{ "item_title" : "The Expert of Subtle Revisions", "item_author" : [" Kirsten Menger-Anderson "], "item_description" : "A thrilling historical mystery about a young woman searching for her father, a young man trying to solve an impossible problem, and the quest for the power to transcend time. From Vienna to San Francisco, I was swept away by this fascinating search for family and for answers.--Janet Skeslien Charles, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library and Miss Morgan's Book Brigade One of The Washington Post's 10 Noteworthy Books for March In Half Moon Bay, California, 2016, a young woman waits for her father's sailboat to arrive at port. They have agreed to meet on this day and time. Yet he never shows. He has told her this event might come. And if it did, she was ready. Go to the library in Berkeley, find a certain book, follow the instructions. But what if the instructions lead to more questions than answers? In 1933, a young man arrives in Vienna to begin a new post as a professor of mathematics at the university. There he finds himself part of the Engelhardt Circle, a group of intellectuals that have recently been targeted by a growing, anti-academic mob. The circle includes the preeminent minds of their time and a cast of characters desperate to get invited into their midst, many of whom will stop at nothing to get there. As fascism rises, and polarization increases, moderate voices are drowned out. There are whispers of a machine, a music box, which can transport someone through time. But no one can confirm if it's a rumor or true. And the only people who know firsthand are not talking. Between the young woman, who lives off the grid and spends her free time editing Wikipedia entries and picking fights with people online, and the circle of intellectuals debating space and time in Vienna on the eve of World War II, lie years of history that might easily be erased--unless old secrets are unraveled. Kirsten Menger-Anderson's beautiful meditation on time, love, and obsession shows us how we never truly know what happened in the past, and often how the past eerily mirrors the future.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/379/830/0593798309_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "28.00", "online_price" : "28.00", "our_price" : "28.00", "club_price" : "28.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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How does one review a book when discussing even the basics of the plot might spoil it? Such is the dilemma with Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s fascinating The Expert of Subtle Revisions. The novel reminded me of 1950s Russian puzzle book The Moscow Puzzles, not just because it’s about a group of mathematicians/philosophers/Wikipedia contributors, but because the solution to its main question is so devilishly clever.

The book opens in 2016, on the birthday of a strange woman named Hase (German for “Rabbit”). Her equally strange father lives on a rickety boat and is missing. Hase grows more and more anxious as the day goes on and he doesn’t show up; it’s not like this meticulous man to forget her birthday. 

Then, in its fourth chapter, the novel jumps backward to 1933 Austria, a most perilous time and place. You’ll wonder what this era has to do with Hase, an impoverished Wikipedia contributor who has neither birth certificate, Social Security number nor any of those other documents that lets the government know you exist. The answer is everything.  

Chapter 4 is narrated by a young man named Anton who has been named a Privatdozent, or an unpaid lecturer, at a university in Vienna. His part of the tale is fraught with nasty rivalries, secret loves, weird cults, blackmail, seances, political turmoil and even an assassination. Then, Anton comes into possession of a music box full of strange little gears and an especially haunting melody. Meanwhile, in 2016, Hase is on the lookout for a book her father wants her to find “in the event.” In the event of what, exactly?

The author’s cool writing style is deceptive, for her characters who so value their intellect are buffeted about by all kinds of crazy passions. These passions, and the one great problem that drives the book, have everything to do with the workings of their beautiful minds. It leads to an ending that’s surreal, impossible and a tad Lynchian. Menger-Anderson’s talent makes you believe in it.