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As She Climbed Across the Table - Jonathan Lethem
As She Climbed Across the Table
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3.64 145
         Anna Karenina left her husband for a dashing officer. Lady Chatterley left hers for the gamekeeper. Now Alice Coombs has her boyfriend for nothing … nothing at all.  Just how that should have come to pass and what Philip Engstrand, Alice’s spurned boyfriend, can do about it is the... show more
         Anna Karenina left her husband for a dashing officer. Lady Chatterley left hers for the gamekeeper. Now Alice Coombs has her boyfriend for nothing … nothing at all.  Just how that should have come to pass and what Philip Engstrand, Alice’s spurned boyfriend, can do about it is the premise for this vertiginous speculative romance by the acclaimed author of Gun, with Occasional Music.          Alice Coombs is a particle physicist, and she and her colleagues have created a void, a hole in the universe, that they have taken to calling Lack. But Lack is a nullity with taste—tastes; it absorbs a pomegranate, light bulbs, an argyle sock; it disdains a bow tie, an ice ax, and a scrambled duck egg. To Alice, this selectivity translates as an irresistible personality. To Philip, it makes Lack an unbeatable rival, for how can he win Alice back from something that has no flaws—because it has no qualities? Ingenious, hilarious, and genuinely mind-expanding, As She Climbed Across the Table is the best boy-meets-girl-meets-void story ever written. 
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9780375700125 (0375700129)
Publisher: Vintage
Pages no: 224
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
nouveau
nouveau rated it
5.0 As She Climbed Across the Table: A Novel
for better (and of course, definitely worse) I was in New York City around the turn of the millenium. one of the appeals of city life is the illusion it gives of "centrality." certain Manhattan movie theatres have day-before national release distribution of motion pictures (I saw Sophia Coppola's LO...
thomcat
thomcat rated it
A story about blindness, figuratively and literally - drug through an academic satire (which didn't enthrall me). All tolled (or told) it was an entertaining book, and I did laugh out loud at times. 3.5 stars
NinthWanderer
NinthWanderer rated it
I like this bit: "Talk was hopeless. We smiled apologetically, while our words went spilling like platefuls of barbecue sauce onto a white dress in a detergent ad, comical slow-motion disaster."This book is entertaining. I am entertained.But, seriously, dialogue tags. My kingdom for some dialogue ta...
Books, You Guys!
Books, You Guys! rated it
3.0
Jonathan Lethem's As She Climbed Across the Table is two books in one: a parable about love and obsession, and a sharp satire of academia. It is narrated by Phillip Engstrand, a sociology professor who talks entirely too much. Phillip tells us the story of Lack, a hole in the universe opened by an...
Osho
Osho rated it
You know by now that I love Lethem, right? Who else could write a love triangle with a physicist, a social scientist, and nothing? Though it includes a blind Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, Schrodinger's cat, and many other amusing features (some of which are surely physics jokes that I don't get), th...
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