Abstract

A moving and original love story about two lost people who find each other on the Internet. In 1991 Emily Piper, a graduate student at Berkeley, has nearly finished her dissertation on metaphysics when her life is changed by the great Berkeley-Oakland fire that destroyed over 3,000 homes. Pi loses all of her belongings: her books and writings, all the things that reminded her of herself. Though others throw themselves into the task of rebuilding their lives, Pi can't. Instead, she escapes to the small coastal town of Mendocino. On the other coast is J.D., a man with an ambition to go: permanently, absolutely. But before making his departure, J.D. decides to write a record of his jokes and neuroses; of his reflections on his wandering father, Joe; and of his urban, unemployed despair-and post it on the Internet. When J.D. and Pi encounter each other's words on the Net, the sparks start to fly. Is J.D. who he says he is? Pi, as a recovering philosopher, ought to be able to tell reality from imagination, but finds herself in doubt. And though her correspondence with J.D. begins to heat up, she finds a sensual, more material temptation closer by, and her dilemma becomes a perilous instance of the "mind/body problem." With The Metaphysical Touch, Sylvia Brownrigg has written a fabulously rich novel full of humor, tenderness, and truth.