Infinite Dimensions: Stories

by Jessica Treadway

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.

Genres: Short Stories

240 pages, Hardcover

First published June 7, 2022

About the author

Jessica Treadway is the author of four novels and three story collections, with a fourth, I FELT MY LIFE WITH BOTH MY HANDS, coming out in Spring 2026 from Cornerstone Press. Her collection PLEASE COME BACK TO ME received the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction; her novels are AND GIVE YOU PEACE; LACY EYE; HOW WILL I KNOW YOU? and THE GRETCHEN QUESTION. She teaches in MFA program at Emerson College in Boston.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. Stories that stay with you long after you close the book.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do any of us really know ourselves? Do we really understand why we do as we do, and how we affect the other people in our lives? Do they have any idea who we are anyway? We meet the characters in Jessica Treadway's Infinite Dimensions at the moment they make a decision that forces them to ask who they are, and if that person is the same as the one that moves around in the world. Running through the collection are a handful of reoccurring characters and a fictional short story about a Russian housewife and a probing talking sugar bowl that everyone but us gets a chance to read.

I loved this book. You should read it. Thank you to LibraryThing and Delphinium for a review copy. Sorry it took me six months to read it.

[angelofmine1974 · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/qGkLOTSASyw

Enjoy!

[Lori Ostlund · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Treadway's work, but this might be my favorite of all of her books. She is a master of the short story.