The MATHEMATICIAN'S SHIVA by Stuart Rojstaczer Is Deathly Dull

The premise & formula for this novel resulted in a frigid story with little warmth & stiff characters.  Set on the wintry college campus of Madison, WI, a weeklong memorial is being held for the world renown, mathematician, Prof. Rachel Karnokovitch (RK.)  Born in Poland, RK & her father made every effort to survive in an Arctic Circle work camp where he was sentenced to hard labor for being an enemy of the people.  Their survival & escape & immigration to the U.S. was compelling.  I gained  an interesting perspective into the hard driven & brilliant woman.  The novel is a fractured account of 20th C Eastern European history, Judaism, assimilation, family dysfunction and the mysticism of mathematics.  Rojstaczer, (b. Milwaukee) was himself a student at UW-Madison.  The MATHMETICIAN'S SHIVA received the Jewish Book Award in '14.  Rojstaczer reveres academic intellectuals, "leaders in the intellectual field are celebrated & envied like rock stars."  This theory proves faulty and the quest to solve an elusive, enigmatic math problem is excruciatingly tedious. This esoteric book was a bore.  It left me out in the cold.  Time spent reading this novel felt like detention.