Strange Attractors: Stories

A National Jewish Honor Book composed of seven short stories from the author of The Mind-Body Problem.

A mathematician studies the geometry of soap bubbles and responds to the rapture of infatuation by reciting Shakespeare in Yiddish. A group of Olympian intellects is made childlike by the appearance of a double rainbow. Becky Sharp steps out of the pages of Vanity Fair to confound a pretentious philosopher. These are just some of the marvelous and unlikely things that happen in Strange Attractors--a collection of stories that explores the interactions of thought and feeling, mind and heart, to reveal the deep, mysterious ties between seemingly unrelated lives.

"A wonderful collection . . . A picture of remarkable depth and complexity."--Los Angeles Times

"Electric and compelling . . . Rebecca Goldstein brings a keen and specially informed vision to our world."--Newsday

"Rebecca Goldstein again probes the relationships between female intellect and emotion--this time in a sparkling, erudite collection in which brilliant women's minds dictate their romantic attachments while their gender continues to dictate their fate."--Kirkus Reviews