Eve's Longing: The Infinite Possibilities in All Things

``They should put a warning on the front of every philosophy text for people like you,'' says one of Eve's academic colleagues, grumbling at her many philosophical flights in her quest for ``infinite possibilities.'' Whether her visions (fruits and vegetables swarm around her head; she inhabits the body of the Virgin Mary) are profound or simply mad, the heroine of this first novel spends little time in the mundane world of New York City, where she works on her doctoral dissertation and lives with her sister Clare (who works triple shifts at a restaurant to support Eve and has a bleeding ulcer). When Eve spends two months in a monastery in Assisi, she continues to see what others do not: dining with portly monks, she peers under the table and spots St. Francis scrounging for crumbs. As charming as she is eccentric, Eve is at once timid and daring; her behavior ranges from rigidly controlled to totally uncontrolled, an intriguing blend of whimsy and philosophical inquiry. Those who are not afraid to abandon the safety of ordinary reality can try to accompany Eve out of the ``First Pearl'' of the finite world and along the ``Pearl String'' toward infinity. (Oct.)