A Universe of Sufficient Size is a richly satisfying novel: it had me completely absorbed from start to finish.

There's a brief enigmatic prologue in Brooklyn in 1950, and then the novel moves to Sydney in 2007. Illy's father has just died after years of dementia, but it's the living who are bothering her more. Her father was a thoroughly disagreeable man, and she had her mother had learned to tiptoe around his anger and his moods. In the new calm, Illy, feeling an itchy entrapment in the responsibilities of being an only child, might now be able to persuade her frail mother into a retirement home, and she might be able to negotiate the issues that have arisen with her young adult children. Josh is about to jettison his almost-finished degree for a far-fetched project in an open-plan office with ping-pong tables and hip American nerds. Zoe, OTOH, is embarking on a relationship that really challenges her mother's tolerant and accepting nature.

And then the notebook announces its presence...

On the same day Eszter moves in the notebook appears on the kitchen counter. It is small and unremarkable, and Illy thinks at first that it must be her mother's address book and leaves it where it is. But some time later that afternoon the book migrates from the bench to the middle of the kitchen table, and announces its presence forcefully and directly. A message for Illy: some offering her mother is trying to signpost. The fact that Eszter is supposed to be napping — Illy doesn't even know when she left her bedroom — raises the frequency of the message to a pitch only Illy can hear.

She gives in to the notebook's demand, opening the hard brown cover just an inch to peek inside.

Handwritten Hungarian. Neat, forward-sloping writing; not like the cramped arthritic script her mother has now. (p.5)

This journal dated Budapest 1938, alternates with the Sydney narrative. It tells the story of a group of five friends, all gifted mathematicians, but subjected to restrictions on their studies at university due to anti-Jewish laws limiting their participation in Hungary's public and economic life. Eszter is engaged to Tibor, Levi is keen on Ildiko, and Pali, modelled on the real life genius Paul Erdős, is an eccentric who is only interested in mathematics. These five meet each week at Budapest's statue of Anonymus, where they share their projects and work through conjectures together. But the winds of war are blowing, and the group is keenly aware that when Hungary joins the Axis, they will be vulnerable to the full force of Nazi anti-Semitism.

Back in the Sydney narrative, Illy is irritated, then intrigued and finally forced into reassessing her entire family life by the contents of the notebook. The novel is so artfully constructed that the twist in the tale is completely unexpected.

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