, geeky and (to Sunny at least), sexy, and her congenital baldness (reminiscent of movie robots) is part of his overwhelming attraction to her.

Maxon is heading to the moon, with his robots who will build other robots and the foundation for an Earth colony. But something goes awry, and his genius will be needed if he and the crew are even to survive. Meanwhile, Sunny's mother is dying and Sunny is pregnant. Circumstances drive Sunny to rethink the life of normalcy she has created in the hope their son (and impending baby) won't experience the difficulties growing up that she and Maxon did.

In an afterword interview, the author explains, "{A}s a weirdo who is married to a weirdo and parenting two weirdos, I am saddened by our modern need to make sure everyone fits in, and functions smoothly, and checks all the necessary boxes. Some amazing and brilliant people do not, and never will, fit in."

The novel celebrates the beauty and challenges of not fitting in, and reflects on the desire to be normal, and the bravery needed to be just who you are. I loved it. Not quite 5 stars - the structure was a little jumpy for me in places - but close. show less

“Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone”
-Elton John

Sunny, is a young housewife, struggling to keep up appearances, while her life is sliding out of control. Her son, Bubber, is autistic and she is pregnant with her second child. She wears a variety of wigs, to disguise the fact she was born bald and remains so. Her mother is dying from cancer and her brilliant scientist husband is currently heading to space, on a rocket, to assist colonizing the moon with robots. The marriage was on shaky ground before his departure and it looks like Sunny is left to handle it all alone.
This is a beautifully written story about helplessness, identity and making tough choices. It also contains a razor-sharp wit, causing this reader to break show more into a smile on a few occasions. Think of a cross between Anne Tyler and the film directors, Tim Burton and David Lynch, with a warmer, more optimistic under-coating.
Netzer is a fresh, engaging new talent and this turned out to be one of the most pleasant literary surprises, I’ve experienced this year. show less

This was an unexpected delight. The love story of a man, Maxon, who uses pseudocode to define his verbal and emotional responses to the world and his wife, Sunny, born with complete alopecia in Burma. The real heart of the novel is the tension between Sunny's desire to fit in with the world as it is, and hide her baldness, as a metaphor for the things that make us different from others, coming to terms with wanting to be the hero of a world of one's own making, with those who are different from us being the outsiders.

The writing is gorgeous. The story beneath the story, of Maxon going to help colonize the moon is interesting and numerous backstories flesh out both characters as full, flawed people, not just subject to the plot.

Lydia Netzer is a very quirky, creative author whose riffs on reality may not appeal to all readers, but I love the books she has written.

This story is about Sunny Mann, pregnant with her second child, and living the “Stepford" life in Norfolk, Virginia. Her husband, Maxon, is a brilliant Nobel-prize winner with Asperger syndrome who is on his way to the moon with other astronauts to try to set up a colony there with the aid of robots Maxon designed.

Sunny was born without any hair anywhere on her body, but after she became pregnant with her first child, “Bubber,” she started wearing a wig, as well as false eyebrows and false eyelashes. The idea of being a mother was terrifying to Sunny. She was obsessed with being “normal,” show more because that’s what she thought a mother should be. There are expectations of a mother, she thought; she must fill a role. She felt every bit as much of a robot as those that Maxon built.

And in fact, Maxon’s robots were very humanistic, except for three qualities he had not yet been able to program:

"Show preference without reason (LOVE)

Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)

Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE)"

This story is all about how Sunny goes from being a robot who can’t fully do those things to a person who can. In the process she discovers that in fact no one is really perfect, no matter what their external appearances suggest. Yet they have children, deal with parents, cope with the losses and triumphs of life, love, and are loved, nevertheless.

Discussion: Not only does Sunny’s husband have Asperger syndrome (AS) but their son Bubber does as well. Sunny has to deal with her anger that Bubber is not “normal,” and of course blames Maxon. Maxon doesn’t understand why Sunny can’t just love Bubber exactly the way he is. Over the course of the book, she discovers how unrealistic her expectations of “normal” are (in the process learning that among geniuses, this disorder is not so uncommon). She also learns that living with “imperfect” in both herself and others is actually the only way to be happy, as well as to enable one to love, to have no regrets, and to forgive.

