Secret Thoughts

by David Lodge

Helen Reed, a novelist in her early forties, still grieving for her husband who died suddenly a year before, is a visiting teacher of creative writing at a university where Ralph Messenger, a cognitive scientist with a special interest in Artificial Intelligence and an incorrigible womaniser, is director of a prestigious research institute. He is an atheist and a materialist; she is a Catholic who has lost her faith but still yearns for the consolations of religion. Ralph is attracted to Helen and she, in spite of her principles, to him. They argue about the nature of human consciousness, and the different ways it is examined in science and literature, as she resists with weakening resolution Ralph's efforts to seduce her. David Lodge has distilled the story of his acclaimed novel Thinks... to create a witty and absorbing drama about a moral, emotional and intellectual struggle between two exceptional people.

Genres: Fiction

96 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 6, 2011

About the author

David John Lodge was an English author and critic. A literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge also wrote television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T.S. Eliot. In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as Point of View (Henry James), The Stream of Consciousness (Virginia Woolf) and Interior Monologue (James Joyce), beginning with Beginning and ending with Ending.

Reviews

[Bookend McGee]

Wonderful writing as always with DL.

[Penny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I much prefered the book Thinks.

[Jeannie Mackenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lodge never fails to appeal - he knows the frailty of human nature so well. Didn't realise this was a play when I got it, but it was not a problem. Reads like a novel.

[Isobel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Downloaded play instead of book. Would have probably enjoyed the book more but this worked well