Leaning Towards Infinity
{{Short description|1996 novel by Australian author Sue Woolfe}}
{{Use Australian English|date= April 2025}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2025}}
{{Infobox book |
| name = Leaning Towards Infinity
| title_orig =
| translator =
| image =
| caption =
| author = Sue Woolfe
| cover_artist =
| country = Australia
| language = English
| series =
| genre = Literary novel
| publisher = Vintage Australia
| release_date = 1996
| media_type = Print
| pages = 393 pp.
| isbn = 0091832284
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
| awards = 1996 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, winner
}}
Leaning Towards Infinity : How My Mother's Apron Unfolds Into My Life is a 1996 novel by the Australian author Sue Woolfe.{{cite web|title= Leaning Towards Infinity by Sue Woolfe (Vintage, 1996)|publisher= National Library of Australia|url= https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/845937|access-date= 21 April 2025}}
It was the winner of the 1996 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards,{{cite web|title="Tales of antiquarian hunters collects top book award" |publisher= Sydney Morning Herald, 6 September 1996|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2527865430|access-date= 11 April 2024|id= {{ProQuest|363360979}}}} and the winner of the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the South East Asia and South Pacific region.{{cite web |url=http://www.commonwealthfoundation.com/uploads/documents/Regional%20Winners%201987-20071.pdf |title=Commonwealth Writers' Prize Regional Winners 1987–2007 |publisher=Commonwealth Foundation |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071023223729/http://www.commonwealthfoundation.com/uploads/documents/Regional%20Winners%201987-20071.pdf |archive-date=23 October 2007 |url-status=dead}}
Synopsis
The story of the novel centres around three generations of women: Hypatia, who writes about her famous mathematician mother Francis, who discovered a new kind of number, and about Juanita, mother to Francis, and herself a mathematician, though unknown.
Critical reception
Kirkus Reviews gave the novel a positive review: "Creating the feeling of a found document, prizewinning Australian writer Woolfe pieces together an intriguing and expansive novel of ideas—showing the ways in which love, motherhood, and mathematics wrap around the human soul...A lovely novel, magical in its elevation of mathematics into a realm of divine beauty, charming in its depiction of the equally demanding sphere of motherhood."{{cite web|title="Leaning Towards Infinity by Sue Woolfe" |publisher= Kirkus Reviews, 27 March 1997|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sue-woolfe/leaning-towards-infinity/|access-date= 21 April 2025}}
In The Sydney Morning Herald reviewer Rosemary Sorensen called the novel a "startingly modern book, balancing, in her case, an undermining of narrative authority against the urgency of a topic that has been waiting for quite some time to be done as well as this."{{cite web|title="Daughter of maths genius gets the point" |publisher=The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1996, p128|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2527581260|access-date= 21 April 2025|id= {{ProQuest|2527581260}}}}
Awards
- 1996 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, winner
- 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize – South East Asia and South Pacific Region, winner
Publication history
After the novel's initial publication in 1996 in Australia by Vintage Australia, it was reprinted as follows:
- Women's Press, UK, 1998{{cite web|title= Leaning Towards Infinity by Sue Woolfe (Women's Press, 1998)|publisher= National Library of Australia|url= https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1912350|access-date= 21 April 2025}} & 2000{{cite web|title= Austlit — Leaning Towards Infinity by Sue Woolfe |publisher= Austlit|url=https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C119954|access-date= 21 April 2025}}
- Faber & Faber, UK, 1998
- Vintage Australia, Australia, 1999
- Wutheringink, Australia, 2013
- Untapped, Australia, 2021{{cite web|title= Leaning Towards Infinity by Sue Woolfe (Untapped, 2021)|publisher= National Library of Australia|url= https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/8804435|access-date= 21 April 2025}} & 2022
The novel was also translated into Dutch in 1997, and French in 2003.
Notes
- Dedication: To Gordon who leans towards infinity every now and then.
See also
References
{{reflist}}
{{New South Wales Premier's Prize for Fiction}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leaning Towards Infinity}}
Category:1996 Australian novels
Category:New South Wales Premier's Prize for Fiction Award-winning works