The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here

At their family's New Jersey seaside cottages, Susanne Paola Antonetta's grandmother led seances, swam nude, and imaginatively created a spiritualist paradise on earth. In The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here, Antonetta chronicles how in that unique but tightly controlled space, she began to explore the questions posed by her family's Christian Science beliefs, turning those questions secular: What is consciousness? Does time exist? And does the world we see reflect reality? In this book, scientific research, family story, and memoir intertwine to mimic the indefinable movements of quantum particles.

Antonetta reflects on a life spent wrestling with bipolar disorder, drug dependency, and the trauma of electroshock treatment--exploring these experiences alongside conversations with some of the world's leading neuroscientists and physicists, and with psychics. The result is a meditation on the legacy of family, on thought and being, and what we humans can actually ever really know about our world.


Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: 02/25/2021
ISBN: 9780814257807
Pages: 248
Weight: 0.66lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.70d