An Invisible Sign of My Own

by Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender's funny, delicately shaded first novel is a constant delight, even at its most warped. An Invisible Sign of My Own tells the story of Mona Gray, a math wiz and a high school track star, whose ordinary childhood comes to pieces when her father is stricken with a mysterious illness. There doesn't seem to be a name for it, but he looks sort of gray and seems frail and unhappy. Whether there's anything really wrong with Mona's dad is unclear, but her fear that he will die, as well as his withdrawal from family life--no more vacations, no running practice with his daughter, no unplanned outings--triggers a corresponding withdrawal in her. Whenever she does well at anything, or starts to enjoy herself, she quits: piano class, dancing lessons, her first boyfriend, running.

I quit dessert to see if I could do it; of course I could; I quit breathing one evening until my lungs overruled; I quit touching my skin, sleeping with both hands under the pillow. When no one was home, I tied ropes around the piano, so that it would take me thirty minutes with scissors to get back to that minuet. Then I hid all the scissors.

Instead of working out her problems, Mona develops a habit of knocking on wood, and sometimes knocks for an hour before getting to sleep. Eating soap is her other dark indulgence: a surefire anti-aphrodisiac that she calls on whenever she feels sexually attracted to a man.

At 20, Mona is recruited to teach math at the local elementary school. To her surprise, she is a brilliant teacher, making addition and subtraction tangible to second graders with a game called Numbers and Materials, in which the students bring in natural or man-made objects that take the form of numbers. When 7-year-old Lisa Venus brings in a zero made of IV tubing from her dying mother's hospital room, Mona recognizes a kindred spirit. But she will have to be healthy herself to help Lisa resist her urge to take on her mother's illness out of grief and loyalty. The complicated connection between children and adults is the underlying theme of this big-hearted novel. However quirky and alarming Bender's methods may seem, An Invisible Sign of My Own is no darker than a fairy tale, and the witch--even if it's the witch within--is reliably vanquished in the end. --Regina Marler

Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Contemporary, Novels, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction, Adult

242 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 2000

About the author

Aimee Bender is the author of the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures. Her work has been widely anthologized and has been translated into ten languages. She lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 plotting of the book... one notable review even complains that this uncertified (and likely certifiable) teacher is handed a classroom.

Which has nothing to do with what the book wants to do.

Aimee Bender traps us in a very narrow first person and makes us experience a fragment of Mona Gray's experience. If you're looking for a gritty realistic novel this isn't your section of the library.

This books sits in the same corner as Jeanette Winterson. Poetic prose with no much of a care for narrative. Except of course that Winterson is all erotic fluidity to Bender's sharp fragments.

Well worth your time if you enjoy experiencing what a writer is trying to convey, not at all worth your time if you Require sharply drawn sympathetic characters and gleaming stainless steel plot points.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh, aimee bender. it's like you wrote this book and mailed it straight to the little postbox in my heart.

[jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book seems to me miraculous. i am blown away. the language is extraordinary -- simple and fluid and always surprising, all sharp angles and painful enchantments -- and what it says, the depth of pain the book carries on its slender breezy back, wow, it left me breathless. strange how much psychic pain such a little funny book can carry, how many deep terrors it can plumb: death, illness, the loss of those we need/love, the body and its redundancies, the unspeakable violence we do to ourselves in order to stay whole, the inevitable breaking of that wholeness, how we doom connection, how we find connection, how connection surprises us with its resilience, its resistance to attack.

twenty-year-old mona gray exorcises her terrors by knocking on wood, counting, and making love to a hatchet. she holds a few certainties, all having to do with the clean hard pain she can inflict to her body. aimee bender, who seems very young and is certainly very brave (check out her beautiful website), explores fear, pain, and love through the blows life deals to the body, and does a very good job at inflicting quite a few messy wounds in the process. if you have spent more than a day or two worrying about the unbearable semantic pregnancy of the body, this book is for you. when i finished it i felt i had been broken apart and put back together six or seven times.

there are some heartbreakingly beautiful scenes, and they are all about people finding each other in spite of self-defeating efforts to make themselves all but unfindable.

