Antonia Hayes

"In the vein of Jodi Picoult's House Rules and Nick Hornby's About a Boy, a debut novel about an exceptionally gifted boy who discovers the truth about his past, his overprotective single mother who tries desperately to shield him from it, and the father he has never met who is trying to come back into his life"--

Relativity

Die relative Unberechenbarkeit des Glücks

Antonia Hayes’ adventures in language began when, as a young child, she was a word sponge, soaking up speech and phrases and the sometimes haunted spaces in between. She became a natural bookworm, turning to the Baby-sitters Club series – those classics of the 90s – to start a lifetime of finding friends and comfort in the pages of a book. When her debut novel, Relativity, was published, she again turned to literature for guidance and consolation, this time in the form of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Woolf wished for financial independence and a room of one’s own in which to write, but Hayes, writing almost ninety years later, argues here that maybe that isn’t enough. Perhaps women writers need a whole universe of their own. Buoyed by hope and a lifetime of language, Hayes tells us how we can dare to disturb the universe before A Room of One’s Own turns 100.

A Universe of One's Own

A “beautifully written, heartbreaking” (S. J. Watson) debut novel about a gifted boy who discovers the truth about his past, his overprotective single mother who tries desperately to shield him from it, and the father he has never met who has unexpectedly returned. “Original, compassionate, cleverly plotted, and genuinely difficult to put down.” –Graeme Simsion, New York Times bestselling author of The Rosie Project Twelve-year-old Ethan Forsythe, an exceptionally talented boy obsessed with physics and astronomy, has been raised alone by his mother in Sydney, Australia. Claire, a former professional ballerina, has been a wonderful parent to Ethan, but he’s becoming increasingly curious about his father’s absence in his life. Claire is fiercely protective of her talented, vulnerable son—and of her own feelings. But when Ethan falls ill, tied to a tragic event that occurred during his infancy, her tightly-held world is split open. Thousands of miles away on the western coast of Australia, Mark is trying to forget about the events that tore his family apart, but an unexpected call forces him to confront his past and return home. When Ethan secretly intercepts a letter from Mark to Claire, he unleashes long-suppressed forces that—like gravity—pull the three together again, testing the limits of love and forgiveness. Told from the alternating points of view of Ethan and each of his parents, Relativity is a poetic and soul-searing exploration of unbreakable bonds, irreversible acts, the limits of science, and the magnitude of love.

»Alles, was geschehen kann, geschieht auch. Und genauso kann man alles vermasseln und trotzdem ein guter Mensch sein.« Der zwölfjährige Ethan hat ein paar ungewöhnliche Talente. Physik und Astronomie sind für ihn so selbstverständlich wie Lesen und Schreiben, und er sieht die Welt auf eine Weise, die anderen Menschen nicht begreiflich ist. Die wichtigste Person in seinem Leben ist seine Mutter Claire, aber je älter Ethan wird, desto öfter fragt er nach seinem Vater, den er nie kennengelernt hat. Er weiß nicht, dass er als Baby beinahe gestorben wäre und sein Vater in der Folge verurteilt wurde. Doch dann setzt ein unerwartet eintreffender Brief eine dramatische Kette von Ereignissen in Gang ... Die Hardcover-Ausgabe erschien unter dem Titel »Die relative Unberechenbarkeit des Glücks« bei Blanvalet.

Antonia Hayes

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