Leaning Towards Infinity

Plot

A reissue of this bestselling Australian Vintage classic PLEASE NOTE NEW ISBN: 00918 40163 ** Tying in with the premiere of the play Leaning Towards Infinity in Sydney in 1997 ** Tying in with the publication of Sue's anthology Wild Minds: Stories of Courage, Madness and Love Winner 1996 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction Winner 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize Best Book South-East Asia and Pacific This is not my story. It is the story of Frances Montrose, an Australian woman with no formal mathematics training who carried across the world, in a borrowed suitcase bulging with a friend's balldresses, something no one knew about. The discovery of a new number. I can barely add up so I can't tell you much about her mathematics. Only to say she was a genius. And she was my mother, my love, my emptiness. Her mathematics was her secret passion and her curse. And my curse too. HYPATIA MONTROSE PRAISE FROM AROUND THE WORLD: 'What a glorious, nourishing, tumultuous novel ... in the great Australian tradition of Patrick White and Christina Stead.' FAY WELDON 'Woolfe's name can sit beside Marquez's with barely a blush.' THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (LONDON) 'Beautiful, inventive writing ... an unflinching exploration of the complex bond of love' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (US) 'captivating from the very first line ...' BOSTON GLOBE 'a rich, character-driven novel ...' ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH 'a novel about the sensuousness of mathematics ... a lyrical book, the deepest novel of ideas I've read in years' THE BALTIMORE SUN 'luminous ... Woolfe artfully traces the endless spirals of memory, desire, and ambition among a family of women moving restlessly through their lives ...Most readers will find themselves wishing that Leaning Towards Infinity would, in fact, never end.' MS MAGAZINE 'Woolfe's writing about motherhood is brave and frank ... Australian women welcomed the book for its realism and fearlessness, as well as for the wonderful story it tells and the important ideas it probes.' SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST 'Witty and seductive.' WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN 'brilliant' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD 'With this book, Sue Woolfe places herself amongst the finest of Australian writers ... I would not be surprised if it became a cult book of great durability.' THOMAS KENEALLY 'Tremendously original and inventive.' KATE GRENVILLE SELLING POINTS: ** In July 1999 the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney will stage the premiere of the play Leaning Towards Infinity. To celebrate this, and to celebrate the success of what has become a classic in the three short years since it was first published in 1996, we are reissuing the novel with a brand new jacket. ** As well as making use of the fantastic reviews that Sue has garnered in New York and London (see samples above), we have also gone for a striking - but fully clothed - cover image. While the original cover was praised for its beauty, and was enormously successful, there were potential readers who were put off by the fact that it featured a nude. ** The new jacket aims to reach a wider audience, while retaining the impact of its predecessor. ** One of the unique things about a literary novel like Leaning Towards Infinity is that as well as being about mathematics, it is also a very strong family story about mothers and daughters, and many readers who would not normally read a literary novel - never mind one about an abstract science such as mathematics - have read Leaning Towards Infinity and responded to it in a very personal way. ** It is the kind of novel that strikes a chord with readers - particularly women readers - the world over. ** We have done very well with Leaning Towards Infinity - over 27,000 copies - but let's just see how much better we can do! ** There will be considerable publicity for the play - Sue wrote it during the writing of the novel as a way of finding out where the novel was going - an unusual and fascinating creative process. Book reviewers and literary criti