Evaluation: I adored this book and love this author. She writes with intelligence, enriching stories about families and relationships by riffing on the intersection of science and emotion, and how we know what is real and true. In addition, she clearly has so much heart and compassion for her characters that you can’t help loving them, with forgiveness, and without regret. show less

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer follows the love story of Sunny and Maxon, but it is so much more than just a love story. Sunny was born completely hairless during an eclipse while her family was in Burma. Her missionary father was executed by the Communists and her mother moved back to the States. Sunny and Maxon met as children and knew one thing: that they belonged together. Now married, Maxon is a very successful Nobel-winning autistic NASA scientist who is on a mission to colonize the moon with self-replicating robots. Sunny is his very pregnant wife, left behind on earth with their autistic 4 year-old son, Bubber. In their current suburban life, Maxon's success has afforded them a model house. Sunny wears a variety of blond wigs show more to hide her baldness and keeps an expensively furnished, immaculate house. It soon becomes clear that Sunny has tried very hard to reinvent herself as the perfect suburban mother, which has put a great deal of self-induced stress on them.

But after Maxon leaves for the moon, Sunny has a car accident that sends her wig flying off in her neighborhood. This exposure of her secret causes Sonny to re-examine her life and the choices she has made in order to fit in and seem "normal." Then a meteorite hits the space ship Maxon is on, placing the mission and his life in jeopardy. To complicate matters further, Sonny is now feeling contractions, her mother is dying in the hospital, and she's re-examining Bubber's need for medication. Sunny's on-going crisis situation causes her to question if she needs to embrace the idiosyncrasies of her and her family. She soon begins to wonder what makes us human and if such a thing as normal exits.

In Shine Shine Shine, Lydia Netzer has penned a clever, imaginative novel full of great descriptive language and unique, quirky characters. The language flowed beautifully, as read by Joshilyn Jackson on my audio version. It has a strong message about accepting the peculiarities and faults of others rather than everyone striving for a Stepford-like conformity. Netzer alternates between the points of view of Maxon and Sunny. She also gives us backstory along with current events to help us better understand these characters and their motives. Sunny is not a perfect character, but that was the point. She tried to put on the facade and be perfect for others. Once her cover was blown, Sunny realizes that she has to accept who she is and who Maxon is and who Bubber is - and that each of them is special and unique.

Very Highly Recommended - one of the best

This was my first audio book. I have to admit that I missed seeing the words in a physical copy of the book. I loved listening to Jackson read the story, however, and I'd like to get an audio CD of one of her books just to hear her read it. show less

Maxon’s autistic mind parses the world through formula infused thoughts. He’s married to Sunny, his lifelong love, a born hairless free spirit whose artistic acumen has allowed her to construct the facade of suburban normality she thinks is best for their young son. But as the novel opens, things aren’t going so well. Maxon is flying to the moon on a NASA mission with robots he designed to build a lunar colony, but his now meteor damaged rocket is drifting, lost in space and cut off from all Earth communication. Sunny is on an hurried errand in her minivan but her car is hit by a Land Rover, sending her wig out the window and into a muddy puddle, exposing her bald secret to the world. Plus her mother is dying slowly in the local show more hospital, her son is medicated with an ever changing pill regime to quash his autistic behaviors, and her uterus is holding a new baby who’s threatening to come out too early.

Flashback scenes in the rugged rural Pennsylvania town where Sunny and Maxon grew up, and Burma where Sunny was born to a missionary father and a determined mother, fill out the story which reads like science flecked poetry. Shine Shine Shine captivated and charmed me completely. I love its celebration of neurodiversity, and as someone who has been temporarily hairless through chemotherapy I'm thrilled to read a book featuring a bald woman. show less