Tony Tulathimutte’s Brains—winner of the Malahat Review’s annual novella contest—is a great story by a talented writer, despite the unappealing title.
At first readers might be put off by the somewhat affected, if self-assured, narration that introduces the main character, Diana, a child prodigy who becomes the unpopular valedictorian of her high school class at the age of fourteen. Though Tulathimutte’s formal diction keeps the reader at arms length, it aptly reflects the condescension and emotional distance of our brainy, friendless, perhaps even asexual protagonist, who sees herself as separate from the rest of her species: