Tenth Muse

“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 mean 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. When I die, I know the first sentence in my obituary will read, ‘Asian American woman mathematician dies at the age of X.'”

Parts of this novel felt like it could be a real-life memoir, written by a successful mathematician, looking back on her career, highlighting the difficulties she had, as a woman of colour in post-WWII America, when trying to build a career in research and academia, negotiating the intrinsic sexism and racism that looked unlikely to ever fade. That would have been a story in itself. And then you realise there is tension elsewhere in Katherine's life, in her personal family story. Growing up in an interracial family, and mixed race herself, it takes many, many years before Katherine begins to learn the truth about her family history. That story takes her all the way to Germany, where she begins to piece together events that occurred in Nazi Germany.

This is feminist historical fiction, which of course it's always good to have more, but it also feels incredibly unique even in that genre, thanks to be wonderfully diverse, and because of its interesting perspective of using mathematics as a lens to examine reality. I also really connected with Katherine and all her insecurities, how all of history seemed to be stacked against her. And if you like novels with family secrets, there's plenty of them here. Highly recommended.