[Nadine Rose Larter · Rating 5 out of 5]

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. Indignant school teachers offended by an inaccurate portrayal of teaching and children. Fussy readers who cannot cope when a story is not "just so" - as if being "realistic" and "structured" is the only way to be when it comes to putting yourself on paper. And yet here I sit, grateful for strange minds that take me to different worlds, and especially grateful that my own mind allows for me to be taken there.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 give proper credit to the effect that the first-person narrative has upon the reader. The math teacher, Mona Grey, is a slightly neurotic and eccentric person who obsessively knocks on wood as her “invisible sign” to deal with her troubles. She sees numbers in everything around her and has a fear of the smell of soap.

Mona’s neuroses developed when she was a child and her father became ill with an unnamed disease that caused him to quit his job and his running (he was a track star in his past) to only wander about the family house privately, avoiding the world at large. As her father is nearing his 51st birthday Mona is privately melting down out of fear that he won’t live past 51 because it is the first non-prime, non even, non-special number. The pressures build as she is faced with many challenges including many uprisings in her classroom, an awkward romance with the school science teacher, and the disappearance of the hardware store owner that happens to be her parent’s next door neighbour and her elementary school math teacher. Through all this burdening pressure there is some beautiful writing that artfully expresses the pressures within Mona’s troubled mind, for example:

“The world can ask you to participate, but it’s a day-by-day decision if you want to agree to that proposal.” (113)

As book-ends to Mona’s mental crisis, the novel begins and ends with variations of the same fable about a kingdom where people do not die. The burgeoning over population has caused the king to require a sacrifice of one family member in order for the kingdom to persist with its ever-increasingly limited resources. This fable is essentially a segue into the importance of numbers for the protagonist, Mona Grey; for to Mona the loss of family, the loss of resources, and any loss can be represented numerically. For example:

“It is all about numbers. Is is all about sequence. It’s the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness – cry and then walk – but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.” (195)

The clean-break from the sequence comes when Mona allows herself to learn from one of her students who’s mother is dying of cancer. This child’s loss allows Mona to let go her neurotic fears about her father’s potential death. In that letting go, Mona is able to imagine a kingdom where moving on to another kingdom, or in other words – letting go – is just as much an option as is the King’s decree that every family must sacrafice a family member in order for the kingdom to survive.

All of the pieces of the story add up to make a perfect equation and when I closed the cover after finishing it I had a smile on my face – that is a visible sign that this novel has achived something unique and was worth the read.

[Carrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only reason I finished this book was because I thought it was well-written (OK, also because I didn't want to have to bring a dish to book club). I didn't connect with any of the characters and found them annoying. But more than that, this book really offended me as a teacher. The fact that this 19-year-old girl is allowed to just go teach seemed to carry the implication that anyone can do it. Forget about my degree, 60 hour work weeks, and hours upon hours of professional development every year, a 19 year-old can just walk in and teach math because she has a flair for numbers. Not to mention that fact it was completely unrealistic; I don't think this author (the author, not the character) has been in an elementary classroom since she was in elementary.

The good news-it stirred an intense reaction in me! I've read plenty of books I dislike but this is the first book in a long time that has really offended me.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd imagine that it'd be difficult to have ambiguous feelings about this book: you'll either love it or hate it. That being said, I loved every bit of it to pieces and have proceeded to carry them in my pocket with me and then scatter them around everywhere I go.

An Invisible Sign of My Own covers innumerable heavy subjects in a way that's so delicate and light that you're somehow able to take it all in without being pinned under a leaden weight. The writing is beautiful, like a dark surreal fairytale where both real and fantastical dangers are tucked away in everyday moments.

The most important thing I got from reading this book was the personal message it left for me in its final pages, which admittedly had me tearing up. In a world where numbers rule, it's important to remember that we can't be whole when we divide ourselves up, even when it's in order to give some of ourselves to others.

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Amber Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 feelings about. He's cute and fun and she wants to bang him but she's afraid she'll lose him or hurt him or kill him so when she's horny she eats soap to supress her desire.
Weird, I know, but within Aimee Benders lovely storytelling, it all makes sense.

[Bill H · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was bemused by the some of the criticism of this book I've read here and there, mostly complaining about it requiring too much suspension of disbelief. I'm not sure how the author could have more clearly telegraphed THIS IS A FAIRY TALE without, say, huge flaming letters on a mountaintop. I can see how it would be an unsatisfactory read you were demanding realism, but read it instead without that bias and you'll read, I think, the book the author intended.

