The Tangerine Tango Equation: Or How I Discovered Sex, Deception, and a New Theory of Physics in Three Short Months: A Novel

Nicky Burden, a 16-year-old physics whiz whose spectacular intellect cannot compensate for his naivete, undergoes rites of passage in this second novel by Targan ( Kingdom ). Sheltered and kept outside traditional schools because of his immeasurably high IQ, brilliant but gullible Nicky enrolls in college to pose experimentally as a ``normal'' student. He becomes a partner in what he thinks is a poster business conducted by his huckster roommate, never questioning the contents of the tubes he delivers to a sleazy guy at a bus stop; he falls in love with campus journalist Sara Logan, convinced that her desire for him extends beyond her quest for a major scoop; he unwittingly supplies his encouraging but self-serving professors with his best ideas. The first-person narration raises the tricky problem of how a teenage super-genius might think and speak, but it is a relief to find Nicky portrayed as an outwardly average young man rather than a standard plaid-shirt-and-taped-glasses nerd. This refreshing, idealistic novel encourages stubborn individuality and acknowledges the complementary merits of science and the arts. (June)