BOOKS

By Stefan Kanfer

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

by Lisa Grunwald

Knopf; 333 pages; $20

At 30, physicist Alexander Simon has everything, including the Theory of Everything. His new, Nobel-size hypothesis ties up the movement of the tides and the invisible violence of the atom, the phenomenon of light and the drag of gravity. If only this young Einstein were a think-tank nerd, he could insulate himself from the challenges of academic inquiry and worldwide publicity.

But Alexander is all too human. He finds himself retreating from a universe whose significance eludes him and undone by persistent echoes of childhood. It was then that his mother Alice abandoned her family -- but not before she convinced the boy that there are such phenomena as ghosts and guardian angels. As Alexander edges toward nervous collapse, Alice returns from a 20-year absence. With her is Cleo, a seductive and hilarious blond, flourishing every new-age artifice from palmistry and crystal therapy to numerology and astrology. Smitten, Alexander finds himself pulled toward opposing terminals: the arena of scientific investigation and the realm of emotion and mysticism.

In her second work of fiction (the first was Summer, in 1986), Lisa Grunwald displays her own gifts of unification. Alexander's obsession with the quartet of forces that influence every particle is counterbalanced by an enchantment with the four elements of alchemy: water, earth, air and fire. And his search for the ultimate strands of matter vie with a desire to find the basic truths of metaphysics.

Which will triumph? Or is a victory really necessary? Are the two arenas of knowledge irreconcilable? Or are they different entrances to the same estate? Such questions have intrigued scientists ever since Plato first observed that "astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another." Grunwald offers no final answers, but her chart of genius in extremis is witty and sympathetic. In The Theory of Everything, Alexander has come up with an extraordinary insight. His creator has kept pace. She has produced that rarest of all items in the VCR age: an authentic philosophical novel.