The Goddess of Small Victories

The Goddess of Small Victories is an exceptionally well written novel that alternates between a fictionalization about the lives of Kurt Goedel and his wife Adele and a completely fictional tale of a woman named Anna Roth, whose duty it is to get the now aged and widowed Adele to give up Kurt's research to the Princeton library. Kurt and Adele, both born in Vienna but from very different backgrounds, the mathematical genius and the cabaret dancer met and fell in love. Adele would care for Kurt through numerous mental breakdowns, test his food on herself to prove to him that it hadn't been poisoned, and persuade him to eat when no one else could.
With the Nazi takeover of Austria, Kurt and Adele had to leave Vienna and were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go to Princeton. Kurt continued to work and was fortunate in becoming friends with Einstein and Oppenheimer, among others. Adele continued to care for Kurt, who was known on campus to be a bit off.
For me, the book held far too much of the mathematical and the scientific. Maybe because I was so out of my depth, I found these sections of the book difficult to plod through. I found the chapters about Anna visiting Adele in the nursing home a welcome respite from the conversations between the various geniuses. Though I enjoyed the book, when I came to a section with someone attempting to explain some theory, I skimmed over it in order to avoid giving myself a headache.