Aimee Bender Libri

Mona Gray, vent'anni, è innamorata dei numeri fino all'ossessione: l'ordine e la precisione dell'aritmetica le servono a difendersi dall'instabilità del mondo. Da quando il padre ha contratto una misteriosa malattia, infatti, Mona ha bloccato ogni propria aspirazione, ha paura di innamorarsi e si rifugia in una serie di piccoli gesti e oggetti scaramantici. Ma quando viene assunta come insegnante di matematica alle elementari, la sua vita - grazie a un'allieva fuori dal comune e a un collega capace di fare breccia nella sua timidezza - comincia a cambiare irreversibilmente. Tenero, spassoso, commovente, acclamato dal "Los Angeles Times" come uno dei libri dell'anno, questo romanzo ha lanciato Aimee Bender come una delle migliori voci della nuova narrativa americana. Ne è stato tratto un omonimo film con Jessica Alba, uscito negli Stati Uniti nel 2011.

L'idea di questa antologia, pubblicata come numero unico della rivista di Dave Eggers "McSweeney's", nasce dalla volontà del curatore, Michael Chabon, di ridare dignità e visibilità alle short stories di avventure in cui un tempo si cimentavano autori quali Balzac, Conrad, Henry James ed Edith Wharton. Una raccolta in cui il racconto breve riacquista la sua dimensione più classica, tradizionale e avvincente: quella di narrarre storie avventurose e piene di thrilling. Gli autori chiamati a misurarsi con questa sfida sono tra i più rappresentativi della letteratura angloamericana da Stephen King a Rick Moody, da Michael Crichton a Neil Gaiman, da Elmore Leonard a Nick Hornby per finire con Dave Heggers e Harlan Ellison.

'The Butterfly Lampshade is an unflinching, empathetic portrayal of a childhood touched by mental illness. As always, Aimee Bender's respect for the child and the child within translates into wisdom and magic on the page.' Jing-Jing Lee, author of How We Disappeared On the night her mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is mesmerised by a lamp adorned with butterflies as she falls asleep. When she wakes, Francie sees a dead butterfly matching the ones on the lamp floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before anyone sees. Twenty-years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment and two other incidents that have haunted her life. But how close are her memories to reality and will she ever be free of them?

In Willful Creatures Aimee Bender takes us on a journey to a fantastical world in which authentic love blossoms. With the mix of charm and keenly felt emotion that characterised her New York Times bestseller The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.

Imagine what a dictionary might look like about thirty years hence, when all of the world's problems are solved and our current dictionaries are a distant memory. Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss have lined up an incredible array of writers to bring you that futuristic dictionary and a vision of the world as it might be. Think of it as a dictionary of language for describing what the future could look like a dictionary that is both useful and romantic, hopeful and necessary, pragmatic and idealistic, and frequently funny. This is science fiction but with a difference.

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the slice. To her horror, she finds that her cheerful mother tastes of despair. Soon, she’s privy to the secret knowledge that most families keep hidden: her father’s detachment, her mother’s transgression, her brother’s increasing retreat from the world. But there are some family secrets that even her cursed taste buds can’t discern.

Eine trauernde Bibliothekarin beschließt, mit jedem Mann, der ihre Bibliothek betritt, Sex zu haben. Eine halb verrückte, unerträglich schöne Erbin folgt einem seltsamen Mann nach Hause und sucht totale sexuelle Hingabe: Er möchte nur Spielshows ansehen. Eine Frau verliebt sich in einen Buckligen; als sich herausstellt, dass seine Deformität ein Prothesen ist, verlässt sie ihn. Eine Frau, deren Mann gerade aus dem Krieg zurückgekehrt ist, kämpft mit der herzzerreißenden Frage: Kann sie einen Mann lieben, der keine Lippen hat? Aimee Benders Geschichten zeigen eine Welt, die auf ihrer Achse verdreht ist, einen Ort des Unkonventionellen, der dem realen Leben in all seiner grotesken, schönen Pracht ähnelt. Von der ersten Zeile jeder Erzählung lässt sie uns wissen, dass sie eine Geschichte erzählt, aber die Moral ist nie ganz das, was wir erwarten. Benders Prosa ist glorreich: musikalisch und umgangssprachlich, unverwechselbar und herzzerreißend. Hier sind Geschichten von Männern und Frauen, deren Leben von der Kraft außergewöhnlicher Wünsche geprägt - und manchmal verdreht - wird, erotisch und anders.