Aimee Bender’s stunning debut collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, proved her to be one of the freshest voices in American fiction. Now, in her first novel, she builds on that early promise.
Mona Gray was ten when her father contracted a mysterious illness and she became a quitter, abandoning each of her talents just as pleasure became intense. The only thing she can’t stop doing is math: She knocks on wood, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. When Mona begins teaching math to second-graders, she finds a ready audience. But the difficult and wonderful facts of life keep intruding. She finds herself drawn to the new science teacher, who has an unnerving way of seeing through her intricately built façade. Bender brilliantly directs her characters, giving them unexpected emotional depth and setting them in a calamitous world, both fancifully surreal and startlingly familiar.
- ISBN10 0385492243
- ISBN13 9780385492249
- Publish Date 17 July 2001 (first published 18 July 2000)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc
- Imprint Bantam Doubleday Dell
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 256
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780385492249