Infinite Dimensions: Stories

by Jessica Treadway

Overview

In Infinite Dimensions, her first collection after winning the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction for Please Come Back to Me, Jessica Treadway writes about the themes of fidelity, betrayal, and self-delusion as she portrays what William Faulkner called “the human heart in conflict with itself.” Following in the tradition of Elizabeth Strout and her own mentor, the late Andre Dubus, Treadway mines the internal landscapes of her characters with intimate insight as she shows them trying but often failing to live up to their own moral standards. A female bank executive with a history of psychiatric illness is forced to decide whether to hire her former hospital roommate, whom she fears will expose her past. A college student has to choose between his grandmother and his girlfriend. A recovering alcoholic faces the prospect of self-sabotage during a dinner meeting with an editor who can make or break her career. The stories are loosely linked by character, setting, and the motif of a talking sugar bowl that appears in the work of the Russian author Anya Chaykovskaya who is, in turn, one of Treadway’s own fictional characters. Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “a writer with an unsparing bent for the truth,” Treadway exhibits in her stories both a deft understanding of human psychology and mastery at depicting it in multiple, complex, and intriguing forms. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781953002112
Publisher:	Delphinium
Publication date:	06/07/2022
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Jessica Treadway is the Flannery O’Connor Award-winning author of the story collections Please Come Back to Me and Absent Without Leave (Delphinium Books), and the novels The Gretchen Question (Delphinium Books, 2020), And Give You Peace, Lacy Eye, and How Will I Know You? Jessica Treadway is a native of Albany, NY. She currently lives in Massachusetts where she is a Senior Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emerson College in Boston.

Editorial Reviews

04/04/2022

Treadway’s dynamic collection (after The Gretchen Question) intuitively explores the vulnerabilities of her characters. “Kwashiorkor” follows a woman named Amy as she struggles with depression after a psychiatric hospitalization and forces herself to embrace her new life as mother to a toddler. She’s nearly convinced herself that she’s recovered from the depression until Dina, her former roommate at the hospital, applies for a job at the bank where she works, prompting painful memories and an awkward interaction. In “Original Work,” college student Stephen is perplexed by his first philosophy assignment and, instead of going out to the bar, he contacts a relative with a philosophy degree for assistance, a decision he consequentially regrets. A woman named Petra in “The Sydney Opera House” goes to the doctor for vertigo, secretly hoping for a diagnosis of something serious, like a brain tumor (“If someone asked her why,” Treadway writes, “she’d be embarrassed to tell the truth: she wouldn’t mind the attention”). After searching dating profiles, Petra finds a man with the same condition, and they start a relationship. Here as in elsewhere, Treadway develops complex insights into her characters’ attempts to build a life for themselves on shaky ground. These stories are powerful and believable. (June)

Publishers Weekly

". . . dynamic . . . complex . . . . These stories are powerful and believable." — Publishers Weekly

"Treadway will leave readers reflecting on choices we’ve made that have set us on our current paths, but she also allows space for us to believe that we can change direction if we only listen to the voices of our 'sugar bowls'—instead of questioning our own sanity. Thought-provoking and engaging." — Kirkus Reviews

“Jessica Treadway’s intense and moving stories are connected by an intriguing thread, yet each one stands alone as a gem of intuition and empathy. This is a stellar collection.” — Hilma Wolitzer, author of Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket

“What an exquisite gift Jessica Treadway has given readers with her latest short-story collection, Infinite Dimensions. A masterclass in the story form, Treadway’s riveting collection awakens us to the marvel of our ordinary lives, even as it demonstrates how little it takes to shatter them.” — EJ Levy, author of The Cape Doctor and Love, in Theory

Praise for The Gretchen Question: “The Gretchen Question is a powerful and emotional ride with disorienting, satisfying turns and a stunning end. Treadway is masterful.” — Lily King, author of Euphoria and Writers & Lovers

“Spellbinding, utterly deceptive in its brevity, Jessica Treadway’s novel packs into a single day one of the most haunting stories I have ever read about the price we pay for the secrets we keep. It’s also about friendship, motherhood, mortality, the meaning of work, and the search for lasting love.” — Julia Glass, National Book Award-winning author of Three Junes and A House Among the Trees

“Roberta’s . . . emotional journey is captured beautifully. Treadway powerfully captures one woman’s attempt to live a meaningful existence despite all that she has endured.” — Publishers Weekly

