June 30, 2016

The Atomic Weight of Love - Elizabeth J. Church

Algonquin Books, May 3, 2016.



Four Stars



In 1941, seventeen-year-old Meridian is beginning her studies at the University of Chicago – she has always loved birds, and her dream is to become an ornithologist. However, it’s not long before she becomes enthralled with her older, brilliant physics professor, Alden, and they begin a relationship. Meri abandons her education to marry Alden and eventually follow him to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where Alden and his colleagues are working on a top secret project – after the war, the world learns that these scientists were building the atomic bomb.


While Alden is absorbed in his work, Meri feels like she is wasting her life as a suburban housewife. She feels out of place with the other local wives in their various women’s groups – the women are more interested in improving their domestic duties than in using their brains for better things. Meri seeks to revolutionize the group by elevating important women’s issues, but she is shunned by many of the other wives. At a loss, she takes up the task of studying a group of crows. Having abandoned her graduate project, Meri channels her academic ambitions into sketching and journaling about her crow family. Ignored by her husband and outcast by the other women, her time with the birds is the only place she truly feels like herself.


During this time, WWII has ended and the world has increasingly modernized, using atomic energy in various ways. At the dawn of the 1970s, counterculture youth invade Los Alamos, seeing it as a symbol of the oppression and terror of war. Many people believed that dropping the atomic bomb was justified because it brought an end to the war, but now with the advent of the Vietnam War, it appears to the protestors that the bomb was dropped for nothing. Meri meets one of these protestors, Clay – he is a young geologist and Vietnam veteran, and the two fall in love despite a twenty year age difference. While Alden represents the old-school group of men who idealized the atomic bomb, Clay sees the world with fresh eyes, inspiring Meri to expand her own horizons.


Alden and Clay played important roles in two very different wars, but where Alden is careful and somewhat cold emotionally, Clay is passionate and willing to take risks to fight for what he believes in. Meri fell in love with Alden because of his vast knowledge and ability to teach her – she falls in love with Clay because of the potential they have to learn together. Clay is the catalyst that allows Meri to become fully herself, and gives her room to grow on her own.


The Atomic Weight of Love is a sensitive, nuanced portrayal of marriage at a time when women were taught to give up everything for their husbands. Meri’s journey is what she calls “quiet resistance to subterranean chauvinism” (Loc. 3714) and she does work quietly, to preserve her sense of self. Unable and eventually unwilling to conceive a child, she is called “unnatural” and “hysterical.” While Meri was willing to submit to these beliefs at the novel’s start, she gradually developed into a strong, independent woman, and her metamorphosis was exciting to witness. The novel started slow, but it built with quiet intensity, strengthened by powerful language and realistic characters. With several important, well-handled themes, this was a great read.


I received this novel from Algonquin Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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