THE EXPERT OF SUBTLE REVISIONS

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.