The Metaphysical Touch: A Novel

A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year In 1991 Emily Piper is a graduate student finishing her dissertation on metaphysics, when her home and work are destroyed in the Berkeley-Oakland fires. With her life's work in cinders, she retreats in shock to the small coastal town of Mendocino. It is here that Emily becomes hesitantly involved in the early days of Net chat rooms. Soon, Emily, dubbed Pi, wanders into the quixotic thoughts of JD, a mysterious figure living on America's opposite coast. What develops is a tentative, stimulating and perilous relationship. Who is JD, and furthermore, who, now, is Pi? This is the highly original, multilayered story of two lost souls whose charged connection gives new meaning to the "mind/body problem."

Literature & Fiction

BROWNRIGG, Sylvia

Literary

Picador

Across a series of vivid, untamed landscapes Sylvia Brownrigg’s characters wander in search of the obvious—love, fame, a good recipe for canapes—as well as the less obvious. In “Hussy from the West” the narrator undertakes a long erotic quest for satisfaction; in “The Bird Chick” a visionary organizes some unusual park inhabitants for a bold experiment in theater. In Sylvia Brownrigg’s starkly original Ten Women Who Shook the World, wherever these maverick women travel, their bold, comical voices urge us to follow.

Ten Women Who Shook the World: Stories

Contemporary

Pages for You: A Novel

PICADOR SHOTS - 'The Then Wives'

Short Stories & Anthologies

PAGES FOR YOUby Sylvia BrownriggHardcover (2001)

Pages for You

Women's Fiction

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

A moving and original love story about two lost people who find each other on the Internet. In 1991 Emily Piper, a graduate student at Berkeley, has nearly finished her dissertation on metaphysics when her life is changed by the great Berkeley-Oakland fire that destroyed over 3,000 homes. Pi loses all of her belongings: her books and writings, all the things that reminded her of herself. Though others throw themselves into the task of rebuilding their lives, Pi can't. Instead, she escapes to the small coastal town of Mendocino. On the other coast is J.D., a man with an ambition to go: permanently, absolutely. But before making his departure, J.D. decides to write a record of his jokes and neuroses; of his reflections on his wandering father, Joe; and of his urban, unemployed despair-and post it on the Internet. When J.D. and Pi encounter each other's words on the Net, the sparks start to fly. Is J.D. who he says he is? Pi, as a recovering philosopher, ought to be able to tell reality from imagination, but finds herself in doubt. And though her correspondence with J.D. begins to heat up, she finds a sensual, more material temptation closer by, and her dilemma becomes a perilous instance of the "mind/body problem." With The Metaphysical Touch, Sylvia Brownrigg has written a fabulously rich novel full of humor, tenderness, and truth.

United States

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Seventeen-year-old Flannery Jansen develops a lusty obsession for a female graduate student teacher and by chance ends up in one of her classes, but as the two become closer, Flannery learns more about Anne than she ever wanted to.

A collection of short stories features women who build pyramids, direct an all-bird production of Hamlet, make conceptual art, and who just might have been, once upon a time, the girl next door.

Ten Women Who Shook the World

The Metaphysical Touch

Victor Gollancz

Paperback. Fair. Remainder. Dust marks on edge of pages and general wear to edges of cover.

Metaphysical Touch, The

Phoenix

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Books by BROWNRIGG, Sylvia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BROWNRIGG, Sylvia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Metaphysical Touch: A Novel

Ten Women Who Shook the World: Stories

Pages for You: A Novel

PICADOR SHOTS - 'The Then Wives'

Pages for You

The Metaphysical Touch: A Novel

Pages for You

Ten Women Who Shook the World

The Metaphysical Touch

Metaphysical Touch, The