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Shadow on the Hearth

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Written in 1950 this is an early science fiction look at the after effects of a nuclear war. A typical day in a Westchester suburb of New York for a family of four is shattered by a nuclear attack on New York City.

277 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

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About the author

Judith Merril

188 books42 followers
Josephine Juliet Grossman

aka Cyril Judd (with C.M. Kornbluth)

Judith Josephine Grossman (Boston, Massachusetts, January 21, 1923 - Toronto, Ontario, September 12, 1997), who took the pen-name Judith Merril about 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist.

Although Judith Merril's first paid writing was in other genres, in her first few years of writing published science fiction she wrote her three novels (all but the first in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth) and some stories. Her roughly four decades in that genre also included writing 26 published short stories, and editing a similar number of anthologies.

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5 stars
11 (15%)
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28 (38%)
3 stars
27 (37%)
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
Profile Image for Alison.
375 reviews6 followers
June 13, 2013
I absolutely loved this book. This is the book I have wanted to read and didn't realize it when I got started on my 1950s (nuclear) apocalyptic novel kick. So glad I came back to the genre and found this one.

Shadow on the Hearth is at its heart a simple novel: the US is attacked with nuclear weapons, and one mother has to keep her family together in the aftermath, dealing with lack of supplies, missing family members, gas leaks, and radiation sickness. It's plainly told and very domestic, but underneath there is so much more going on. The main characters are all women: Gladys, the mother; Barbara, her 15 year old daughter; Ginny, her five year old daughter; and Veda, their household servant. Several men play large roles, but they are there as complements - it is the women's thoughts and hopes and dreams that get explored. And what thoughts they are: this is a deeply feminist novel, but in quiet ways that slide in under a veneer of the expected. Gladys is a quintessential 50s housewife - except she is given great strength, resolve, love, and even romantic passion. (She even gets to join with Veda and Levy in an all-out brawl with a gang trying to break into her house!) It's also very subversive for the time - Gladys and her family shelter one of Barbara's teachers, Gar Levy, who is wanted by the emergency government for his anti-war, anti-nukes position. It's intimated that he would be killed for these beliefs. But our heroines embrace him and his politics, as well as the other main sympathetic male character, the young doctor Peter. I was frankly quite shocked that this book was published at the time at all.

This isn't a book, however, that I think anyone else on my feed would really enjoy; the plotting is slow, the domesticity very present, the genre obscure. But for me it was an easy five stars, for that very domesticity given value and importance, for female characters who appear stock but have layers, for its different take on the post-nuclear landscape, and for its thoughtful commentary on war in general. Yes, I wish the war had been better explained and more plausible; yes, I wish the ending wasn't so predictable; but overall I honestly couldn't have asked for anything more. Loved, loved, loved this.
Profile Image for Michael.
Author 2 books377 followers
February 9, 2019
020817: how (limited) nuclear war 1950 affects middle-class american housewife. fantasy/science fiction of the era. war imagined not truly devastating. war disrupts everyday life... but life continues. interesting aspect that this war is all as experienced by women, housewife, maid, daughters. very immediate, very domestic, family, doctors- not the end of the world. reminds me of a tv miniseries i saw when i was a kid: 'the day after', and critiques of how the nuclear war there was nowhere near as terrifying and complete and inescapable as it would be. even less so here as america seems to survive with institutions/society intact with more political readings muted, even with teacher/scientist wanted for anti-war warnings. this is the Cold War paranoia by government. well written, personal, effective characterization, understandable motivations and concerns... only the mildness of portrayed war unbelievable...
Profile Image for Michele.
633 reviews189 followers
August 9, 2023
Hugely disappointing. It's hard to imagine a boring post-nuclear-apocalypse novel, but that's what this is. Literally nothing happens in this book; I actually skimmed the last third just to get through it. The characters are cardboard and annoying, the dialogue is repetitive and tedious, the science is super sketchy (even for 1950), the patriotism is jingoistic and facile, and the gender stereotyping is distractingly heavy-handed (again, even for 1950), including a jarringly nasty swipe at "the fears and vapors that a childless woman could have" -- and from a female author, yet! There are glimpses of what the book could have been, such as the renegade math teacher, but all in all it's just... very blah.

