"Powerful."-- The New York Times , Notable Book of the Year An unforgettably elegant tale of obsession and the fragile line between reason and desire. In this compact literary gem, an historian retreats to a quiet cottage in rural Ireland to complete a biography of Isaac Newton. Why, he must unravel, did Newton suffer a mental collapse in 1693, and why did he write such a strange letter to his friend John Locke--hinting at a personal and philosophical crisis? But as the summer days drift by, work is stalled as he becomes obsessed with the lives of the people around him--stranded Charlotte; doomed, drunken Edward; mysterious Ottilie. The more he tries to decipher the mysterious web of their lives--even while trying to decipher the central mystery of Newton's--he becomes undone by the murky, unmeasurable forces of the human heart. Banville's prose is lyrical and precise, and The Newton Letter is both a meditation on genius and a portrait of quiet unraveling. A must-read for fans of psychological fiction and literary elegance.