This book is beautifully written and full of food for thought.
I loved Katherine, a complex and fleshed out characters, and I loved how the historical background was described and the author's commentaries.
The plot is engrossing and enjoyable and it flows keeping you hooked.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

As a female Chinese-American mathematician in the post-war United States, Katherine knows that her path ahead won’t be easy, and that she will never be viewed on her own merits: ‘When I die, I know the first sentence in my obituary will read, “Asian American woman mathematician dies at the age of X”. Nevertheless, she refuses to compromise her principles for the sake of her career or her personal life. The central problem that will haunt her forever is framed early on in this novel; when still an undergraduate student, her professor confronts her, claiming she has copied her problem sets from her male friend. Of course, it’s the friend who is the plagiarist, but he refuses to tell the truth, and Katherine feels that the only way to prove her own merits is to work ten times harder. Later, when she begins a relationship with a well-known mathematician and they publish papers together, everyone refers to him as the sole author, and assumes she was only named on the papers because she’s sleeping with him. However, these early unjust incidents are only the preamble for two further events that mean Katherine must choose between the people she loves and the work that inspires her.

The title of Catherine Chung’s novel, The Tenth Muse, also refers back to this central dilemma. As she tells her story, Katherine repeatedly remembers two tales she first encountered as a young child; as she summarises them, ‘The tenth muse gave up everything to claim her own voice. Kwan-Yin gave up everything on behalf of everyone else.’ Katherine wants to believe there’s a middle way between these two poles, but her experiences constantly force her into difficult choices. Chung’s take on the damaging sacrifices we make for those we love is refreshing, and I admired the portrayal of a female protagonist who isn’t willing to always be the Kwan-Yin. She also interweaves the complicated story of Katherine’s heritage, which is rooted in the Second World War, carefully through the main plot. However, The Tenth Muse was a little too neat for me. Its message is spelt out several times. It’s very light on the mathematics it describes, which in one way was a relief, as I doubt I would have understood anything more complex, but this also means there’s little to make it stand out. Katherine is a compelling narrator, but her story remains a sketch. 3.5 stars.

I loved it. It was a gentle compelling story. Takes the reader into the world of mathematics but whilst the maths is an integral part of the book but it is not necessary to be a mathematician to understand it. The book has a number of parts, the way women were treated in academia, the strength of Katherine, the main character, the maths itself and the very intriguing story of the background of the main character. I loved the ending too. What more can I say..

This was a fascinating book with lots of content that made it very rich. Lots of social commentary, history, characters, etc.
I really enjoyed the writing. It dragged a tiny bit in the middle, but beautiful writing made up for it.

I highly recommend it.

Thanks a lot to NetGalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a fascinating story - the cut throat world of maths, a bit of German Jewish history, commentary on the place of women in society and a dash of fairy tale with lost parents and families. I so very nearly loved the book but it did flag, particularly in the middle section. However if you can power through you will be rewarded with a bittersweet finale.

A novel that not only engaged my heart and soul but informs, educates and gave me two quotes to help me through life.

“Be kind.
Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”

“Let everything happen to you,
beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.”

This novel is going into my “best ever” list and very few make it, still less than 20, and I’ve been reading for 60 years! I do not give out story lines, that would be unkind, but only wish to let a prospective reader know that this is a gift of a novel, treasure it. It will inform the reader on the long reaching effects of WW2, the unending battle for women to be taken seriously and given credit for their intellect and is also a beautifully written and thoroughly researched.

Thanks to NetGalley and The Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars rounded up.

I was asked to consider reading this by the publishers via NetGalley. I didn't really read the blurb properly but picked up it was about maths and I like maths and numbers in general so I thought maybe but didn't give it much priority. It also started popping up in other places so I decided to see what all the fuss was about.

I'm so glad I did.

This is a phenomenal book. I couldn't put it down. Beautifully written.

It's about the life of an eventually extremely successful Chinese-American Female Mathematician on a quest to find her true identity but deals with her struggles to be taken seriously in a male dominated field and what she has to give up in order to reach the top. It it has added layers and depth by exploring the history and pioneers of Mathematician and how they were treated because of their gender. And the effects of World War Two and the legacies left behind. My description doesn't do it justice.

