The Solitude of Prime Numbers
A Novel
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3.6 • 287 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Heaven and Earth, a sensational novel about whether a "prime number" can ever truly connect with someone else
A prime number is inherently a solitary thing: it can only be divided by itself, or by one: it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia, too, move on their own axis, alone with their personal tragedies. As a child, Alice’s overbearing father drove her first to a terrible skiing accident, and then to anorexia. When she meets Mattia she recognizes a kindred, tortured spirit, and Mattia reveals to Alice his terrible secret: that as a boy he abandoned his mentally-disabled twin sister in a park to go to a party, and when he returned, she was nowhere to be found.
These two irreversible episodes mark Alice and Mattia’s lives for ever, and as they grow into adulthood their destinies seem intertwined: they are divisible only by themselves and each other. But the shadow of the lost twin haunts their relationship, until a chance sighting by Alice of a woman who could be Mattia’s sister forces a lifetime of secret emotion to the surface.
A meditation on loneliness and love, The Solitude of Prime Numbers asks, can we ever truly be whole when we’re in love with another? And when Mattia is asked to choose between human love and his professional love — of mathematics — which will make him more complete?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Italian author and mathematician Giordano follows two scarred people whose lives intersect but can't seem to join in his cerebral yet touching debut. Alice and Mattia, both survivors of childhood traumas, are the odd ones out amid the adolescent masses in their high school. Mattia has never recovered from the loss of his sister, while Alice still suffers the effects of a skiing accident that damaged her physically and stunted her ability to trust. Now teenagers, Mattia, also addicted to self-injury, has withdrawn into a world of numbers and math, and Alice gains control through starving herself and photography. When they meet, they recognize something primal in each other, but timing and awkwardness keep their friendship on tenuous ground until, years later, their lives come together one last time. Giordano uses Mattia and Alice's trajectory to ask whether there are some people the prime numbers among us who are destined to be alone, or whether two primes can come together. The novel's bleak subject matter is rendered almost beautiful by Giordano's spare, intense focus on his two characters.
Customer Reviews
The Solitude of Prime Numbers
I was impressed at how the characters remained consistent despite the pull of sentimentality most authors would succumb to.
Captivating story
The characters are perfectly drawn and the arcs of their lives constructed in such a way as to propel the reader with increasing velocity from beginning to end. I felt as though I personally knew these people and found myself identifying with them in many of the defining moments. The prime number metaphor is particularly apt with composite numbers always there but outside of reach and never actually formed.
Intelligent novel
As a psychologist I was impressed with the author's knowledge if the human psyche. Yes, the novel is sad and dark, but nonetheless extremely smart. If you like Remark, you gonna like this book.