Review by Booklist Review
An enigmatic young woman seeks clues to the whereabouts of her father, but the answers may lie, a century previous, with the Vienna Circle of Austrian mathematicians. Hase, as we know her, defines herself by what she lacks--close friends, identification documents, a cell phone, a digital footprint. She loves only two things: editing Wikipedia articles (which she treats "as if it were my own personal web page") and the reclusive mathematician who raised her but has now disappeared from the sailboat he called home. Mathematics books at a Berkeley public library may provide some answers. Meanwhile, in a parallel narrative set in 1933 Vienna, we meet Anton, a geometry instructor whose involvement with a small group of elite mathematicians leads to romantic temptation, political peril, and the metaphysical magic of a very special music box. Melding a historical narrative (inspired by her grandfather's own experiences with the Vienna Circle) and a mind-bending time travel story, Menger-Anderson delivers a thought-provoking critique of digital existence. "The silence of my time," her narrator suggests, "is not a pressed hand over lips but the illusion that I'm present."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Menger-Anderson debuts with an eloquent story of time travel and family secrets. It begins with a 21-year-old woman named Hase, who was raised in San Francisco by an adoptive mathematician father, with whom she shares a hobby of editing Wikipedia pages, including one devoted to the late Josef Zedlacher, an Austrian who claimed people can travel through time. When her father disappears while sailing his boat, she wonders if he's become a time traveler. In a parallel narrative set in 1933, young mathematician Anton Moritz lectures on geometry at a university in Vienna. His greatest hope is to join the intellectual circle of philosopher Walfried Engelhardt, which includes Albert Einstein, but he encounters competition from the jealous Zedlacher. Past and present collide as Hase, Anton, and Josef are caught up in the search for a music box that functions as a time machine. Menger-Anderson does an excellent job of recreating the fraught academic and cultural life of Vienna before the 1938 Anschluss, and she effectively sustains the pretzel logic of time travel. It's an appealing intellectual mystery. Agent: Heather Jackson, Heather Jackson Literary. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Essayist and short story writer Menger-Anderson melds history and SF in her debut novel about loss, yearning, and the nature of reality. The intricate plot tacks between contemporary California, where a young woman awaits a visit from her father, and 1930s Vienna, where a group of brilliant mathematicians becomes increasingly vulnerable to violence and antisemitism erupting with the rise of fascism. Hase's father has told her that if ever he fails to appear when expected, she must go to a public library in Berkeley and retrieve a certain book by the Austrian mathematician Walfried Engelhardt and turn to page 71. When the Coast Guard finds her father's abandoned boat, Hase follows those instructions, which set her on a circuitous path of discovery. Besides eking out a living tutoring and doing odd jobs, Hase has been devoted to editing Wikipedia entries, as was her father. "Like me," she knows, "he enjoyed the site because he could be invisible and visible, an outsider and a participant simultaneously, a contradiction realized." She finds comfort in browsing deleted pages, a "shadow history" of content. "Most people don't even know it exists," she admits, "but I'm a connoisseur of untold stories." As Menger-Anderson's narrative unfolds, Hase's own shadow history emerges: She realizes her parents' true identity, and she suddenly understands that her mysterious music box can effect time travel. Menger-Anderson drew on a memoir by her grandfather, a mathematician and member of the internationally renowned Vienna Circle in the 1930s, who was caught up in the political events that made intellectual life impossible; in 1936, he accepted a position in the U.S. and fled. As Hase discovers, though, the past can never truly be escaped; the present is haunted by shadows. Caught in the swirl of time. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