[Jenny Schmenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. Admittedly, I have a surreal and unhealthy relationship with numbers myself, so I could relate to the plot. There's a leaden quality to the whole story, inertia and weight that threaten to drag the reader down, but here's the thing: you have a choice! You can decide to pluck the beauty and sweetness from down among all those stones. Bender's got some seriously whimsical ways.

[Rye · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I'm going to have to abandon this one about 2/3 of the way through. Aimee Bender's writing kept me in it for as long as I was. There are some really good literary moments. Unfortunately, I have been getting increasingly annoyed with the novel itself. Many of the reviews I have read here reflect on the lack of believability. While I am willing to suspend some of that disbelief for good writing, much of it did not pay off and could have been handled better, particularly in the school scenes. I teach elementary school and there was little that connected for me here.

I chose to read this book because I had read a few of Aimee Bender's short stories. I liked the surreal quality in these. It didn't work in An Invisible Sign of My Own, but I think I'll try going back to the short stories. I do enjoy her style.

[Jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

i love working with people who have ocd, but get bored while reading about them. also annoyed when all it takes is a cute boyfriend to make the ocd go away. (though that boyfriend waaaaaaas cute.)

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Aimee Bender's whimsical, clever work, and very much enjoyed An Invisible Sign of My Own. It is an unusual novel, as I have found all of her work to be, with an awful lot of depth to it. Interesting and strange, An Invisible Sign of My Own has rather an original feel to it, and is filled with glorious descriptions and some quite moving scenes.

[Sonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ho inaugurato il 2012 con un romanzo che merita davvero.
Buon segno per me, per le mie letture, per i miei libri.
Un romanzo che fin dalle prime pagine mi aveva già convinta ad attribuirgli le 4 stelline anobiane.
Aimée Bender sa scrivere, sa raccontare, sa spiazzare, sa confondere, deludere, rallegrare, inorridire... tiene costantemente il nostro bagaglio di emozioni in movimento.
Inizia la sua storia con una fiaba dal retrogusto amaro ma dal lieto fine, ed è a quella fiaba che tutto ritorna.
Protagonista è un'adolescente di vent'anni (non me ne vogliano le ventenni, ma a quell'età si ancora del tutto immersi nel pieno dell'adolescenza!) che si ritrova con un padre improvvisamente vittima di un male senza nome (depressione), messa fuori casa dalla madre non per cattiveria ma per ricevere la possibilità di iniziare a vivere la sua vita.
A vent'anni Mona ha già rinunciato ai suoi sogni, all'amore, a un futuro. Le resta un'ossessione per i numeri e un rassicurante tamburellare con le dita su ogni superficie a portata di nocche. Senza averlo cercato si ritrova insegnante di matematica in una scuola elementare, i cui studenti sembrano essere tutti normalmente problematici, quanto o più di lei.
Non continuo nella narrazione: la Bender ha saputo immergere un racconto originale e difficile in una storia quotidiana.
Non avremo a che fare con una giovane adolescente (la tipica americana dei romanzi contemporanei) ma un personaggio nuovo, diverso, unico. Una ragazza che deve affrontare un mondo adulto senza averne apparentemente la voglia, ma che in realtà ha a disposizione tutti i mezzi possibili per poterlo vivere al meglio.
Tutte le persone che incontrerà sarebbero sembrate fuori dagli schemi in qualsiasi altro romanzo: il vicino di casa che si appende ogni giorno al collo un numero diverso a seconda del suo umore, l'insegnante di scienze che fa impersonare ai bambini le malattie più terribili, i bambini stessi che ci appaiono come dei piccoli terroristi... siamo capitati in un mondo dove la parola "normale" non rispecchia assolutamente il nostro criterio di normalità (e questo dovrebbe farci porre dei dubbi su cosa possa essere davvero normale...).
Personaggi usciti da un manicomio? Certamente no, ma dalla sapiente penna della Bender che non vuole assolutamente seguire la scia dei suoi colleghi. Spiazza e soddisfa allo stesso tempo.
E' un piacere leggere queste pagine, da qualcuno definite una fiaba per adulti.
Come ogni fiaba che si rispetti, anche questa ha il suo lieto fine ce l'ha, anche se non come ce lo si aspetterebbe.

http://cuoredinchiostro.blogspot.com/...

[brynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I quit dessert to see if I could do it- of course I could."