So yeah, do not recommend.
Profile Image for Beth.
599 reviews13 followers
April 22, 2015
Another midcentury post-apocalypse book. This one was written in 1950, and I was pleased to get a first edition from a used book seller! That's always fun.

This was not one of my favorites. I liked the premise...suburban housewife, in the basement doing laundry, notices a bright flash outside. It takes her a while to realize exactly what has happened. Her husband was in the city on business that day, and of course, the city was hit. Will Jon make it back to Gladys? Only time will tell!

Gladys has to deal with her sassy maid (and man, if there aren't some awkward moments there!), her drunken neighbor, a teenage daughter, and a bratty five-year-old who I honestly came to wish would just die and put everyone out of their misery in having to deal with her. There is no time for temper tantrums in a nuclear war, and if any kid pulled that on me, they would WISH they'd die from radiation poisoning!

The whole thing struck me as a sort of post-apoc Peyton Place. Hey, there's an idea...a soap opera set in the aftermath of a nuclear war!

Not one of the best post-apocalypse books I've read so far. Not awful, but there are many that are much better.
Profile Image for TrumanCoyote.
974 reviews14 followers
March 17, 2014
Wonderful situation and characters (particularly that of the little girl, Ginny). The sort of homey verisimilitude found here is precisely the element that was lacking in so much earlier scifi, and demonstrates how like a breath of fresh air it was as more women began to write it. Unfortunately though I have to say that the writing here is a bit pulpy throughout, and I think it would've benefited enormously from tightening (and a blue pencil); otherwise I would've given it the full 5 stars. Incidentally, this novel was made into a one-hour TV show in 1954 (featuring Patty MacCormack perfectly cast as Ginny)...which is how I came to find out about this book in the first place. :) They also changed the ending for the broadcast, which actually (I believe) served to make it stronger.
Profile Image for Mike Anderson.
2 reviews
July 15, 2018
I'm really disappointed, the beginning and the end of the book are really well made, but all the rest is terribly slow paced and a bit lame, and most of the characters are really annoying, and they keep acting in a really illogical way. I was expecting much more from this book, but I didn't enjoy reading it at all.
Profile Image for Hrh George.
12 reviews
September 2, 2022
Not so much a solid review as disjointed thoughts.

This is literature. Being pigeonholed into "science fiction" often leaves stories and books unable to be read as intellectually equal to other fiction, this book definitely transcends as literature.

It isn't really fair to genrify this 1950 novel as science fiction. Seventy years after it's printing it barely fits the description. It's only the external setting of "post-apocalyspse" in the days after a nuclear war that class it as sci-fi. It could be re-written to fit any kind of large disaster scenario that serves to isolate the household. Isolation is the core driver of the plot. In any other setting this would be a psychological thriller or, if filmed, a one-room thriller. What it definitely is not is pulp sci-fi.

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A female author writing female characters places the book as "feminist" writing, but that leads to some poor reviews because the lead protagonist, the mother, is not a strong role model. She is a very traditional and domestic housewife of 1950 that does not know how to take the lead in any situation and is very uncomfortable doing so. She's June Cleaver, not Rose Sayer. That doesn't mean it's not a feminist book or feminist characters.

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The subtext of the setting is easy to lose, but gives the book a feel like some of the psychological episodes of the Twilight Zone. The federal government collapses, a coup occurs, a right wing fascist administration takes over. The media and first responders all taking orders from Emergency Headquarters. The various characters that run in and out of the house are either in, or out, with this new government. Some of the household visitors seem to have been in on the coup itself and using their power within the administration to gain advantage in their relationship with the characters.

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Nobody seems to blink at the flirting between the teenage daughter and possible suitor that is eleven years older. Guess that was ok in 1950.

