My husband bought this for me (for the naked woman I'm sure). It is one of the most beautiful books I have every ready. I loved the hypnotising mathematics. ( )

Great to read a novel taking on the topic of maths and mathematicians. Really enjoyed this one, the structure of the novel is something really unique with many strands seeming to wind to towards each other. ( )

Winner of the New South Wales Premier's Prize, this is a wonderful and at times challenging novel of mothers, mother guilt, mothering, mathematics, obsession, thwarted genius, the indifference and chauvinism of conservative academia, the earnest hopes, and at times sexual envy of the overlooked daughter seeking her mother's approval.

The allusions to mathematics was good fun, and I got the mother guilt, and the feminist outrage. ( )

I wanted this book to continue. I loved it. I read it about the same time as some other books ...Hanna's Daughters was one, and I thought it had every bit as much to say about mother-daughter relationships. Also 'Gut Symmetries' by Janette Winterson, which I did not like...this had more to say about the mathematical woman genius.
It makes the point rendered over and over by Dale Spencer in 'Women of Ideas and What Men have Done To Them' but in a fictionalised account, well plotted and without the hyperbole to which Spender is prone.

Woolfe is a good writer, and her use of language approaches the delights of Arundhati Roy in God of mall Things (but never surpasses). ( )

A demanding, but very rewarding exploration of the destructiveness of unrecognised genius, through the lives of three generations of women. The mother is on the verge of discovering a new form of mathematics, but is driven mad by social isolation and betrayal. The narrator, her daughter, attempts to piece together her work. Meanwhile, her daughter is trying to get her attention ... A stunning novel. ( )