Kwoomac

There really wasn't much of a plot in this meandering tale of 19 year old woman, who struggles with most aspects of life, who is grounded only by her love of numbers. Implausibly, she becomes a 2nd grade teacher, without any training, because there is a shortage of teachers and the principal saw her doing long-division in a park for fun. Really ! Most of the characters in the book are just variations of the main character, Mona Gray. Her next door neighbor fashions numbers out of wax to wear around his neck to rate how he is feeling that day. The numbers range from 1-75 but he usually hovers around a 15. Her students bring in things from home which look like numbers. A bar of soap carved into a 9, a piece of IV tubing made into a 0, an amputated arm shaped like a 1. She hangs an axe on the wall of the classroom, because it looks like a 7. Spoiler alert...no good will come of this. Anyway, I stuck with this book because there is some really beautiful prose in there, "his lips are as sweet as orange slices on a plate on a porch in the summer with weeping willow trees and larks."