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gemmak 's review for:
The Tenth Muse
by Catherine Chung
This was a more linear novel than I'd expected, a coming-of-age story about math and discovering one's origins. But Chung's straightforward prose is very good at revealing the truth of certain moments -- the heroine, Katherine, a mathematician of incredible skill who is frustrated by the sexist world's constant belittling, tries to explain these feelings to her male partner. He loves her, and he's really trying, but he just can't understand what she's saying to him, smart as he is. Those paragraphs felt so piercingly real to me, and in a few deft sentences, Chung cuts to the heart of what makes people close and what makes it impossible to really close the distance between them.