The Folded World: A Novel by the Author of Sea Wife

Amity Gaige

Mar 2011 · Other Press, LLC

About this ebook

From the author of the critically acclaimed Sea Wife

Praised for her exquisite prose and crystalline insights, Amity Gaige returns with The Folded World, the story of an idealistic young social worker drawn into the lives of his mentally ill clients.

Charlie Shade was born into a quiet, prosperous life, but a sense of injustice dogs him. He feels destined to leave his life of “bread and laundry,” to work instead with people in crisis. On his way, he meets his kindred spirit in Alice, a soulful young woman, living helplessly by laws of childhood superstition. Charlie’s empathy with his clients—troubled souls like Hal, the high-school wrestling champion who undergoes a psychotic break, and Opal, the isolated young woman who claims “various philosophies have confused my life”—is both admirable and nearly fatal. An adoring husband and new father, Charlie risks his own cherished, private domestic world to help Hal, Opal, and others move beyond their haunted inner worlds into the larger world of love and connection.
 
A collision of extraordinary characters, The Folded World addresses the universal dilemma of love, wherein giving to another can seem like “the death of the world of oneself.” With an unerring eye for both the joys and devastations of life, Amity Gaige once again reminds us of the pleasures and depths to be found in her fiction.

About the author

Amity Gaige is the author of four novels, O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, which was short-listed for the Folio Prize, and Sea Wife. Published in eighteen countries, Schroder was named one of best books of 2013 by the New York Times Book Review, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Kirkus Reviews, The Women’s National Book Association, Cosmopolitan, Denver Post, The Buffalo News, The Millions, Amazon, Bookmarks, and Publisher’s Weekly, among others. Gaige is the recipient of many awards for her previous novels, including Foreword Book of the Year Award for 2007; and in 2006, she was named one of the “5 Under 35” outstanding emerging writers by the National Book Foundation. She has a Fulbright and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, New York Times, the Literary Review, The Yale Review, and One Story. She lives in Connecticut with her family.