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I rate on a curve. No matter how good it is, escapist pulp of any genre is never five stars. If a novel you read to pass time on a train or plane commute all gets ranked five stars, how do you ever rate the rare gems and masterpieces to make them standout? This novel gets all five stars.
Profile Image for Nora.
Author 6 books42 followers
November 22, 2022
A total masterpiece! This Golden-ish Age of Science Fiction novel about nuclear war is fully centered on the experience of a Westchester housewife whose decision to skip a society luncheon to take care of the laundry saves her from dying of radiation sickness. I really appreciate the focus on women and domestic life. It actually is a bit of a rosy picture of nuclear holocaust, but that's okay. One of the worst things that will happen is that these jerky guys will show up and keep track of everyone and get urine samples and boss people around, because it's 1950 so the US is efficient, obsessed with finding Reds, and seemingly cares a little bit about whether people live or die. I grew up in the _When The Wind Blows_ era where it seemed pretty clear that the government would just give you a pamphlet and then you'd be left to die on your own.
Profile Image for Jim  Davis.
399 reviews23 followers
October 16, 2020
This was an interesting novel for an older reader (I'm 73) who can put their self into the mind set of the 1950's. This was one of the earliest novels to deal realistically with an actual nuclear attack on the US although there were many good short stories on the subject from 1946 until 1950 when this was written. It was still a time when a nuclear war could be considered much more destructive than earlier wars but not the complete holocaust that it was depicted in later novels like 1959's "Alas, Babylon". It dealt mainly with the effect on one family and a few people around them. It also brought out a general fear of enemy agent's hiding under the bed kind of mentality that was common in 1950. On one hand Americans are scrambling to help those harmed by the atomic bombs and provide aid and food for the survivors. But at the same time they were on a constant alert for anybody they suspected of being enemy agents, spies or saboteurs with some taking this to the extreme. For those who liked this novel I would suggest they find a copy of her 1948 short story "That Only a Mother".
Profile Image for Kevin Page.
Author 5 books8 followers
February 18, 2020
I liked this book about the domestic troubles of a suburban 1950's housewife after a nuclear attack on nearby New York. However, while tightly written (Judith Merril was a well-known editor as well as an author), the attitudes and presumed mores of the era have not aged very well. I enjoyed it, but I am also a bit of a historian of the golden age of sci-fi...so this was sort of a built-in winner for me as it was her first full-length novel (published in 1950). However, I'm not sure I would recommend to many, particularly if they are easily offended by limited or differing worldviews.
2,657 reviews
January 8, 2024
Gladys must take care of her family after an atomic bomb drops.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Since it was written in 1950, I honestly wasn't expecting much. It's slow paced and made me roll my eyes in places (good thing we have a radar screen up so we don't have to be alarmed) but it did what it was supposed to do. It plopped me into the mind of a scared, confused, and not used to be the 'in charge' person of a family with little to no information and the possibility that her children have been exposed. And that's a scary place to be.
Profile Image for Chris.
247 reviews41 followers
October 26, 2014
When her maid calls in sick, Westchester housewife Gladys Mitchell is forced to stay home and do the laundry and chores herself—a fact that saved her life, given that New York City is obliterated in a surprise atomic attack. Urged to stay indoors by radio announcers, Gladys struggles through the day despite crushing uncertainties about the fate of her husband Jon. When her daughters—teenage Barbara (“Barbie”) and toddler Virginia (“Ginny”)—arrive home from school, Gladys must overcome the obstacles of living in a post-nuclear United States. Isolated and with only themselves (and an ever-growing, rag-tag group of neighbors and acquaintances) for support, Gladys must keep her family safe from radiation and hostile looters until they can be evacuated from the danger zone.

In our age of news saturation—twenty-four-hour cable news, social media, RSS feeds—it’s strange to be thrust back to a time where radio and newspaper was the primary news source. With no papers being delivered, Gladys must rely on over-enthusiastic radio announcers, who read off status updates and casualty lists, along with trite updates of retaliation by remote-control planes. Her obnoxious neighbor is convinced it’s all propaganda, but the Mitchells remain confined to their home, giving the book a constricted setting that Merril thrusts tension and conflict into. Barbara’s possible radiation sickness carries a lot of the burden, as does her teacher, a blacklisted atomic scientist hunted (?!) by the authorities for predicting an atomic attack. Gladys’ maid is a suspected enemy agent, one of the human targets (!?) used to direct the incoming atomic missiles. There’s a gas leak in the cellar, threatening to blow the house up. And there’s the fear of looters and contaminated survivors mobbing the suburbs…

