While not struggling with the drabness of Linguistics Renee flounders with her own identity. Is she bright for a pretty girl? or merely nice-looking for such a clever girl? would either quality stand alone?

To further complicate her identity questions she marries a bumbling mathematical genius (think Paul Erdos): "I'm often asked what it's like to be married to a genius. The question used to please me -- as an affirmation of my place, of my counting for something (if only through marriage) in the only world that counted for anything. But even back then [. . .] I was uncertain how to answer. "wife of genius" does not in itself define a distinct personality. The description, and my own fluid nature left me the burden of choice. And I found it hard to choose. I could never even decide how I should arrange my face when I answered. Should I radiate the faintly dazed glow of one who stands within sweating distance of the raging fires of creativity? Or should my features exhibit the sharp practicality of managing the mundane affairs of an intellectual demigod? I could never decide, and usually ended up trying to look both dazed and practical, to look a logical contradiction, which is, I suppose, to look a fool. And that, of course, is the very, very last thing I have ever wanted to look."

I have reread this book three times in this decade. I don't loan my copy out to anyone. I highly recommend it to anyone, but particularly to pretty and intelligent philosophy students.