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The 351 Books of Irma Acuri |
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| eBook: Microsoft Reader | 304 pages | ISBN 9781436223522 | 19 Jun 2008 | Viking Adult |
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For most of his adult life—through two marriages and countless travels—the mathematician Philip Mazyrk has carried on a love affair with Irma Arcuri. Now Irma has vanished and left Philip her entire library of 351 books, five of them written by Irma herself. Buried in the text of this library—Cervantes to Turgenyev, Borges to Fowles—lay the secrets of Irma’s disappearance and, in the novels Irma has written, the story of her elusive and romantic past with Philip.
Philip, a math genius who sees equations in every facet of life, reads the novels and begins to sense a more profound and troubling design at work. A mysterious woman appears; his ex-wife reveals a terrible secret; his stepdaughter, Nicole, long troubled by the free-spirited nature of her parents’ lives, approaches a dangerous turn; and Nicole’s teenage brother has fled. As clues, warnings, and implications both inside and outside the library mount, Philip begins to realize that he too is trapped in a narrative. Who is Irma Arcuri? What is really buried in the library? And, most important, whose story is this?
Like the work of Milan Kundera or John Fowles, Bajo’s novel is brazenly passionate, sexy, even transgressive, yet thrillingly mysterious. Addictive, compelling, and clever, The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri, will captivate fans of The Time Traveler’s Wife and The Shadow of the Wind.
"It might be easier to explain what’s lacking in David Bajo’s mind-expanding novel The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri. This is an amazing, beautiful story of Philip Mazryk’s quixotic search for the Siren of all Sirens. These characters live within a puzzle, that’s inside a maze, that’s inside a labyrinth all tied up in Mobius strips. It’s as if Stranger than Fiction were co-directed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Gottlob Frege. Smart, mystical, sexy, and lyrical: I’m convinced that The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri will not leave the reader, ever."
-George Singleton, author of Novel and The Half-Mammals of Dixie
“The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri is a dazzling combination of love and sex and, yes, mathematics, and David Bajo uses mirrors to make his magic. If you have ever opened a novel and found yourself ‘inside’ the story, you must read this book.”
—Keith Donohue, author of the bestselling The Stolen Child
“David Bajo’s first novel is a provocative and elegant meditation on love, literature, and mathematics.”
—Karl Iagnemma, author of On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction
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MYSTERY & SUSPENSE
Interred with Their Bones
Jennifer Lee Carrell
In our Mystery & Suspense special interest area, read a Q&A with Jennifer Lee Carrell, author of the Shakespeare-inspired thriller, Interred with Their Bones.
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