I think it's important to grow up with a book. When I read this as a teenager, Mona wrecking things on purpose resonated with me. I always happened to read it after I'd done something stupid like burning a friendship for no reason or spending all year impressing a teacher only to purposely let my grade in the class sail down at the very end of the year. So, Mona ritualistically quitting everything in her life that makes her happy, stuck with me. Mona punishing herself for accidentally enjoying something felt very personal to me. I first came into contact with this book when everything I did felt so monumental and fatalistic to me. I wanted to be just like Mona and looking back, I already was.

"This is me protecting the world."

What I love about it now is how the story is really about Mona getting ripped from her old ways, torn from what she thought was safe. A strange friendship with a little girl who wears the truth on her head instead of hidden beneath a fingernail or folded up in a pocket, safe. An awkward romance with a man who sees right through her. Now, at twenty-one, what hit me the hardest was Mona being forced to realize that her ruining, her knocking, her secret spin-out was never a secret at all. Everyone knew all along. Finding out that your own secret fight with illness and desire is actually just plain on your face and apparent to everyone else is exactly what growing up feels like.

"Shut up, Mr. Jones."

There's nothing quite as adolescent as feeling your pain so deeply, yet only wanting to share it with one specific, idolized person. It hurts even more when they don't seem to understand what you want. Or like Mr. Jones, they ignore you. "I wanted somebody to see, and I picked him." This was another part I clung to when I was sixteen.

Most of the parts I'd underlined when I was younger don't hit me like they used to but with each reread I always find something new to haunt me until I read it again. This book has been in my life for almost ten years, and I've never stopped thinking about it for a second.

[Kwoomac · Rating 2 out of 5]

There really wasn't much of a plot in this meandering tale of 19 year old woman, who struggles with most aspects of life, who is grounded only by her love of numbers. Implausibly, she becomes a 2nd grade teacher, without any training, because there is a shortage of teachers and the principal saw her doing long-division in a park for fun. Really ! Most of the characters in the book are just variations of the main character, Mona Gray. Her next door neighbor fashions numbers out of wax to wear around his neck to rate how he is feeling that day. The numbers range from 1-75 but he usually hovers around a 15. Her students bring in things from home which look like numbers. A bar of soap carved into a 9, a piece of IV tubing made into a 0, an amputated arm shaped like a 1. She hangs an axe on the wall of the classroom, because it looks like a 7. Spoiler alert...no good will come of this. Anyway, I stuck with this book because there is some really beautiful prose in there, "his lips are as sweet as orange slices on a plate on a porch in the summer with weeping willow trees and larks."

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite Bender thus far. Loved everything about this story. The characters, the premise, the prologue... everything. Never stop writing Aimee!!

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aimee Bender might be my favorite short-story writer of all time. When I read The Girl in the Flammable Skirt in college, I was really impressed. At the time, short stories and I had a complicated, mostly uncomfortable relationship. But Bender made me love short stories again, and in new ways, ways that would help me over the years as I struggled with my own writing.

I bought Bender's An Invisible Sign of My Own from Powell's in Portland on a very important--dare I say formative--trip to Oregon in summer 2004. I finally got around to reading it in December 2004 when I was proctoring law exams. I muddled my way through about a third of the book, but I was so disappointed in how inferior her novel-writing was to her short-story-writing that I gave up on the book. For almost two decades. I'm not exaggerating.

I didn't give up on Aimee Bender, though. The year after I abandoned reading her novel, her short-story collection Willful Creatures came out, and I knew then and forever that Bender was one of the few writers whose work is vastly better in short form than in long form. I was happy again, and I didn't even need to finish Invisible Sign now because why waste time on mediocre novels when you can revel in near-perfect short stories?

Time. And fairness. And getting through this dusty stack of books I started a long time ago.

An Invisible Sign of My Own isn't as bad as I thought it was in 2004. It is maddeningly plodding at times. It's as if Bender intentionally didn't trust her own instincts as a writer of short fiction, so she strung the scenes out on purpose because that's what novel scenes are supposed to be like. She was wrong, of course. The bigger problem, though, might be that the novel is too much like a short story, or at least the protagonist's observations are too much like one of Bender's short-story heroine's. Don't get my wrong; I love these strange women (and they're usually women). But it's almost as if Bender tried to stretch a Britney Spears or Taylor Swift song into a symphony.

