Ada's Realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo

Ada's Realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book began on a rollicking note but then petered out into inanity towards the end. It was a vast temporo-spatial canvas - spanning the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries and encompassing German concentration camps during WWII, coastal West Africa, Dickensian England and Germany at the uncertain time around Brexit. Among the protagonists, besides multiple Ada's in Cloud Atlas like multigenerational incarnations, there is also a palm-frond broom, a leonine door knocker, a room in the Dora concentration camp and a passport, play an important role in the narrative.
One of the Ada's is the renowned Ada King (daughter of the poet Byron), Countess of Lovelace, the famous mathematician – a contemporary of Charles Babbage, Charles Dickens, Michael Faraday etc. She visualized multiple roles of the computer (when it would become a reality, that is), besides just calculations; she foresaw its role in producing music and other forms of communication. Here is an example of her algorithm for the calculation of Bernoulli’s Numbers– purportedly the first computer programme

In consternation at her abilities, her husband's perception of her personality

Secretly, he suspected that she was not so much a countess, but rather some kind of counting machine in human form.

Some more extracts of the author's lyrical prose

A wad of spit flew conspicuously from her mouth and landed a few inches from his feet. It frothed boldly on the red dirt floor before disappearing, bubble by bubble, in the dust…
The toothless ones had made their way at once into the shelter of one of the small houses, salvaging nearly all the food along the way – a single fish head failed to make the exodus from the courtyard to the cover of the buildings and sulked alone, forgotten in the mud.

…such transformations do not come easy. A broom, a doorknocker and a room – these are all tangible objects. They are clearly delineated, halfway consistent, and have something of a monothematic function. A breeze is entirely different.

As a breath of wind, I can neither be seen or touched, although my effects remain perceptible. There is a certain arbitrariness to that. I can “bring something into motion” or “cause chaos”.

Only love is off limits. Love is reserved for God. Which is honestly a bit of a relief for me because love is a worn-out concept anyway – and one which leads quickly to terrible decisions and even worse pop music.

A very original idea of a book!

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