This was an extremely imaginative and clever book. Some of the scenes were quite memorable, for example, the description of the birth of Alan's brothers, and the stories of their life in the cave. Doctorow has fine descriptive capabilities.

I found that the two main plots did not quite mesh together for me, the subplot with Kurt not having anything to do with the more interesting family story. And certain interesting ideas got introduced and then dropped, for example, the database, and the idea of his writing a story. Also, I found the letter-named brothers who are referred to by numerous first names to be a bit confusing and serving a purpose that was not apparent to me.

In spite of these flaws, it was an engrossing read that will stay with me. I will be thinking of this book and digesting it now that I have finished reading.