Strange Attractors: Stories (Contemporary American Fiction)

A National Jewish Honor Book composed of seven short stories from the author of The Mind-Body Problem.

A mathematician studies the geometry of soap bubbles and responds to the rapture of infatuation by reciting Shakespeare in Yiddish. A group of Olympian intellects is made childlike by the appearance of a double rainbow. Becky Sharp steps out of the pages of Vanity Fair to confound a pretentious philosopher. These are just some of the marvelous and unlikely things that happen in Strange Attractors—a collection of stories that explores the interactions of thought and feeling, mind and heart, to reveal the deep, mysterious ties between seemingly unrelated lives.

“A wonderful collection . . . A picture of remarkable depth and complexity.”—Los Angeles Times

“Electric and compelling . . . Rebecca Goldstein brings a keen and specially informed vision to our world.”—Newsday

“Rebecca Goldstein again probes the relationships between female intellect and emotion—this time in a sparkling, erudite collection in which brilliant women’s minds dictate their romantic attachments while their gender continues to dictate their fate.”—Kirkus Reviews