Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves.

They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they’d been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all the others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn’t do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.

Paolo Giordano’s international bestseller from Italy, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, chronicles the relationship between two misfits: Mattia, a math genius who, because of his intense remorse for abandoning his twin sister when they were very young, punishes himself with burns and cuts, and Alice who, after a crippling skiing accident as a young girl, nurtures a skewed perspective of her body and anorexic eating habits.

The novel follows Alice and Mattia through their solitary lives, beginning with a recounting of the events that severely affected them as children and picking up when they meet as adolescents. Recognizing in each other an inability to connect with others and to master the “machinery of life,” as they become adults Alice and Mattia cling to each other while managing never really to touch. Then Mattia decides to accept a mathematics grant at a university in England, and Alice fumbles to find a connection to the world without him.

Such a novel, in the hands of a less adept writer, could quickly turn into a melodrama, but Giordano’s debut reads more like intricate portraits of people whose loneliness has been etched in relief. Even the “adjusted” adults in the novel, the parents of Alice and Mattia, Alice’s housekeeper, Sol, and the successful doctor Alice marries (she spends much time at the beginning of their relationship noticing his “normalcy”), struggle to reach beyond themselves.

While reading Solitude, I couldn’t keep myself from noting the insightful ways Giordano portrayed the struggle to connect with another — I am against underlining for the most part, so by the end of the book I was repeating numbers, much like Mattia would do, in order to remember pages and chapters that I wanted to go back to.  The quote above is one of them; it’s the opening of chapter 21.  There were also chapters 11, 15, 20, and pages 77, 115, and 131. I’ll refrain from sharing all of those with you, but I would like to end with the conclusion to which Mattia comes after the passage above, which gives the title of this impressive novel its significance:

Twin primes are pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you’re about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered. Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other.

yes, this is another book about school shootings but at least this time it’s fiction.  although i’m only about 100 pages into it so far i think i’m gonna love it.  it’s told in the perspective of several different people who were present at the shooting and the detective assigned to the case.  it’s told in the form of witnesses interviews and the view of the detective in the present as she tries to decide if the case is as open and shut as the public would like for it to be.  this is one of those books that i really don’t want to put down.

by Zita

Not only did we celebrate Cinco de Mayo at Lemuria yesterday, we were also honored to have Holly LeCraw come and read to us from her debut novel, The Swimming Pool. Despite having just driven straight from Atlanta with hardly a minute to catch breath before we put her to work signing books, Holly was a captivating reader and a truly pleasant person. A murder mystery/love story set in Cape Cod, The Swimming Pool is the perfect summer read (Amy Tan describes it as “riveting and psychologically complex as Hithcockian film noir” – !), so for those of you looking for something to get lost in this summer, come on over…we’ve got signed copies!

Read some of the general public’s reviews of The Swimming Pool here.

Susie

The Male Brain: A Breakthrough Understanding of How Men and Boys Think

by Louann Brizendine, M.D.

Broadway, March 2010

Like The Female Brain, The Male Brain traces the organic development of the brain through the stages of life. I have been looking forward to reading this book for over a year now. Comparing the two books was most interesting, and now future readers can read them back to back.

The male cell has a Y chromosome and the female does not. Eight weeks after conception, the tiny male testicles begin to produce enough testosterone to fundamentally alter its structure.

The male brain is a lean mean problem-solving machine with two and a half times the brain space devoted to sexual drive. Sexual thoughts flicker all day and night making him always ready to seize sexual opportunity. Women don’t always realize that a penis has a mind of its own.

Especially parents of both sexes will benefit from reading The Boy Brain and The Teen Boy Brain sections. Boys’ moods and drives are explained clearly as they change biologically and with age. Mating and parenthood go way back in the evolution of the male brain development. The need to protect loves ones and to reproduce drive the male towards survival.

Now that I am getting old, I especially enjoyed the section on manhood and the description of the emotional lives of men.

I agree with the author: “. . . learning the male brain can help men and women feel more intimacy, compassion and appreciation for each other. Such understanding might be the most important factor in creating a genuine balance between the sexes.”

In 2008, I was reading The Female Brain and wrote about it here. Joe also has read The Male Brain and wrote about how it has affected his role as a parent. Check out Louann’s website here.

I walk past her house all the time; her books take up an entire bookcase in the fiction room; a writer coming to Lemuria is inspired by her . . . I feel like things are finally coming together for Eudora and me.

The article Karl Marlantes wrote about what writing and readings means to him has had quite a presence on our blog and website. Well, I don’t mean to bring up Karl again, but it tickles my curiosity that Eudora Welty made an impression on him. I read Delta Wedding for a course in Southern Literature. As I recall, I did not have any strong reaction to the novel. But now I want to read Eudora Welty again not only to quell my curiosity but to also revisit her since I happened to move to her hometown three years ago. I also get to visit her house next week.

I started reading some of her short stories last night and I loved them! I think next I am going to read The Optimist’s Daughter. Surely this will round out my personal Eudora Welty appreciation month and in the end I can say something more thoughtful about her writing and her life.

The photo of Eudora Welty with Richard Ford was taken at Lemuria Books in 1985 .