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I was hoping for a more extensive rendering of what life was like for the wives of the scientists at Los Alamos during WWII. This book was little more than a laundry list of things that happened to this group of women presented from the "collective" viewpoint using the pronoun we which the author was forced to abandon when it was important to single out one individual.
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I did not finish this.
Like "The Buddha in the Attic" by Julie Otsuka this book is told in a slightly odd, almost poetic, plural voice that generalizes everything. "Our Marcias got chicken pox..." (p. 14) "We were round-faced, boisterous, austere, thin-boned..." (p. 12). It does not read like a novel, but does tell the story in its way. Like reading a montage of photos. I hope this isn't the new cool literary fad of the year. It's very difficult to follow the thread of the story--all the "we" and ...more
Like "The Buddha in the Attic" by Julie Otsuka this book is told in a slightly odd, almost poetic, plural voice that generalizes everything. "Our Marcias got chicken pox..." (p. 14) "We were round-faced, boisterous, austere, thin-boned..." (p. 12). It does not read like a novel, but does tell the story in its way. Like reading a montage of photos. I hope this isn't the new cool literary fad of the year. It's very difficult to follow the thread of the story--all the "we" and ...more
An interesting tale, though I wonder how well it would hang together without the device of telling the story in the second person. It's a strong authorial choice by Nesbit and she executes it well, but I doubt I'd find it as compelling and engaging if she'd presented the relatively thin set of historical facts in a more straightforward style. The tension between giving voice to a little-known group of women and subsuming that voice into a collective is what makes this stand out from the pack.
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I've always been interests in the Manhattan Project and thought is would provide a rare perspective. The author's narration was distracting and didn't provide much character development. After only a few pages, "we" and "some of us" got to be a bother.
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Really hated the POV on this one. I will look for another, non-fiction book about Los Alamos.
Mar 29, 2014
Tina
marked it as to-read
Jan 12, 2015
Katy
marked it as to-read
Apr 06, 2016
Meghan
marked it as to-read
Nov 06, 2019
Chantal
marked it as to-read
Aug 24, 2021
Brenda
marked it as to-read