It's a super weird book. If you like weirdness, try to make it past the first 40 percent of the book. If you're still with Mona at that point, the ride will be worth it.

It's not magical realism, but it is realism through the fun-house mirror. It's also not a book for the squeamish, especially if you're a parent of young children. There's a little bit too much resolution for my taste, but there's plenty of tragedy throughout as well, so I can't really fault Bender for pulling punches. OK, I can, but Willful Creatures, so all can be forgiven.

[Martyna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is peculiar and definitely not for everyone. I would say that a bit of sensitivity is required from reader to some issues and maybe even some knowledge about obsessive-compulsive disorder, obsessive disorders, various effects of trauma / shock. When a person knows nothing about it and when he sees the manifestations he may think that this is a peculiar, bizarre one.

For me, this book is quiet nicely balanced. It is not overemotional, so that the reader can dwell into main characters phenomena and not reject it immediately. It is easy to like main character although I felt sorry for her most of the time. It could be that this is exactly what the author had in mind. It covered up the fact that many of the mental problems mentioned in the book where not introduced and described properly. But as this is not a scientific book per se, we can forgive Bender for it. It was a relaxing, 2 days read.

[Yem · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is so, so Good! if you don’t see yourself in at least 3 characters then who even are you?

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Touching, unusual, intelligent, thoughtful, both real and surreal.

[Jake Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I discovered this book through imdb.com because of a movie starring Jessica Alba entitled An Invisible Sign. The preview for the movie was intriguing for a few reasons, among them being that Alba was actually going to be in a thinking movie that would require some acting and not just a pretty body. I was interested in the plot, so I looked up the book and ordered it right away.

It's just a small, barely-over-200 page, book. I started it on the last leg of my trip to California, and I was hooked right away. It starts with a morbid little fairy tale that sets the tone for the whole book. Yes, this is a morbid book. The main character, Mona, is a savant who is sometimes quite plucky and charming, but, other times, she is very near crazy.

Her relationships seem very distant. She has issues with her mother, but those barely get addressed. Her father is fading with what seems like alzheimer's and her relationship with him is intriguing, but there is no real closure with it. Bender, in fact, alludes to the fact that Mona is going to go the way of her father which is depressing to say the least. Mona is also hired as a teacher and her relationship with her students is unconventional. The second graders don't talk like any second graders I've ever heard.

Before I go further, I must say that the writing is fantastic. Bender captures images wonderfully and I got the idea that Mona is crazy in an unexplainable way. Some of the imagery is beautiful. Other imagery in this book are weird and sometimes forced.

To me it all goes back to the fairy tale at the beginning of the book. Mona tells a story about a kingdom where people discovered eternal life. No one was dying so the kingdom was getting overpopulated, so the king decreed that each family would have to volunteer one member of their family to die. One family in the kingdom could not decide who should die so they end up cutting off parts of themselves. Disturbing, no? I was disturbed. It ends with another version of the fairy tale that is much better. I'm still trying to figure out why, but it all ends up making sense. Every character in the book seems to be searching to become whole, as if they've been divided up, parts of them cut off. There are some cool insights like that that made reading the book worthwhile.

Would I read more Aimee Bender? Maybe. I wouldn't not read her again, but I'm not going to run down to the store and get her next book the first chance I get. Would I recommend this book to anyone? Sure. If you like your books short, quirky, a little dark, and sometimes humorous, then this is a good one to pick up. Otherwise, it might not be worth the time. I'm still trying to decide if it was worth mine.

[Siobhán Mc Laughlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started out liking this book - the fairytale element, the clever use of numbers as a thematic component, the lovely lyrical language that carries you along in a quicksilver current from line to line, page to page, as in a dream.

But then somehow, somewhere, it flopped. The plot was flimsy, at best. And its dark subject matter - death, cancer, mental illness - is not dealt with sharply enough, hovers as a mere shadow on the narrative that never fully comes into the light. Things are vague, too vague, hinted at a hundred times over, but never fully effectively engaged with. Fairytales push the boundaries of expectation, but not their own foundations. This one has not near enough moral substance or backbone to support it.

