An Invisible Sign of My Own: A Novel (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Aimee Bender's funny, delicately shaded first novel is a constant delight, even at its most warped. An Invisible Sign of My Own tells the story of Mona Gray, a math wiz and a high school track star, whose ordinary childhood comes to pieces when her father is stricken with a mysterious illness. There doesn't seem to be a name for it, but he looks sort of gray and seems frail and unhappy. Whether there's anything really wrong with Mona's dad is unclear, but her fear that he will die, as well as his withdrawal from family life--no more vacations, no running practice with his daughter, no unplanned outings--triggers a corresponding withdrawal in her. Whenever she does well at anything, or starts to enjoy herself, she quits: piano class, dancing lessons, her first boyfriend, running.

I quit dessert to see if I could do it; of course I could; I quit breathing one evening until my lungs overruled; I quit touching my skin, sleeping with both hands under the pillow. When no one was home, I tied ropes around the piano, so that it would take me thirty minutes with scissors to get back to that minuet. Then I hid all the scissors.

Instead of working out her problems, Mona develops a habit of knocking on wood, and sometimes knocks for an hour before getting to sleep. Eating soap is her other dark indulgence: a surefire anti-aphrodisiac that she calls on whenever she feels sexually attracted to a man.

At 20, Mona is recruited to teach math at the local elementary school. To her surprise, she is a brilliant teacher, making addition and subtraction tangible to second graders with a game called Numbers and Materials, in which the students bring in natural or man-made objects that take the form of numbers. When 7-year-old Lisa Venus brings in a zero made of IV tubing from her dying mother's hospital room, Mona recognizes a kindred spirit. But she will have to be healthy herself to help Lisa resist her urge to take on her mother's illness out of grief and loyalty. The complicated connection between children and adults is the underlying theme of this big-hearted novel. However quirky and alarming Bender's methods may seem, An Invisible Sign of My Own is no darker than a fairy tale, and the witch--even if it's the witch within--is reliably vanquished in the end. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Clever, original and written with brio and eloquence, Bender's first novel (after the praised short story collection The Girl with the Flammable Skirt) may not appeal to every taste, but those who respond to its depressed, quirky heroine in her anguished search for safety from life's disasters will feel instant love. At 20, Mona Gray has deliberately made herself as colorless as her name. A decade ago, when her adored father fell victim to a mysterious illness that has left him drained of energy, hope and desire for human contact, Mona too retreated from life and deliberately stopped aspiring for success or happiness. Having turned her back on achievement as a track star and on sharing love, Mona still nourishes one source of happiness: the world of mathematics. Numbers, being clear and immutable, are Mona's salvation, as well as her job. She teaches arithmetic to second graders, having invented a zany curriculum in which her students find numbers everywhere in the environment. Kids love Mona, although she constantly and compulsively knocks on wood to keep disaster at bay. Everyone else seems unaware of her emotional isolationAbut everyone else in this novel is also pretty strange. Mr. Jones, Mona's former high school math teacher, wears numbers around his neck to indicate his daily mood. Mona wears "an invisible sign of my own" that denotes her fear and vulnerability. Then awkward, unsociable science teacher Michael Smith, who shares Mona's morbid imagination, breaks through her emotional reserve. Meanwhile, she has developed a particular fondness for seven-year-old Lisa Venus, who is actually experiencing the real terror of loss and abandonment that Mona fears: her mother is dying of cancer. In a satisfying denouement in which Bender brings the narrative full circle with astonishing dexterity, Mona discovers how to connect and live fully, and helps Lisa to navigate her own way through a frightening world. Readers may find the narrative too schematic and the characters exceptionally odd. On the other hand, Bender writes like an angel, with images that strike resonant chords, and her sly humor pervades every page. And those who are initially put off by the bizarre fairy tale that opens the narrative will be touched almost to tears when it comes full circle. Author tour. (July) FYI: Bender is the sister of Karen Bender, author of Like Normal People (Forecasts, Feb. 21).
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; Later printing edition (July 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385492243
• ISBN-13: 978-0385492249
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #284,315 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I always wanted the stories to last longer and now they do, July 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: An Invisible Sign of My Own (Hardcover)

I loved Flammable Skirt so when I heard Bender was writing a novel I bought it immediately. I love it! She delivers on the promise of her stories in a way I wouldn't have imagined. The darkness that was present in the stories about the Ice Girl and the Fire Girl or The Rememberer, is deeply explored in this novel. The novel has a weighty sadness which is revealed through the prism of Bender's magical language. In terms of what it has to say about family too, this book is both frightening and relevant. I am so happy to spend a whole book with her characters.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Stick with the Skirt, December 5, 2001

By	Christopher E. Brogan (Northern Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: An Invisible Sign of My Own (Hardcover)

I probably did this to myself. I read Bender's novel back to back with reading her book of short stories, The Girl In the Flammable Skirt. The problem is this: I feel Bender used lots of the little character quirks she came up with for her short stories in her larger work, the Invisible Sign Of My Own. To me, it was cheating.

The book read fairly well, and it was quick and quirky, but what I didn't like about it was that it reused things from other stories, if not directly, at least in spirit. She definitely took the "knock on wood" thing from an earlier short story of her own.

This all aside, I liked the writing, and felt it really worked well for me.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Knock on wood, August 19, 2001

By	"insectwings" (Cinti, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Invisible Sign of My Own (Hardcover)

From the moment I started the beginnings of this book, I found it absoultely irresistible. In fact, I found it very complicated to even put it down. I read through it in most of one sitting, even denying myself the simplicity of water.

Aimee Bender gives us a wonderfilled, poetic story about Mona Gray. A woman, turned 20, obsessed with numbers and good luck. This incredible story reaches far into the reader, taking a life of it's own deep inside, even though far from insouciant.

A must read for Plath lovers, as parts of the novel remind me of Esther Greenwood (The Bell Jar), and in reality, these two could have been best of friends, or better yet...worst enemies.

Bender turns obsession and compulsion into a moving story of a woman that knows too much...and too little.