The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

The Girls of Atomic City is a bit like Debs at War, with the twist that these American girls 1) by and large were from quite unprivileged backgrounds in contrast to the likes of Princess Di's aunt; and 2) had absolutely no idea that the factory where they worked was actually creating the material for the atomic bomb. The latter is probably the most fascinating aspect of Denise Kiernan's story of Oak Ridge, Tennessee: virtually no one knew anything - and doesn't seem to have given it too much thought. There was a war on, there was a job to do, and for most of these women, from the small towns and smaller farms of the rural south, there was a paycheck to earn, the size of which they'd never dared imagine.

In the age of social media and, yes, Edward Snowden, it's also fascinating to contemplate what the government accomplished - buying and clearing land, hiring tens of thousands of people, building an entire town, to say nothing of the nuclear plant that was its raison d'être, and all without nearly anyone knowing. Following FDR's death, even Harry Truman had to be briefed on the Oak Ridge facility, a revelation which left him gobsmacked. He would write, in fact, that learning of Oak Ridge left him feeling "like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

I especially enjoyed the way in which Kiernan intertwines the history of Oak Ridge and the women who lived and worked there with the history of nuclear science itself, as well as the breadth of women she interviewed and ultimately profiled in this book. These women held jobs ranging from janitor to statistician to high level scientists and hailed from equally variable backgrounds. Although it can be hard at times to keep up with which character did what, when, and with whom, the cast of characters provides a comprehensive look at what went into the making of the atom bomb on a day-to-day, behind-the-scenes basis.

David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courlif Affair

I have previously read several of Irène Némirovsky's longer works (my favorite,
Suite Française, as well as All Our Worldly Goods and The Wine of Solitude); this book encompasses four short stories. Like The Wine of Solitude, each of the short stories is that of a Russian individual or family forced one way or another into French exile, not unlike Némirovsky herself. (That's not entirely true: the origins of the family at the center of The Ball are not Russian, but they are outsiders to Parisian society, still finding their way after coming into money. They are also - like Némirovsky - Jewish.)

Snow in Autumn  and The Courlif Affair were my favorite stories of the four. The former chronicles the flight of a White Russian family from their lovely villa into the chaos of Boshevik Russia and then onto Paris; more poignantly, it is also the story of the family's most devoted servant who adapts to the changes with even greater difficulty than those for whom she worked for more than half a century.

Snow in Autumn contrasts neatly with The Courlif Affair whose narrator is a Red Russian born to celebrated revolutionary parents and assigned at a young age to assassinate the Minister of Education, whose policies are responsible for the heavy-handed repression of the student movement at high schools and universities across Russia. As part of his assignment, he becomes the personal physician to his intended target, changing his perspective, if not the ultimate outcome. He, too, ends up in France after the Revolution, hunted and perhaps haunted by this assignment more than any other. 

As always, it is a pleasure to read Némirovsky's prose, and her character development and story telling are superb. This book is a wonderful compilation of short stories, one that I can easily recommend.

Lulu in Hollywood

I have wanted to read Louise Brooks's memoir Lulu in Hollywood since I read The Chaperone last August. Louise Brooks, lest you need a refresher, was a well-known actress of the 1920s and 30s, perhaps most famous for popularizing the highly scandalous bobbed haircut. Her memoirs are more forgettable. (Although she would recoil to hear them called that, having ended her non-memoirs with the line, "That is why I will never write my memoirs."I'm sorry to say, don't quite live up the hair.)

Brooks was born in Kansas, moved to New York at age 15, and was a major Hollywood star so there seemed to be potential, but...

Brooks finally lost me at the chapter devoted to Marion Davies' niece (that's actually the name of the chapter). Said niece was Pepi Lederer and Brooks takes her reader through the whole sad tale of Pepi's addictions and eventual suicide. In fact, most chapters focused on other people Brooks had known, but revealed little of her thoughts or emotions on the people or the events. I suppose she tried to warn her reader: these are not really her memoirs.

Did not finish.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

Bill Bryson wrote A Walk in the Woods over 15 years ago, but I learned of it for the first time this past weekend as I was scanning the library's collection of currently available ebooks. I have read his books before (Lost Continent, most notably) and find them to be humorous and quick to read. I wasn't disappointed. At times, A Walk in the Woods is laugh-out-loud funny.

The deal is this: Bill has decided to hike the Appalachian Trail. He would prefer not to do this alone, though, so he invites basically all of his friends and acquaintances to join him. The one person who takes him up on the offer is an old high school buddy, Stephen Katz, whom Bill has not seen in roughly 20 years. Katz, as Bryson describes him, is recovering from his stint "as Iowa's drug culture," and is seriously out of shape and overweight to boot. He must gorge himself on donuts (or Snickers, or something else of that nature) regularly to avoid the seizures that have plagued him since his run-in with a bad batch of narcotics a decade earlier.

