The Metaphysical Touch Book

Sylvia Brownrigg's first novel, The Metaphysical Touch, has been published to warm critical acclaim, contributing to her reputation as an intelligent and entertaining new voice in contemporary fiction. A book which explores the potential of love and death, philosophy and loss via the Internet, The Metaphysical Touch takes a deft, and focused, approach to its topics. Having lost all her possessions--including her philosophy dissertation and her cat--in the Berkeley fire, Pi's grip on the reality of her University life fades before the demands of rebuilding her world from scratch; JD is writing his Diery, a lengthy suicide note, published on an Internet bulletin board: "I've got an ambition to go. Permanently, absolutely, I mean...I'm also writing this in order to leave some print in my wake". Alternating between the stories of Pi and JD, the novel follows their gradual coming together via the new technology of Internet and email. In their different ways, both Pi and JD represent the challenge of how--if at all--to draw a person (back) into life; what is it that turns life into a promise rather than a suicide note? And what does the Internet, that "most significant change to human communication since the printing press", have to do with the difference between being alive and being dead, with the human conditions of loving and losing? Those "metaphysical" questions are at the heart of this patient and lengthy, novel--a book which takes its time to come to its remarkable, and feeling, conclusion. --Vicky LebeauRead More