Peter Zadecki Zadecki itibaren Oğulduruk Köyü, 14030 Oğulduruk Köyü/Bolu Merkez/Bolu, Türkiye itibaren Oğulduruk Köyü, 14030 Oğulduruk Köyü/Bolu Merkez/Bolu, Türkiye

** spoiler alert ** Though it took me a surprisingly long time to figure out that the story Kasischke told *was* 'the life before her eyes', once I did it all made sense. The shifts of tense - present for things in the 'past' and past for things in the 'present' were made clear. The whole novel felt like a dream. I thought that there were a bit too many flowery metaphors, but once I realized that the novel was, essentially, a dream, the choice to include them made sense. Left me feeling disturbed and disquieted, otherwise I might have rated higher.

Possibly in my top personal favorites - these are the kind of stories that I always personally like.

This was the first graphic novel that I have read, and I was drawn to it by the subject matter (i.e. the foundations of mathematics), as well as personalities it covers (Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein). It was not a disappointment: a beautifully illustrated story that covers all of the bases of the historical quest. It did illuminate some of the characters involved in this period who I had not previously known much about (Frege, e.g.). The novel was a disappointment in so far as it did not surprise me: it did not go beyond the expectations I had of it. Insofar as it covered the history of mathematics, it was procedural. I appreciated the self-referential scenes in which the writers of the novel are depicted, and discuss the narrative of the story and its "meaning". That said, I do not know why there needed to be so many characters in these self-referential scenes: the illustrator characters were not necessary (the mathematician writers may have needed a non-mathematician character for the sake of exposition, but there did not need to be three non-mathematician characters). The prose was a bit flat. Perhaps this is to be expected from a graphic novel in which there is not much space for text. The subject matter would appeal to a more "mature" audience who could have dealt with nuanced prose, and could have done with less exposition by the writer characters. It was a fun read, but unforunately it did not break ground or surprise me (beyond the novelty of it being a graphic novel). The story itself may have been better told in traditional prose where these complex ideas could have been dealt with in greater depth, and with more creative synthesis. If the trade-off is between depth of prose and depth of illustration, I would have taken depth of prose for this story. If you liked this story, I would recommend Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, which is a novel which deals with mathematics (Alan Turing is a character, for example, as is John von Neumann), and the use of mathematics in cryptography.