Please Mr Einstein by Jean-Claude Carrière trs John Brownjohn

Quantum physics for the slightly dim

Saint Jerome famously proposed four criteria to determine whether or not a text should be attributed to an author. In order for us to be certain that a text has been created by a particular author, it should not be inferior to the author's other works; it should not contradict what the author has said in other works; it should be stylistically similar to other works by the author and, finally, it should not contain information about events from after the author's death.

This "novel" (it has no plot, themes or characterisation, but "novel" is what is says on the back), a quirky attempt to re-write Einstein for the masses, attempts to reproduce Einstein's thought in his own words in the form of a posthumous conversation he has with a journalism student. And it fails on all Saint Jerome's criteria.

A jeune fille enters a dreary building somewhere in Europe and is granted an audience with Einstein, or at least Einstein's ghost. Over the course of a few hours, he explains relativity, time, quantum physics and other such things to her, while "we" look on. We learn that Einstein has agreed to see this girl before all the others in the waiting room (including Newton) because, as well as having a "touch of impudence" and "physical charms", she is living evidence that the human race has not yet disappeared as a result of the atomic bomb. (After cocking his right forefinger, Einstein corrects the girl: "Because of nuclear weapons, to give them their correct designation.") We also learn that Einstein "did away with the ether" (OK, but didn't Michelson and Morley at least help?) and does not believe in God, despite being famously credited with quotes such as "God does not play dice with the universe" and "I want to know God's thoughts - the rest are mere details."

Einstein's views on religion were more complex than simply believing or not believing in God, and this author has clearly done his research and attempted to reflect something of this complexity. But, because this Sophie's World-style project must always simplify its subject matter for its rather dim ideal reader, all this complexity is flattened out. A discussion of relativity begins with the observation that something that is small to an elephant may seem big to an ant. Again, the material isn't exactly wrong - but it feels awkward.

If Carrière has Einstein contradicting himself without good explanation, he also has him say things that just don't seem, well, like Einstein. There is not one moment in this novel in which it is possible to believe that this is Einstein speaking, and not Carrière.

It doesn't matter that this "could be" a novel about experiencing knowledge and that we are not necessarily required to read the Einstein character literally. The character shares the same name, and that is enough to spoil it all. When George Gamow wanted to fictionalise these kinds of ideas, he created the character Mr Tompkins, who was credible precisely because he was fictional. It probably goes without saying that Einstein did a better job of explaining his theories in his own popular science book, Relativity.

If plagiarism is the appropriation of someone else's words that are then passed off as your own, then this book must represent the opposite: forcing somebody to speak with your voice. But it's somehow worse than simple literary ventriloquism. The imposition of Carrière's words on Einstein is a strange form of ghostwriting, in which the subject's authentic words are replaced by a fantasy, a phantasm, reanimated for no discernible purpose. This kind of Poltergeist-writing can only be a hoax, a fake. There are no ghosts, of course, only the person creating the illusion.