An Invisible Sign of My Own, Aimee Bender
An Invisible Sign of My Own, Aimee Bender
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An Invisible Sign of My Own

Author: Aimee Bender

Narrator: Kristen Sieh

Unabridged: 7 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/13/2021


Synopsis

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.

About Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender is the author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, which was a New York Times Notable Book; An Invisible Sign of My Own, which was a Los Angeles Times pick of the year; and Willful Creatures, which was nominated by the Believer as one of the best books of the year. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, GQ, Harper's, Tin House, McSweeney's, the Paris Review, and many more. She has received two Pushcart Prizes and was nominated for the TipTree Award in 2005. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Travis on January 01, 2009

On finishing the book I came to Goodreads to see what the concensus was... and I continue to be amazed at the power of subverted expectations. There are dozens of reviews citing the unbelievability of the circumstances of the book, or the lack of realism in the dialog of second graders and the thin......more

Goodreads review by Nadine Rose on September 21, 2015

Feeling humbled by the (to me) unpretentious quirk that is Aimee Bender. How glorious when reading feels a little bit like falling in love - something that you instinctively understand but could not possibly explain. I must admit that for this novel a lot of the charm lay in the reviews of others. I......more

Goodreads review by Anthony on July 11, 2011

Just when I was getting a little weary of knocking down the unread pile of books from my shelf, Aimee Bender’s quirky novel about a socially awkward 20 year-old elementary school math teacher pleasantly surprised me with its unique perspective and wittiness. To simply summarize the plot wouldn’t giv......more

Goodreads review by Emma on June 14, 2022

I think Aimee Bender just isn't really for me. Her main characters seem to float through life in a surreal way that I find hard to enjoy. I liked the main character's connection with her maths class, and enjoyed reading about Mr. Jones with his numbers around his neck to denote his mood.......more

Goodreads review by Amber on October 04, 2008

This is about a young woman (she's between 18 and 20, I think) who stumbles upon a teaching job. She's eccentric, almost OCD, but in a whimsical and charming way that allows her to form interesting relationships with her second grade students...Not to mention the science teacher, whom she has mixed f......more


Quotes

"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