As a scientist myself, what was most interesting for me was although this book was set in the past many of these issues are still rife. The author really brought the essence of this to the forefront.

So thought provoking and relatable in so many ways. This was a pleasure to read.

This is a story filled with math but also fairy tales. An odd combination that just worked well.

I myself would rather scoop my eyes out with a spoon than work on math problems so believe me when I say you do not have to understand high math to appreciate the context of the story.

Set in the 50’s and 60’s, this is a time where women were expected to work for free if they ever want to work in science at all. And that was viewed as a privilege!

The author also included sections on other women in history who made an impact on science and it reminded me that I still need to read a book about Hypatia as she sounds absolutely fascinating.

Juxtaposed to the orderly world of mathematics Katherine’s personal history is a messy complicated puzzle. One that gets unravelled as the story progresses.

I liked that the story touched on WW2, Japanese comfort women and the mysteries of math, all making the first half a strong 5 stars.

Katherine’s emotional immaturity and air of victimhood tainted my enjoyment just a little. At the end of the story I was left with the feeling that Katherine never really learned from the watershed moments in her life.

I would still recommend the book as it has an intelligent and unique angle.

“What terrible things we do in the name of love.”
Katherine grows up a very special girl. Her father introduces her to natural sciences and she is fascinated by numbers from her childhood. When her mother leaves them unexpectedly, the bond between father and daughter becomes even closer. Stubborn as she is, she wants to study mathematics knowing that the time hasn’t yet come for women to enter university and compete with men in the 1950s. But which other way could she possibly choose? She is obsessed with the Riemann hypothesis and determined to solved the greatest riddle of her time. Her stubbornness does not prevent her from being hurt, from learning the hard way that only because you are talented and eager, you do not necessarily get what you want.

Even though Catherine Chung’s novel is set in the 1950s, there is so much also today intelligent young women experience when it comes to the intellectual ivory tower. Men are still considered made in god’s image and thus by nature more capable, cleverer and more talented that any woman could ever be. Well, that’s their interpretation. I found it easy to bond with the striving protagonist and, unfortunately, only could commiserate too easily with what she feels when being deceived and her intellect ignored over and over again.

One should not shy away from the book because of the mathematics, the logical problems they are occupied with are well explained and remain quite on the surface so that the average reader can easily follow their thoughts. Apart from that, what I appreciated most is how Katherine sticks to her ideals and goals, even though this at times means that she hurts herself and gives up a lot for her professional integrity – without being rewarded for it. The second line of the plot about Katherine’s family is also quite intriguing since it is well embedded in the German history and the dangers even intellectuals ran when they had the wrong religion.

A beautifully written book about a strong woman that captivated me immediately.

A fascinatingly erudite and thought provoking historical novel by Catherine Chung written in the style of a personal memoir, with the extraordinary Katherine reflecting with on the challenges of her past life with the self awareness that perhaps there was much that she could have approached more wisely with the benefit of hindsight. She grew up in the post-WW2 years in small town New Umbria in Michigan, the child of an interracial relationship, with her American father, a man silent on his wartime experience, and Chinese mother. It was her father who triggered her curiosity in science, and her mother opened her eyes to the underlying principles within nature, prior to abandoning her when she was young. Katherine's aptitude for mathematics, the key to life's mysteries, was apparent even as a child, in this story of ambition, family drama, tragedy, lies, secrets, race, gender, love, and culture, where past history continues to haunt the future.

Feeling like an outsider even as a child, where her abilities were unacknowledged and treated with contempt, these are experiences that are to repeated in her future. It is surprising that Katherine wins a university scholarship, as she steps into an academic world run by men for men. Katherine harbours a drive to solve the mystery behind the Riemann Hypothesis, the greatest mathematical problem of the time. All that she believes about her personal fractured family history collapses as she now reevaluates her sense of identity and events that occurred during WW2 and secrets buried there. Despite the obstacles that face her, like the tenth muse of myth and legend, the strong, independent Katherine is determined to forge her own path in life, irrespective of the price it costs and toll it takes on her.