And to like a book you need to like its narrator, or at least, trust them. I have to admit I couldn't. Mona Gray, flits skittishly between emotional insecurity and borderline crazy (taking an axe into a classroom? - I mean c'mon, really - how could that even happen??! or how could someone even get a job as a teacher without a background/mental health check??!)An OCD-like obsession with numbers - endearing, yes, an obsession with eating soap - eh, no, that's just bizarre. And veering on the ridiculous, like so much of this novel. Not to mention, unsettling. The author pushes too far on too many accounts and turns what could have been profound into just plain silly. This reader, for one, tut-tutted my way through the rest of it.

Yes, it is written in the fairytale-esque genre and disbelief must be suspended. But there is a fine line between whimsical intent and a narrative riddled with stupendously unbelievable incidents that rip credibility to shreds.

I ended up getting more and more annoyed with its flippant approach to content as I went on and ended it thinking - what the heck just happened? It's all just a great grey blur to me now (sorry Mona). I could see the premise, the plot, but it never fully unfolded for me, got lost in too vague and ambitious a master plan. Even some of the intricate spot-on observations started to become ludicrous, flair disintegrating into farce. A shame, really.

In saying all that, I really enjoyed her second novel, 'The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.' It clearly has graduated from this style to a more fluent and strong one. But this one has made me question whether I would read more of her work or not...

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aimee Bender is one of my new favorite novelist/short story writers. Her short stories, for me, fall into the same category as Kelly Link's work: these magical little gems that are weird and wonderful and can't be nicely wrapped up. There's just something about them that I adore, even when I don't like certain things about them. That's the case with this novel. There was so much that I loved: the language, the symbolism, the quirkiness, the emotion (what a SAD novel this was, in many ways). BUT I really disliked the main character. Actually, I liked her well enough...I think I was just disturbed by her, by the things she did. She made me uncomfortable, she made me squirm. It was a strange feeling to like a book so much but to still be so put off by the main character.

[Sneha · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was ridiculous. One star only because I liked the author's writing style, but the plot was unrealistic to the point of being nonsensical. It's a weird book about weird people- I wish I could get back the hours of my life that I spent reading it. I get that the story was supposed to be quirky and whimsical, but it was just annoying and stupid. As a math major myself, I find it disheartening that there are so few books about mathematicians where they are portrayed as normal people.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I was like THIS IS SO STUPID THEY WOULD NEVER LET A 20 YEAR OLD WITH NO EXPERIENCE TEACH MATH AND ALSO KIDS DON'T CHANGE CLASSES WHEN THEY'RE THIS LITTLE but I kept reading and realized that fables and fairy tales don't have to be set in a land far away they can be set in today's world and still use metaphor to teach their lesson.

Now, I'm not sure what this lesson is, other than Do Not Fear Death. But I closed my eyes and enjoyed the ride.

[Eimear · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably more like a 2/5 but I was so bored that I struggled to finish this pretty short book. It’s not bad I guess I just couldn’t connect to the characters or the story.

[Anncleire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recensione anche sul mio blog:
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“Un segno invisibile e mio” è l’ultimo libro di Aimee Bender che ho letto e di cui mi sono innamorata ancora una volta. Edito da Minimum Fax è una storia irreale, magica e incredibilmente toccante, che naviga nelle acque del magic realism e ne esce edulcorata da ogni logica, per restituire una prospettiva nuova sul mondo. Mona racchiude tutte le idiosincrasie di una società che sfugge alla logica imprevedibile del tempo, accompagnando quella ineluttabile dei numeri, per una storia che di certo non lascia indifferenti.

