Natural Wonders

A Novel

Fiction & Literature, Literary
Cover of the book Natural Wonders by Angela Woodward, University of Alabama Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Angela Woodward ISBN: 9781573668606
Publisher: University of Alabama Press Publication: April 1, 2016
Imprint: Fiction Collective 2 Language: English
Author: Angela Woodward
ISBN: 9781573668606
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Publication: April 1, 2016
Imprint: Fiction Collective 2
Language: English

Winner of the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize

Natural Wonders is a novel in the form of a series of lectures about the earth and its prehistory. In it, a grieving widow assembles an idiosyncratic history of the earth’s history based on her understanding and impressions of her deceased husband’s papers.

In Natural Wonders, Jenny is given the task of assembling a memorial edition of her recently deceased husband Jonathan’s lecture series about the physical history of the earth. With little knowledge of his work or of Jonathan himself, Jenny constructs from his fragmentary and disorganized notes her own version of our planet’s past.
 
Presented as a series of lectures, Jenny’s earth history is an amalgam of stories from science and about scientists—a Serbian mathematician and his theory of the ice ages, a Swiss doctor camped on a glacier, the mysterious materia pinguis thought to have drifted down from stars to form fossils. Into these stories she interweaves scenes from their marriage as well as material she finds on Jonathan’s shelves. In her history, an explanation of continental drift becomes enmeshed with a schoolboy’s erotic encounter with an older woman. Icebergs in an Andean lake launch a woman’s jealous affair with a third-rate actor, and H. G. Wells’s Island of Dr. Moreau is dramatically recounted in new form.
 
Natural Wonders mixes mythology, popular fiction, and a misfired romance with the story of the earth hurtling around the sun. From intimately human to geologic to cosmic, it explores change, love, and loss.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Winner of the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize

Natural Wonders is a novel in the form of a series of lectures about the earth and its prehistory. In it, a grieving widow assembles an idiosyncratic history of the earth’s history based on her understanding and impressions of her deceased husband’s papers.

In Natural Wonders, Jenny is given the task of assembling a memorial edition of her recently deceased husband Jonathan’s lecture series about the physical history of the earth. With little knowledge of his work or of Jonathan himself, Jenny constructs from his fragmentary and disorganized notes her own version of our planet’s past.
 
Presented as a series of lectures, Jenny’s earth history is an amalgam of stories from science and about scientists—a Serbian mathematician and his theory of the ice ages, a Swiss doctor camped on a glacier, the mysterious materia pinguis thought to have drifted down from stars to form fossils. Into these stories she interweaves scenes from their marriage as well as material she finds on Jonathan’s shelves. In her history, an explanation of continental drift becomes enmeshed with a schoolboy’s erotic encounter with an older woman. Icebergs in an Andean lake launch a woman’s jealous affair with a third-rate actor, and H. G. Wells’s Island of Dr. Moreau is dramatically recounted in new form.
 
Natural Wonders mixes mythology, popular fiction, and a misfired romance with the story of the earth hurtling around the sun. From intimately human to geologic to cosmic, it explores change, love, and loss.

More books from University of Alabama Press

Cover of the book Animal, Vegetable, Digital by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book A Blockaded Family by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book Native American Legends of the Southeast by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book Place Names in Alabama by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book In the Name of Necessity by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book Ye That Are Men Now Serve Him by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book When Good Men Do Nothing by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book Treatise On Laughter by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book Walt Whitman and Nineteenth-Century Women Reformers by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book Sissy! by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book Remote Sensing in Archaeology by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book In the Shadow of Hitler by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book American Drama in the Age of Film by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book Populism to Progressivism In Alabama by Angela Woodward
Cover of the book Raphael Semmes by Angela Woodward
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy