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  • Published: 1 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099558521
  • Imprint: Windmill Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $19.99

An Invisible Sign of My Own




From the author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, the story of one woman's attempt to prove that life really does count....

When Mona Gray is ten, her father contracts a mysterious illness. His gradual withdrawal from everyday life marks a similar change in Mona, who removes herself from anything - or anyone - that might bring her happiness. Numbers provide a kind of solace, and help her make sense of the world: she counts words in her head, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. As a maths teacher, Mona delights her pupils by encouraging them to find objects that take the form of numbers. But when seven-year-old Lisa appears with a zero that displays real turmoil, Mona knows that in order to help a person in pain, she needs to find a way to connect with the world she has been afraid of for so long.

An Invisible Sign of My Own is a story about children and adults, and how we protect ourselves from the things we fear the most. It is about superstition and logic and the big muddy area in between. Written with the same eloquence and flair that characterisesThe Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, this novel marks the sign of a unique talent in contemporary fiction.

  • Published: 1 April 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099558521
  • Imprint: Windmill Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $19.99

About the author

Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender is the author of the novels The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, a New York Times bestseller, and An Invisible Sign of My Own; and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Willful Creatures and The Color Master. Her work has been widely anthologised and has been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Praise for An Invisible Sign of My Own

Light as a zephyr and unique as a snowflake

The Washington Post

This mesmerizing novel places a mathematical mind, poet's imagination, and voodoo queen's superstition in an athlete's body and sets to work, in a town stark as a blackboard, on the problem of Death. Pitting axes against angst, kids against cancer, soap against sex, wax numbers against depression, and love against the certainty of the beloved's doom, Aimee Bender nevertheless arrives--with wit, grace, and proof (that math is funny)--at compassion

David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and River Teeth

Aimee Bender writes in a skillfully minimal way, everything very tight and poignant and sharp and often burning, quick to get to things and out of them, but still providing us with significant characters of emotional depth

Stephen Dixon, author of Frog and 30: Pieces of a Novel

Fantastic! Bender has a perfect pitch. Her stories are fierce and true

LA Times

Incendiary

New York Times Book Review

An achingly idiosyncratic story rendered with eloquence, hilarity, and ominous precision

Boston Globe

Intelligent and engaging ... [A] fanciful and original take on the quietly helter-skelter world that lies within

The New York Times

Clever, original and written with brio and eloquence... Bender writes like an angel, with images that strike resonant chords, and her sly humour pervades every page.

Publishers Weekly