So it is that this unlikely duo sets out for the southernmost end of the trail, deep in Georgia, and begins hiking. Their adventures, or more specifically those they encounter over the course of their adventures, make for fantastic reading. From nutty hikers to those who pick up hitchhikers to innkeepers and cab drivers, Bryson brings color - and humor - to each day's long, hard slog.

In addition to chronicling his very long walk in the woods, Bryson offers a great deal of history on the Appalachian Trail, the National Parks Service and Forest Service pretty generally, and even the dreaded zoonotic diseases one might encounter within the parks. For a moment I forgot I was reading Bryson and thought I was reading Quammen.

Four stars.

My Notorious Life

I must confess: I read closely for 300 pages, then skimmed about 100 before reading the last 30-40 closely again. I don't feel like I missed anything. I liked Kate Manning's My Notorious Life, but it was simply too long. More than once I had to flip back through hundreds of pages to refresh myself on some person or event - and it's not like it took me six months to read!

My Notorious Life opens with a suicide - whose and for what reasons will not be revealed until the closing pages of this drama. In between, we are treated to the life and times of Axie Muldoon aka Mrs. Ann Jones aka Madame DeBeausacq aka Madame X. Axie-Ann-Madame is the orphan daughter of Irish immigrants. The defining events of her early life are riding the orphan train west from New York City to Rockford, Illinois, where she alone among her siblings is not adopted, and watching her mother die in childbirth. Both will mark her, of course, and set her on the path to becoming Madame X, the city's most sought midwife who delivers her patients safely of their babies, though often "prematurely."

Madame is on a collision course with Anthony Comstock, he of the famous Comstock laws, though and it is this battle that leads to the events of the opening pages - and the closing ones.

Written in the style of a memoir, Manning does a nice job of capturing the voice of a poor immigrant girl in nineteenth century. The language is pitch-perfect, non only Axie-Ann-Madame's, but especially that of her German friend, Greta, whose own history is so intertwined with that of the protagonist.

Returning to my opening comments, the (undue) length is the only knock I have against My Notorious Life. Certainly there were times I wanted to reach through the pages and shake one or more of the characters, but that is the hallmark of good writing. The twists and turns are mostly unpredictable, the language rich, and the work of the midwife deftly handled.

The Schoolmaster's Daughter: A Novel of the American Revolution

John Smolens's The Schoolmaster's Daughter had been on my reading list for well over a year before I finally read it last week - and it was worth the wait.

This is the story of Boston's Lovell family, in the opening days of the American Revolution. The father is the well-respected schoolmaster of the Latin school (hence the title of the book) - and a devoted loyalist. His three children on the other hand, James, Abigail, and Benjamin, are avowed Americans - and known revolutionaries. This is particularly true of eldest son James, he of the slightly dodgy past and mysterious illness (which is oddly and annoyingly never explained) who pens many of the missives that drive the Revolution.

Primarily Schoolmaster's Daughter focuses on the parallel stories of Abigail, who alternately woos and spurns a British corporal and finds herself accused in the murder of a sargeant, and youngest brother Benjamin who slips through siege lines and fights in the early, hot battles in the countryside outside the city. The latter he does alongside Ezra Hammond, whom Abigail expected to wed until he left Boston without a word some months before the opening shots of the war - and whose own history is one of the most intricately woven pieces of the story.

Smolens has written a wonderful novel, replete with such larger-than-life characters as Paul Revere and his wife Rachel (conveniently Abigail's best friend) and General Thomas Gage who is friendly with the schoolmaster himself. Ultimately, the language and the events of the time so permeate the pages that the reader feels immersed in Revolutionary Boston and surprised to find herself, say, in a crowded airport.

Four stars.

The Painted Girls

Cathy Marie Buchanan's The Painted Girls is the fictional story of Marie van Goetham, the real-life model for Edgar Degas's Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, and her sisters, Antoinette and Charlotte.

Fourteen-year-old Marie struggles with her place in the world, while 19-year-old Antoinette is torn between mothering her younger sisters and idling away her days in the company of Emile Abadie, who may or may not be a murdered. Nine-year-old Charlotte is a somewhat fleeting presence, while the mother of all three is addicted to the bottle, the reek of absinthe never absent from her breath.

Buchanan cleverly weaves together their stories, using clippings from Le Figaro and other papers to move the action along and fill in any gaps. Occasionally there are even glimpses of 1880s Paris (the portrayal here being 180 degrees from the Paris of Zola in The Ladies' Paradise). The biggest problem for me, however, was that I didn't care much about Marie, who often seemed rather pathetic, or Antoinette, who often seemed rather stupid, or Emile Abadie for that matter. The ending was the strongest part of the book, but even so, The Painted Girls is not in any danger of cracking my year's best list when the time comes.

Two stars.