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As She Climbed Across the Table 

As She Climbed Across the Table (1997)
A novel by Jonathan Lethem

 
Particle physicist Alice Coombs and her colleagues are on the cusp of a great discovery. They have created a void, a hole in the universe, a nothingness they have named "Lack". Philip Engstrand loves Alice Coombs. The trouble is that Lack is about to come between them.When is the absurd not absurd? When the story is chronicled by Jonathan Lethem. In As She Climbed Across the Table, Lethem again manages to take the strangest of set-ups and make them seem commonplace--so much so that, despite the high concepts (Motherless Brooklyn was about a Tourettes-suffering gangster/private eye and Girl in Landscape was a sci-fi coming-of-age story), his books are masterpieces of human characterisation..

The (ostensible) premise of As She Climbed Across the Table concerns the discovery of a hole in the universe by Professor Alice Coombs, and the effect of the discovery on the campus on which she works. A physicist, Coombs and her department create a hole in the universe--a hole that is defined by its complete lack of tangible qualities. As she and her department explore their discovery, they anthropomorphitise it: Alice comes to ascribe a personality to "Lack"; it is this relationship and the effect it has on Coombs' partner, Philip Engstrand (a sociologist who studies the community of academics around him), that the book revolves around. Told from Engstrand's point of view, it is a fantastic tale told without wonder--think Don DeLillo, especially White Noise, another tale of the everyday absurd set on a college campus--and it's all the richer for it. --Randy Silver

 
Used availability for Jonathan Lethem's As She Climbed Across the Table


See all available used copies of this book at: Abebooks UK or Abebooks US
 

 

Hardback Editions

February 1997 : Hardback
Title: As She Climbed Across the Table
Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem
ISBN: 0385485174 / 9780385485173 (USA edition)
Publisher: Doubleday
Availability: Amazon UK   Amazon   Amazon CA   

Paperback Editions

January 2005 : Paperback
Title: As She Climbed Across the Table
Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem
ISBN: 0571225292 / 9780571225293 (UK edition)
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   

January 2002 : Paperback
Title: As She Climbed Across the Table
Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem
ISBN: 0571206050 / 9780571206056 (UK edition)
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   

January 2001 : Paperback
Title: As She Climbed Across the Table
Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem
ISBN: 0571205895 / 9780571205899 (UK edition)
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Availability: Amazon UK   Amazon CA   Amazon   

February 1998 : Paperback
Title: As She Climbed Across the Table: A Novel
Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem
ISBN: 0375700129 / 9780375700125 (USA edition)
Publisher: Vintage
Availability: Amazon UK   Amazon   Amazon CA   

Kindle Editions

April 2011 : Kindle edition
Title: As She Climbed Across the Table: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
Author(s):: Jonathan Lethem
ISBN: B004JN1CWE
Publisher: Vintage
Availability: Amazon   

 


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