I wouldn’t say that the book is tense or thrilling due to its isolation, though, existing in a vacuum outside of space and time. Some parts read like Civil Defense literature, urging calm and patience until some semblance of government can restore order while explaining the basic details of radiation poisoning and the threat of atomic attack. A pair of rescue workers arrive on occasion to do just that. Merril’s writing is very good, but her plotting is merely competent. Some of the crises stretch the realm of credibility—the “wanted” high-school teacher/physics professor, and her “sick” maid/survivor of the New York holocaust, are character backgrounds I found nigh hyperbolic.

Merril had a very good idea for a book, which turned into an interesting and well-written novel. However, some of the story elements are chintzy or downright implausible, such as several of the unrealistic characters and their convenient backstories. As a character piece in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war, the domestic life thrust into the front-lines, I found the novel partially succeeds. Rather than following a general, scientist, or politician, the book views the aftermath of atomic war from the isolation and fear of a housewife, her daughters, and an oddball cast of friends. That down-to-earth perspective makes it more unique, even realistic despite its aforementioned failings. Yet it falters with Gladys’ portrayal, and is now a bit dated. While a decent novel, Shadow on the Hearth is not a perfect one; its domestic perspective is a brilliant idea, and Merril’s prose keeps the reading moving along despite the straightforward plot.

Full review found here.
October 27, 2023
I tracked this book down because I had seen the Motorola Television Hour adaption, Atomic Attack. Written at a time when the public still believed in a winnable nuclear war, this does not take away from the convincing and tragic events the characters experience. If I had read this book when it was first published, it would have fed into my already sizable anxiety about the impending doom of World War III.
Profile Image for Tell Tale Books.
461 reviews3 followers
February 25, 2024
Full video review is available here: https://youtu.be/8eQZt9eZNCA?si=ldB3l...

In 1950, science fiction was never about families. Even though I keep saying that people are too harsh of critics on classic sf for its characters, the characters just didn't get as deep as literary fiction did. The focus was always on the ideas. And you didn't have a woman as the protagonist. At least not in general. This is the book that turns all of those things on its head. This has a woman and mother as the main protagonist. The story is about a family dealing with the occasion of an atomic bomb attack on the US. The mother and her daughters are very well characterized. The writing is tense even though this is not an action novel. I found it hard to tear myself away once I got into it. The description of the atomic attack is a bit dated. We’ve learned a lot more about what would likely happen than we knew in 1950. But I think it is accurate to what we knew at the time. And Merril adds the idea of atomic bombs placed on missles for delivery. I think that was a new idea in 1950. Mostly this is a character book. At that I think the writing is excellent. The characters are great, the plotting is great. I can’t believe that this novel is not a lot better known. Highly recommended.
Profile Image for Sheehan.
634 reviews35 followers
June 13, 2013
What a hidden gem, I really enjoyed this book.

The majority of this book is actually centered around the lives of women, albeit somewhat repressed Cold War era women trapped in suburban post-apocalypse, but the whole story is about how you navigate the void in all services/guidance that follows cataclysm in the absence of the patriarchical structures you are accustomed to acquiescing on a normal day to day basis.

I'd stop short of calling it a feminist framing of the end of the world, but is surely one of the most women-focused apocalit books I have read yet. The whole focus is on the home, all the craziness the grand scale issues that are generally fodder for this genre of fiction are placed in the background as tangential occurrences that intermittently intervene on the lives of the women protagonists. So the story feels intimate, feels personal, and less spectacular...just as frightening.

Like I said a great summer surprise! Not sure how it took me so long to get around to this book...
683 reviews13 followers
April 7, 2014
One of the few 1950s era novels dealing with the immediate consequences of nuclear war that was written by a wonan and from the perspective of a female protagonist. Merril captures the transition from confused and helpless suburban wife and mother to a survivor with the strength to deal with privation and illness with skill.
Profile Image for Claire Handscombe.
Author 6 books114 followers
September 15, 2013
Ridiculous and unrealistic, and I only read it because I had to for grad school, but oddly compelling...
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews

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