3.14.2014

The Wives of Los Alamos | A Book Review


STATS:
Author, Tarashea NesbitPublished, February 25, 2014
Publisher, Bloomsbury USA
eBook, 240 pages

Description on Goodreads:
Their average age was twenty-five. They came from Berkeley, Cambridge, Paris, London, Chicago—and arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure, or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship as they were forced to adapt to a rugged military town where everything was a secret, including what their husbands were doing at the lab. They lived in barely finished houses with a P.O. box for an address in a town wreathed with barbed wire, all for the benefit of a project that didn’t exist as far as the public knew. Though they were strangers, they joined together—adapting to a landscape as fierce as it was absorbing, full of the banalities of everyday life and the drama of scientific discovery.

And while the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn’t say out loud, the letters they couldn’t send home, the freedom they didn’t have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges to the people of Los Alamos, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind.
The Wives of Los Alamos is a novel that sheds light onto one of the strangest and most monumental research projects in modern history, and a testament to a remarkable group of women who carved out a life for themselves, in spite of the chaos of the war and the shroud of intense secrecy.

My Thoughts:
I was really looking forward to this book.  I love Historical Fiction as well as Historical accounts of WWII.  It is one of my favorite time periods to read about.  With that being said, I did not enjoy this book.  It was nothing like what I expected.
This book is written in first person plural.  What that means is that the narrator is "we".  It was told as if this group of women was "we".  After a few pages I really thought that the real book would start.  I was looking for people.  People with names and lives and relationships.  That is not what I got.
I did learn a few things and was able to get a good idea of what it might have been like to be one of these ladies.  And maybe that was the entire point.  But overall it just made me mad.  I couldn't get over the style of writing and desperately wanted first person accounts.


It is important to note that I received this book via NetGalley in return for a honest review.  All opinions and views are mine.

1 comment:

  1. I think the idea of this book sounds really interesting. But I have read quite a few reviews on it similar to yours. It does seem like an interesting way to write a story, and while I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy it, I am quite curious as to how it actually works. This may not be one I'm running out to buy, but still... I'd love to get to it eventually.

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