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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
1. women are superior
2. men are stupid
...
infinity. math major??? haha NO. unless??
2. men are stupid
...
infinity. math major??? haha NO. unless??
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I listened to the audio book in one "sitting", and immediately went for a copy of the book to read right after I finished it. I like the riddle of the ferry and the boy and the girl, and fortunately the author let us know the answer at the end of the book. I feel very connected to the book, even thought the plot of the story is beyond my imagination, yet it feels so natural even though it is extraordinary. Characters are also very well written, and it is completely thought-provoking - the issue of alternative universe seems so imminent. One slip of your thoughts or actions can just change your life path completely!!
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Didn't hold my attention and I ended up skimming. For a bunch of math geniuses, the characters seemed to have no clue how to run their lives.
adventurous
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
So I found this novel at a used bookstore a few months ago and grabbed it because the title sounded familiar. Honestly, I thought it was about an early glass-ceiling breaking female mathematician, and I was into reading it just for that. But as I got farther and farther into the book, I realized how much more it involved than that. Like, so much more. Also, I am not sure where to add this, so I feel like this intro serves as well as anywhere else, but from the very beginning, I felt like this was the perfect adult companion novel to Malinda Lo's Last Night at the Telegraph Club. I can't say exactly why. I mean both feature Asian-American female MCs who are into STEM, but that's really it, as far as what they have in common. Many of the other themes in each are quite different. I think perhaps it was just an overall vibe, but I feel like if you liked that (or this), then you should give the other a try!
Even as a young child, Katherine loved (and was good at) math. As she grows up, she fights myriad types of sexism and racism in (60s and 70s) educational environments to continue studying and working with the numbers that she loves. While in graduate school, she turns her attention to the Riemann Hypothesis, one of the most well-known unsolved mathematical problems of her time. In her quest to solve it, she decides to use a theorem with roots in WWII era Germany. But there's more to the theorem than just its own mysterious origins, and in the journey to make her name as a mathematician, Katherina also uncovers a completely hidden (purposefully obscured/kept secret) personal ancestry/history.
Alright y'all. This was such a fascinating and dramatic and convoluted (but in a way that is so deeply believable/followable) story. Like I said in the intro, I was wanting to read this even when I thought it was (just) a sort feminist mathematician tale...and I honestly don't even like math. And I got that. But I also got a page-turner of a historical fiction family legacy mystery plot, with writing that was compelling and smooth and walked me through the math aspects with enough to make it feel real but not so much that I got bogged down/bored (the perfect mix, for me). I was completely invested in Katherine's quest for making her own name (with her own work and in her own right) in the world of academic and popular mathematics. And as we started to hear more about her family history, first with her father's revelations about her mother and further, as the even more deeply buried truths of her parentage and ancestry came to light, I was having trouble putting the book down. Katherine's drive for success, her shock and hurt as she learned about the lies she grew up believing, the betrayals from those closest to her in academic/work settings, her sacrifices for friends and what she lost by being unwilling to bend...all of it created such a robust and fully dimensional narrator. (A small side note, although many of the side characters' depth paled in comparison to Katherine's own development, they held their own enough to support/move her story forward, so I was more or less able to move past that.)
Thematically, this novel covered quite a bit, but the absolute highlight, for me, was the way it addressed legacy and heritage. This look at the aftermath of how youth/children "survive" in times of war, and the way conflict causes such depth of loss of records/memories/people, is something I haven't seen explored too much in literature. Many WWII stories (especially with the boom in the genre recently) cover the drama of war itself, the fight to "win" it and survive, but end when the official war does. This novel looks at the years-after effects, the lost generation of youth who lived but have no idea where they came from, whether because those records were lost or because they were never told for their own safety. It was absolutely fascinating. And of course, in so many ways, deeply tragic. There was also a very important (and again, under-addressed) exploration of the legacy of the war and the way the bystanders pretend to have…not forgotten, exactly, but sort of pretend to have nothing to remember, because it’s easier than facing their own guilt. This included an attempt to reckon with the complacency post-conflict, the way that many people benefitted from what was left behind by those who were taken and murdered and have never come clean. Intense questions were raised in a literary context that gave them an individual face around which to consider them, making them, if not easier to contend with, at least more accessible.
This novel was just utterly captivating storytelling. There was so much unexpected drama, twisty and mysterious, as well as deep historical reflection and an introspective look on legacy and what makes one's identity. I feel like it flew under the radar when it was published and that's such a shame because its a truly unique combination of recent history, feminism and family, as well as page-turning plot.
“Still, I wonder now why it had to be necessary, and why my teacher disliked me so much – whether it was because I was a girl, or y family wasn’t from New Umbria, or because I was half Chinese. But it occurs to me now that even if those were not the reasons she treated me badly, they were the conditions that made it possible to do so.”
“How are they [intelligent men] so sure of themselves, and why are so many people so eager to listen? I’ve always wished I had the confidence to speak with half the conviction on subjects I’m actually competent to discuss.”
“There is the story you think you are living in, and then there is the invisible, secret, unguessed-at core of the story, around which everything else revolves.”
“I was so used to my perpetual status of outsider that I’d stopped questioning in each situation whether this time it was my femaleness or my Asianness or the combination of both that branded me different. Even now, I feel impatient when asked about what being these things means to me – the expectation that because my race and my gender are often the first things people notice about me, they must also be the most significant to me.”
“And here’s the kicker: it all makes sense when you consider how folktales were mostly told and passed along orally by women, but that the written versions have universally been set down and altered by men, that in the women’s version the girl gets away by her wits, and in the men’s version she’s saved by a hero. Two very different lessons, wouldn’t you say?”
“Everyone who remains benefited from the exiles and murders of Jews, don’t you see? We all did, we citizens of this country, whether we wrung our hands and regretted what was happening or openly celebrated when they were cast out of their jobs. We took whatever came out way and pretended it was ours to have by right.”
“The tyranny of history […] is that it’s always too late for justice, the price always too high.” (re: reparations)
“Every story I knew about a woman, it occurred to me, involved a story of theft.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, Grief
Moderate: Antisemitism, Religious bigotry, Abandonment
Minor: Genocide, Sexual violence, Death of parent, Pregnancy, War
The Tenth Muse is a complex and intriguing novel about a mathematician who confronts her own past in the process of trying to prove a hypothesis. Katherine grows up being told she is too clever, and then dealing with her mother's disappearance. At college she becomes drawn into mathematics and soon she is on a quest to prove the Riemann hypothesis whilst she is at graduate school. However, questions over her real family, the impact the Second World War had on them, and how they are all tied into the mathematical world will make her rethink everything and look at how stories are told and academic work is attributed.
The novel is told in a memoir style, with Katherine as narrator looking back over mostly her childhood and then a specific period in her life. This style gives it a candid sense that Katherine is telling her story and the struggles that her and others faced, and the interlacing of real historical figures and theorems into parts of the narrative adds to this feeling. Chung weaves together Katherine's narrative with a recurring theme of stories and myths Katherine has been told, making the novel not only a reflection on a woman's fight in the mathematical world but also on how stories are framed and how people interact with them. Katherine's struggles in academia are important, but so is her personal journey into her origins and family and how she reacts to present love and secrets.
The Tenth Muse is a captivating book that draws the reader into the mysteries of Katherine's past and of mathematical proofs, looking at twentieth century history and the academic world. It raises all too prevalent issues around attribution and credit, but also about fighting in environments stacked against you.
The novel is told in a memoir style, with Katherine as narrator looking back over mostly her childhood and then a specific period in her life. This style gives it a candid sense that Katherine is telling her story and the struggles that her and others faced, and the interlacing of real historical figures and theorems into parts of the narrative adds to this feeling. Chung weaves together Katherine's narrative with a recurring theme of stories and myths Katherine has been told, making the novel not only a reflection on a woman's fight in the mathematical world but also on how stories are framed and how people interact with them. Katherine's struggles in academia are important, but so is her personal journey into her origins and family and how she reacts to present love and secrets.
The Tenth Muse is a captivating book that draws the reader into the mysteries of Katherine's past and of mathematical proofs, looking at twentieth century history and the academic world. It raises all too prevalent issues around attribution and credit, but also about fighting in environments stacked against you.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved it, it reminded me of a Doubters Almanac at times.
This is more like a 3.5 but I rounded down. In fairness to the author, I don't typically like memoirs, even fictionalized ones. But by the end of the book, I was kind of fed up with the main character. She either needed to be more assertive or to quit complaining about how she wasn't more assertive.