Chung is herself a mathematician, and she outlines the history of mathematics and science with skill and simplicity for the none mathematician in this wonderfully complex novel. The characterisation of Katherine is complicated and well developed, both compulsive and satisfying. This is an inspiring read, beautifully written and moving, original in its interweaving of mathematics, history, identity and gender. Absolutely loved it, and recommend it highly. Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.

Relatable story about a woman trying to break with convention whilst also trying to piece together her past and make sense of what happened to her family.

The author is a delightful story teller and the perspective is interesting enough to to keep you reading.

I very much enjoyed this book.

Sometimes our own family is the puzzle we spend our lives trying to solve. Katherine is an unusual child who early on shows signs of genius. Mathematics is her passion but for a girl to be successful in this field she needs to learn how to tell the difference between friends and foes, rivals and lovers, and love and dependence.

The book is fascinating and compelling and I loved the theme of the Tenth Muse who was the one who wasn't willing to give her skills away for a man to reap the rewards. The Tenth Muse decided to live out her own dream and to accept the challenge that this entails - sometimes letting go of security and acceptance. To forge her own path.

I learnt a lot from this book

Highly recommended

What a beautiful book. I felt myself being drawn into this
This book was well written and was different to any others that I have read in the past.
I really loved this book.

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.

"Everyone knows that once upon a time there were nine muses ….
What not everyone knows is that there once existed another sister, who chose a different path. She was the youngest of them, and the most reckless, and when she came of age and it was time to claim an art, she shook her head, and she refused. She said she did not wish to sing in the voices of men, telling only the stories they wished to tell. She preferred to sing her songs herself."

I guess every book has an ideal audience – for this one its probably:

Some one with enough of a pure mathematics background that a book which opens with David Hilbert and his twenty-three problems immediately draws them in anticipation of what will follow – and is then drawn in further by the mix of well known and lesser known real life and historical mathematicians invoked as the story develops

Someone perhaps no longer active in mathematics – so that they do not get too worked up about the actual details of the Schieling-Miesenbach theorem, Mohanty problem and Kobalesky formula which form an essential part of the plot

Someone who enjoys well written literary fiction but also a story with a family drama/mystery plot in addition

Someone aware of the sexist bias still prevalent in Mathematical fields – I think back on my time at Cambridge some 30 years ago and all the top students, post-graduates or renowned lecturers I can remember are male

Someone with three young daughters interested in how they learn to “sing their own songs” in whatever fields interest them

So it is not a surprise that I really loved this book – but I feel (and I think other reviews show) that it has much wider appeal.

This is a book with many challenging themes,sensitively handled. The lead character is a mathematician and readers must not be put off early on as the details of that are explained,,sometimes at length. The maths are a necessary backdrop to this confused woman. Her gender makes progress in her career difficult,her awareness that her parents are not who she thought they were confuses her and sends her on a well described journey to seek out the truth. In the course of it all she seems to meet men who are out to mislead and deceive her. Long term happiness eludes her. The book is well written with many different backgrounds and contexts.

The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung

Math is the engine that drives this book, but everything that surrounds this engine is the body of the vehicle. The engine is not the whole. Katherine, the protagonist, has a story to tell and no words are wasted. It takes the entire book to get to the end of her story; a masterpiece of a tale.

Katherine lives for puzzling over and solving mathematical theories. It is in her blood. Along the way, slowly, she discovers truths about her life that are more complex than the math theories she wishes to prove. Getting this information in bits and pieces is the best part. Chung just has a way with dangling that carrot, and nicely, gently leaving us wanting more.

People cheer and disappoint Katherine. She rises and she falls in academia and in personal relationships. Largely, she shares the perils of being a woman in a man’s world. All the parts weave together to make an incredible life’s journey. It is a story for all readers who delight in a perfectly delivered tale. If you read only one more book this year, make it The Tenth Muse.