Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblad, and today my guest is Sylvia Brownrigg, the author of the first

novel, The Metaphysical Touch.

It's published by Faris Strauss and Giroux, who will be publishing a book of her short

stories following this book.

Now, I wanted to jump into the heart of things immediately because the title, the metaphysical touch, made me think about the Midas touch, that idea of greed that turns people into gold.

So eventually King Midas loses his daughter.

Here, the processes of mind and thought seem equally likely to estrange the characters from the human.

And it seemed like this was the subject of this book.

Well, I think it's interesting to explore the ways that thinking and rationality can both be a comfort to people

and an expression of people's very human selves, and the way it can also distance people

from their physical experiences of the world

or sometimes their more emotional experiences of the world.

And so both of the characters in this novel live in some ways in their mind.

And one, sort of for a living, Emily Piper, you know, she has been a philosopher, and so that's really how she's existed and made her, that's the work she's done and that's been her metier.

And I think in the course of the novel, she finds out the limitations of that is the only way of connecting to the world.

And the other?

...