07/01/2014
In French author Grannec's first novel, which focuses on real-life couple Kurt and Adele Gödel, love is more powerful than anything, from family disapproval to mental illness. Adele devoted her life to taking care of her mathematical genius husband, a paranoid recluse who never showed her even the smallest affection. Kurt, who believed that others were trying to poison him, ate less and less, eventually dwindling to 66 pounds and dying of anorexia. The novel alternates between Adele's memories of her difficult marital life and the efforts of a young woman named Anna, who has been charged with the task of gaining Adele's trust in order to secure rights to her late husband's papers. The women develop a true friendship that comes to mean a great deal to both of them. VERDICT While some of the mathematical discussions are hard to follow, the book offers insight into a little-known historical figure, as well as a portrait of Kurt's close friend, Albert Einstein. And Adele, who always lived in her husband's shadow, rightfully takes center stage, with readers marveling at how love can survive when it receives no nourishment. For fans of Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful Mind.—Evelyn Beck, Piedmont Technical Coll., Greenwood, SC
07/14/2014
Grannec depicts the life of historical mathematical prodigy Kurt Gödel and his mismatched but devoted wife, Adele, in this overly earnest debut. In 1980, young translator Anna Roth, tasked by her mathematician parents, visits the widowed Adele in a nursing home and tries to persuade her to release Kurt’s papers for study. Adele recounts her early life, beginning with her first meeting with Kurt in Vienna. Older and worldlier than Kurt, the earthy Adele holds considerable allure for the young genius, but only gains his iron-willed mother’s consent to marry him when Kurt flees Nazi Austria just after the outbreak of WWII for a position in the United States. In Princeton, Adele is initially lonely, but soon makes friends, with Einstein, no less. Meanwhile, in chapters told in the third person from Anna’s perspective, the young woman learns valuable lessons from the older woman in everything from beauty to standing up to her smothering family and oppressive bosses. Yannec’s attempts to evoke period can be clumsy, as when, in 1955, Adele listens to the radio and asks her friends, “Do you know Chuck Berry, ladies? They are calling this ‘rock and roll.’” More off-putting, though, is the afterword’s admission that the novel’s premise—Adele’s reluctance to part with Kurt’s papers—is utterly untrue. (Sept.)
"[A] fascinating portrait of a marriage…tracing the Gödels’ tumultuous past and the sad decline of a brilliant mind.” —The New York Times
"Painstakingly researched, seamlessly translated, this is historical fiction of exceptional daring." —Booklist (starred review)
"An intellectually challenging...deconstruction of the notion of 'the great man.'" —Kirkus
"Impeccably researched...an engrossing piece of historical fiction." —Bustle
"An important meditation on those forgotten by history." —The Huffington Post
"A well-written novel, deep, troubling, and powerful." —Historical Novel Society
"The Goddess of Small Victories is a pitch perfect comedy of manners set on an intellectual Mt. Olympus in mid-20th century New Jersey. Albert, Oskar, Oppie, Johnny and Kurt are the reigning deities. Mathematical gossip and conspiracy theories are served up with birdbath-sized martinis and three inch steaks. Domestic relations appear to be governed by Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. Yannick Grannec's portrait of the marriage-of-opposites at the heart of the novel is pure genius." —Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind
“By focusing on the woman who kept Gödel's demons at bay, The Goddess of Small Victories succeeds in portraying the human side of his life in a way that sympathetically captures its mix of triumph, tragedy and eccentricity, without sacrificing historical or mathematical accuracy. No wonder it has already won prestigious literary awards.” —John W. Dawson, Jr, author of Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel
"I loved this book. It takes us back to one of the most important periods in our scientific history, when The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton served as an ingathering place for some of the most brilliant, and tortured, minds of their day. And it brings one of the forgotten geniuses of that day vividly to life." —Douglas Starr, author of The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and The Birth of Forensic Science
"A model of novelistic efficiency which intelligently combines history, theorems, passion, and flamingos." —Lire
"Suffice it to say that The Goddess of Small Victories is an astonishing novel." —Le Point
"A first novel as ambitious as it is accessible." —Le Soir
"Breathtaking." —Livres Hebdo
2014-07-14
Art and math mingle in Grannec's debut historical novel, which hinges on the life of logician Kurt Gödel. In 1980, a Princeton student named Anna receives a difficult task: to befriend Gödel's cantankerous widow, Adele, and convince her to donate her late husband's papers to the university archives. Grannec alternates between this plotline and Adele's narration of her life with the tortured Gödel, a genius whose quirks—reluctances to eat or leave his home or publish his work—eventually mutated into impairments. The boldness of Adele—a former dancer and, to many on the Princeton faculty, a philistine—contrasts with the reservation of Anna and Gödel in each of the respective timelines. For a while, this creates powerful thematic unity—especially in the early chapters, which focus on twin seductions: Adele's of Gödel in late 1920s Vienna and Anna's of Adele more than 50 years later. The novel's middle stretch feels more diffuse, however, the intellectual material drifting away from the emotional material. It seems that Grannec has set out to write one of those sweeping literary works that balances the historical with the personal. As such, she gives us World War II, McCarthyism, the Kennedy assassination, etc., populating her narrative with guest appearances from the likes of Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein. Yet her settings and characters feel like shadows—mere glimpses of history. While the female protagonists, Adele and Anna, are fascinating and three-dimensional, Grannec often makes them passive in both action and thought; the former is understandable, though the latter—especially during the novel's long dinner parties, where dialogue takes over and interiority gets left behind—is questionable. Grannec never finds a convincing emotional counterweight to the dense mathematics and philosophy discussed throughout. An intellectually challenging, though occasionally lopsided, deconstruction of the notion of "the great man."
