In this wry début novel, which reflects on modern parenting and campus politics, a community is upended when a two-year-old boy begins to glow…. Baird’s quasi-satirical story emphasizes the tussle between high-mindedness and baser instincts.
Baird’s debut novel, which is at once a realist (and satirical) campus novel and speculative science fiction, depending on how one looks at it. The novel alternates between the eyes of different characters trying to make sense of the boy’s glow, including his father, a divinity professor.
Compelling…elegant and precise…The Nimbus arrives at a moment when American culture is grappling with questions of truth, authority and meaning. What makes Baird’s contribution so valuable is his refusal to choose sides in the battles between reason and faith, skepticism and belief.… A beautiful argument for the necessity of mystery.
The Nimbus is a hilarious and powerful portrait of faith (or perhaps more accurately the crisis of faith) in a secular and lost age…. Both big hearted and boundless in its spiritual examination.
A caustic send-up of the campus novel…. Baird's satire takes no prisoners.… This packs a stinging punch.
Baird is brilliant, and so is his remarkable novel about faith, family, and the life of the mind. Read this wonderful book. You’ll be glad to own it.
I think that there are miracles in the world, but realistic novels don’t usually tackle them. Baird’s intelligence, compassion and humor illuminate this astonishingly original debut, which somehow manages to ask hard questions about how to live while also being enormously fun to read.
A big-hearted novel about the biggest questions—marriage, religion, parenthood, meaning. The Nimbus is comic and profound, a novel that practically glows. Robert P. Baird is a huge talent.
I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed getting lost in the pages of a novel this much. Set in an academic milieu that is captured with delicious precision, and populated with intricately drawn characters as intelligent and compelling as they are believable, The Nimbus is as humane and psychologically astute as it is entertaining—the kind of novel that reminds you why you read fiction in the first place.
Robert P. Baird has written a novel of remarkable breadth, one that ponders both the big mysteries (God, miracles) and the small ones (petty graduate school advisers). The Nimbus is a revelation, a book that explores our deep longing for something extraordinary in an otherwise ordinary world.
