MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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The Geometry of Sisters (2009)
Luanne Rice
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Young Beck hopes her mathematical skills will somehow bring back her dead father. Other reviewers have mostly complained that this novel does not work as the serious family drama it intends to be. From the mathematical point of view, I'm afraid it fares no better.

Rice seems to have some vague concept of what a limit is:

(quoted from The Geometry of Sisters)

"Okay," Lucy was saying to Beck, pushing her papr closer. Beck glanced down, saw a series of six thick, fat columns about a half-inch wide. "Limits and infinity, right? That's what we're dealing with. These big, ugly, clunky columns are limits"

"And these," Beck said as beside them she drew six elegant, thin lines, "are infinity."

But most of the mathematical content involves mention of "proofs of infinity" (whatever those are) or insipid and nonsensical lines like:

(quoted from The Geometry of Sisters)

Words get in the way. Numbers don't lie. We are two sisters add us up. Carrie + Beck = Us.

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And now my mother's taking me away from them. Away from Carrie. Without Carrie, I'm less than a person. It's like subtracting one from one. That equals zero. Except, as all mathematicians know, there's really no such number as zero.

Thanks to Barry Cipra for bringing this book to my attention.

More information about this work can be found at www.amazon.com.
(Note: This is just one work of mathematical fiction from the list. To see the entire list or to see more works of mathematical fiction, return to the Homepage.)

Works Similar to The Geometry of Sisters
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. Long Division by Michael Redhill
  2. Long Division by Buzz Mauro
  3. The Solitude of Prime Numbers [La Solitudine dei Numeri Primi] by Paolo Giordano
  4. Gifted: A Novel by Nikita Lalwani
  5. An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender
  6. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
  7. Cliff Walk by Margaret Dickson
  8. The One Plus One by Jojo Moyes
  9. Casebook by Mona Simpson
  10. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Ratings for The Geometry of Sisters:
RatingsHave you seen/read this work of mathematical fiction? Then click here to enter your own votes on its mathematical content and literary quality or send me comments to post on this Webpage.
Mathematical Content:
2/5 (1 votes)
..
Literary Quality:
2/5 (1 votes)
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Categories:
Genre
MotifProdigies, Female Mathematicians, Math Education,
Topic
MediumNovels,

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Exciting News: The 1,600th entry was recently added to this database of mathematical fiction! Also, for those of you interested in non-fictional math books let me (shamelessly) plug the recent release of the second edition of my soliton theory textbook.

(Maintained by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston)