Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by fiendfull
The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung
4.0
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.