Leggere la Bender è sempre un viaggio formidabile in storie che non lasciano mai indifferenti che scavano nell’animo umano con una delicatezza stupefacente. Questo libro racchiude un po’ tutte le paure di una società in crescita, fagocitata dai gesti ripetuti di una quotidianità imprevedibile. La Bender scava, incredula, in una società indifferente, che non accetta i suoi limiti e non riesce a prevenire il male che serpeggia tra i suoi membri. In fondo è questo che sconvolge, l’incapacità di guardare oltre il proprio naso, di rendersi conto che siamo tutti un po’ infelici, un po’ incostanti, incredibilmente fragili. Mona è l’emblema di chi si agita, insoddisfatto nei meandri di chi non si rende conto dell’imperturbabilità della perdita, della insoddisfazione che serpeggia fino a consumare. Mona è una ragazza che rinuncia appena raggiunge il successo, che si priva del piacere per paura di vederselo portare via. Si ferma un attimo prima che sia troppo tardi, incurante dei passi che servono per andare avanti, dei successi negati, delle insoddisfazioni che si sedimentano nelle negazioni della propria personalità. Perché scappare è fin troppo semplice, scappare sembra la soluzione più semplice anche quando è la scelta più sbagliata possibile. Mona è intrappolata in un bolla creata dalla malattia del padre e dalle sue incapacità esasperate dal suo bisogno spasmodico di controllare l’impossibile. Mona vive per i numeri, per il suo bisogno di gestire il mondo intoro a lei, il suo tic di picchiettare contro le superfici di legno si trasforma in atto ripetuto e mai corretto, in un momento che scandisce le sue parole e le sue ansie. Mona è una ragazza incredula, ma che mentre sembra solo galleggiare durante tutto l’arco narrativo tira fuori tutta la sua forza. D’altronde questa potrebbe essere la storia di ognuno di noi, di chi cerca di essere capito, di essere visto davvero nel marasma di umanità che ci circonda. La solitudine sembra inghiottirci, anche nel bel mezzo di una folla e ognuno cerca modi per emergere, per catturare l‘attenzione di chi ci circonda. Negli incontri di Mona il motivo principale resta sempre quel punto di incontro, quei dettagli che dovrebbero emergere in un momento in cui tutto sembra oscuro. Mona si muove instabile, masticando sapone e cercando di nascondersi mentre tutto intorno a lei sembra crollare e precipitare. Dall’altra parte però c’è una costante e una sicurezza, l’infilarsi preciso e rispettoso dei numeri, le somme e le moltiplicazioni, le tabelline e le serie numeriche che si ripercuotono in un ordine inalterabile. Comprendere le regole equivale a muoverci con sicurezza nel mondo dei numeri. In fondo non siamo tutti numeri pari facilmente divisibili, incasellabili. Ci si perde, si incespica nel mondo e si sopravvive, perché in fondo è questo che dobbiamo fare, andare avanti e vivere. La Bender è straordinaria, sensibile e acuta non fornisce la strada più facile, ma guida il lettore in un viaggio difficile, in una storia che si articola intorno ad una fiaba, una scelta che dilania e fortifica, che scalpita e cresce.
L’ambientazione, vaga e incerta, si accumula intorno ad un ospedale dai vetri azzurri e le prospettive di un luogo in cui tutto sembra perdere di valore, in un modo o nell’altro. Eppure anche il luogo è importante, perché può essere quello in cui viviamo, una città vale l’altra quando la storia che si racconta assume i connotati di una storia universale. E la Bender con poche parole descrive un mondo in cui interrogarsi, in cui muoversi e in cui perdersi.

Il particolare da non dimenticare? Il numero di un maratoneta…

Una storia agrodolce, che si interroga sulla solitudine dell’uomo, una storia incerta e intrisa di surreale e incredibilmente toccante, che stupisce e getta una luce nuova sul mondo, che parla il linguaggio della matematica ma che fatica a comprenderlo, anche perché spesso i segni che ci lancia sono invisibili.
Buona lettura guys!

[Anna [Floanne] · Rating 3 out of 5]

La vita di Mona Grey, una bambina amante della matematica e attenta osservatrice, cambia improvvisamente quando il padre si ammala di una misteriosa malattia che lo ingrigisce. Da quel momento Mona si rifugia in una serie di riti scaramantici per sopravvivere alla paura della morte del padre e trova conforto nei numeri e nel tamburellare compulsivamente sul legno ogniqualvolta sul suo cammino si affacciano emozioni positive che minacciano di farla uscire da quel grigiore in cui anche lei è precipitata. La situazione sembra migliorare quando Mona, ormai adulta, viene assunta come insegnante di matematica in una scuola elementare. Qui riesce a far appassionare i propri piccoli, particolarissimi alunni alla magia dei numeri, ma c’è sempre un’ascia che incombe sulla sua possibile felicità. Un romanzo decisamente particolare, che non lascia indifferenti e che tratta molte tematiche con uno stile elegante e accattivante ma a volte un po’ troppo surreale per permettermi di entrare in sintonia con i molti stranissimi personaggi. Indimenticabile comunque la piccola Lisa Venus!
Voto: 3.5 stelle