Life After Genius

By M. Ann Jacoby
(Grand Central Publishing, Paperback, 9780446199728, 400pp.)

Publication Date: October 2009

Categories: General

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Description

Theodore Mead Fegley has always been the smartest person he knows. By age 12, he was in high school, and by 15 he was attending a top-ranking university. And now, at the tender age of 18, he's on the verge of proving the Riemann Hypothesis, a mathematical equation that has mystified academics for almost 150 years. But only days before graduation, Mead suddenly packs his bags and flees home to rural Illinois. What has caused him to flee remains a mystery to all but Mead and a classmate whose quest for success has turned into a dangerous obession.

At home, Mead finds little solace. His past ghosts haunt him; his parents don't understand the agony his genius has caused him, nor his desire to be a normal kid, and his dreams seem crushed forever. He embarks on a new life's journey -- learning the family business of selling furniture and embalming the dead--that disappoints and surprises all who knew him as "the young Fegley genius."

Equal parts academic thriller and poignant coming-of-age story, LIFE AFTER GENIUS follows the remarkable journey of a young man who must discover that the heart may know what the head hasn't yet learned.




About the Author

M. Ann Jacoby has been an art director at Penguin Group USA for the past 20 years. LIFE AFTER GENIUS is her first novel.




Praise For Life After Genius

"Filled with colorful characters, all winning and wonderful, even in their pain."
-USA Today

"Seductively absorbing...Jacoby has succeeded in uniting the traditional coming-of-age narrative with a distressing and effective account of the private cruelties that can flourish amid the turmoil that ensues when anyone attempts to take credit for the genius of another person. "
-Chicago Sun-Times

"Part mystery, part coming-of-age, and entirely engaging. This semiautobiographical novel by an award-winning book-jacket designer whose father was a math genius and whose grandfather was an undertaker is recommended for fiction collections."
-Library Journal

"Refreshingly offbeat...the elements of mystery are tantalizing."
-Booklist

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