Alan Lightman's 1994 novel "Good Benito" continues the vignette style he used in "Einstein's Dream" (1993), in this case it is Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn personal experiences of Bennett and friends but in the Space Age.

In the "best" Iowa Writers tradition, Lightman shifts the plot back and forth in time (a serious consideration in all of Lightman's novels), leaving the reader to determine what the shift is all about. Emerging is a very grim picture of a family life (his father is totally withdrawn, his mother is a nut, his uncle totally spoils his graduation party), with not much improvement in interpersonal relationships (although there is considerable space to young Bennett and friend concocting computer-like devices a la Steve Jobs). 

The one bright light in Bennett's life is mathematics, "beautiful mathematics." No interpersonal problems, it is "a world without bodies, . . . a world of clear logic and grace."

While Bennett's positively described his world by equations," that precision was never in his personal life, including the end of the book where is wife replicates the mental instability and rejection of Bennett, just as he experienced with his mother. No "good Benito" anywhere.

Review by a Gulfport patron.