“A thoughtful, and thought-provoking, meditation on love, loss, and legacy.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Beautifully written . . . raw . . . heart-wrenching.” — The Portland Book Review

“Moving . . . delicately paced. . . . The story takes on an urgency that carves an edge into everything.” — Book Trib

Praise for Jessica Treadway: “Jessica Treadway draws her characters into an impossible knot and then expertly teases it apart. The question of what really happened to Joy kept me up half the night.” — Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of State of Wonder 

“A writer with an unsparing bent for the truth.” — The New York Times Book Review

“Treadway combines intense suspense with a smart take on 21st-century adolescence, parenting and justice.” — People, “Book of the Week”

“It's been a long time since I've read a novel at once this gripping, and this wise, and psychologically complex. As a portrait of motherhood, and an exploration of the limits of knowledge—of others, of one's self—Lacy Eye probes, devastates, and informs." — Elizabeth Graver, author of The End of the Point

“Since her debut story collection ‘Absent Without Leave,’ came out in 1992, Jessica Treadway has wowed critics with resonant depictions of flawed, all-too-human characters.” — The Boston Globe

“An intricately plotted psychological thriller.” — The Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

"Jessica Treadway’s intense and moving stories are connected by an intriguing thread, yet each one stands alone as a gem of intuition and empathy. This is a stellar collection."

Hilma Wolitzer

Beautifully written . . . raw . . . heart-wrenching.

The Portland Book Review

Spellbinding, utterly deceptive in its brevity, Jessica Treadway’s novel packs into a single day one of the most haunting stories I have ever read about the price we pay for the secrets we keep. It’s also about friendship, motherhood, mortality, the meaning of work, and the search for lasting love.

Julia Glass

Moving . . . delicately paced. . . . The story takes on an urgency that carves an edge into everything.

Book Trib

What an exquisite gift Jessica Treadway has given readers with her latest short-story collection, Infinite Dimensions. A masterclass in the story form, Treadway’s riveting collection awakens us to the marvel of our ordinary lives, even as it demonstrates how little it takes to shatter them.

EJ Levy

Praise for The Gretchen Question: “The Gretchen Question is a powerful and emotional ride with disorienting, satisfying turns and a stunning end. Treadway is masterful.

Lily King

A writer with an unsparing bent for the truth.

The New York Times Book Review

Praise for Jessica Treadway: “Jessica Treadway draws her characters into an impossible knot and then expertly teases it apart. The question of what really happened to Joy kept me up half the night.

Ann Patchett

Treadway combines intense suspense with a smart take on 21st-century adolescence, parenting and justice.

“Book of the Week” People

It's been a long time since I've read a novel at once this gripping, and this wise, and psychologically complex. As a portrait of motherhood, and an exploration of the limits of knowledge—of others, of one's self—Lacy Eye probes, devastates, and informs."

Elizabeth Graver

Since her debut story collection ‘Absent Without Leave,’ came out in 1992, Jessica Treadway has wowed critics with resonant depictions of flawed, all-too-human characters.

The Boston Globe

An intricately plotted psychological thriller.

The Chicago Tribune

2022-04-13
Flawed and struggling characters face their mistakes and suffer the consequences in Treadway’s short story collection.

In “Providence,” a woman meets her addiction personified on the same night that she meets her idol. In “Sky Harbor,” another woman confronts an act of emotional infidelity that destroyed her marriage and broke her son’s heart. And in “A Flying Bird,” a third woman impulsively steals a cake out of someone’s car—and eats it. In the universe of Treadway’s stories, which are strongly character-driven, some people recur while others are featured only once. Conflict is frequently conveyed through internal dialogue, though the spoken dialogue is believable and true to each character as well. Whether the conflict is large or small, the characters are united by references in each story to a fictional Russian writer’s short story about a housewife and a talking sugar bowl; this weaves a whimsical link from story to story and also makes it clear that while each story stands alone, they are also meant to serve as parts of a whole. These passing references to the sugar bowl story provide a glimpse of the unifying themes of this collection: an exploration of the little voices we heed and those we ignore; the suggestion that there is some other life just outside the reach of our fingertips—a life more surreal, a life that reflects the roads not taken, the things said or left unsaid and often regretted. Treadway will leave readers reflecting on choices we’ve made that have set us on our current paths, but she also allows space for us to believe that we can change direction if we only listen to the voices of our “sugar bowls”—instead of questioning our own sanity.

Thought-provoking and engaging.

Kirkus Reviews