A review by nadinekc
The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung

3.0

As a love letter to mathematics and the unsung women mathematicians of the 20th century, this novel was wonderful. As a work of fiction, I had some problems. I liked the overall story/mystery, but most of the characters never came alive for me and often seemed to exist only to further the plot - especially the characters Katherine met in Germany. Likewise there were a few small plot elements that were jarringly unrealistic (a provost is not going to go to great lengths searching university archives for a visiting grad student) but were needed for the story to work. But there was another small detail that just delighted me. Early in the novel a mathematical riddle is posed, about a boy and a girl on separate islands, a ferryman and a ring. I hoped that the author would wait till the very end of the novel to solve the riddle - and she did!