"If I had a nickel for every book I've read this year about an extraordinary woman mathematician solving a hitherto unsolved problem and also WWII, I'd have two nickels. WHich isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice." - Dr. Doofenschmirtz

But seriously, this book was very different than Chung's The Tenth Muse and it was surprisingly sweet and uplifting for a book about shiva. Rojstaczer is not skewering his characters' foibles, but he is drawing them to the surface and writing a story about identity and belonging and the ways in which idiosyncrasies become culture. It is the mortifying ordeal of being known at its best.