A sometimes engaging read. However, I think it was a tad longer than it needed to be and I found Katya super annoying. I enjoyed the motif of maths, but ultimately this wasn't quite the book for me.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read an ARC of this book.

I was intrigued by the premise of this novel, the involvement of math in a work of fiction, and appreciated the author’s unique approach.

The story has an inevitable feeling of sadness, starting with the early death of the young woman’s father. This prompts his wife’s spiral out of control, which triggers the daughter’s. If only the mother had sought psychotherapy early on.

It’s hard to review this novel without sounding like I’m critiquing the author as a person—because the main character is like the author: she is a Russian immigrant to the USA who also becomes a writer then published author.

While I admire the character’s care for her mother, much of the time she forgets about her as well as her children, and seems hellbent on finding romance as an escape. Sone might say “Who wouldn’t, in her situation?” But that strikes me as immature. I find it hard to separate fiction from reality in this case, to separate author from her main character whose life seems to parallel the author’s.

In the end, this is a story of deeply flawed adult characters who are all self-absorbed and selfish. I find it impossible to relate to them and find it miraculous that their children (appear to) have grown up undamaged. The adult themselves were damaged, though, at least the mother and daughter were. The husband is selfish too, focused entirely on work and not on making his marriage work. The wife says he is a good father in some ways, just as she acts responsibly in some cases, but not all the time. She herself acknowledges that the three adults together almost make up one parent; each fulfills part of a whole. The grandmother, as in so many multigenerational families, fulfills a vital role in the family; she takes up the slack when mum and dad are too busy. Which is good for the kids. But it also enables the parents to use her as built-in babysitter and slack off. How does the main character use her time? By having affairs. She is hardly unique in this regard, but it doesn’t make her a tragic heroine.
I just feel sorry for the lot of them.

A delightfully brooding and darkly witty book how a woman's life falls apart around her, exploring issues of infidelity, office politics, memories of growing up in the Soviet Union, and seeking truth in her mother's math textbook. Wonderful.