The Wives of Los Alamos

Reviews

The story is told by all of the women . . . together in unison as one haunting, communal voice. Impressive . . . . Lulled by the voice, we know that offstage the historic work is being done….Together and alone and each in her separate way, the wives are left to celebrate or lament the wonder or the horror of what their town had done. Haunting . . . fascinating . . . A powerful testament to women’s strength and ability to hold a community together during a disturbing time. A novelistic imagining of married life at the World War II nuclear lab. A great story, and Nesbit boldly uses the first person plural to tell it . . . . She evokes the women’s days in lyrical, hypnotic detail. Dominique Crenn’s favorite book of the year. Revealing . . . offers an unusual glimpse into a singular community where war, science, and home life collided. I am in awe of this novel. TaraShea Nesbit's brave and brilliant choice of point of view for these women living inside their earth-shattering secret crucible brings home to us in the fullest way possible that our personal story is never just ours. The Wives of Los Alamos will be read and re-read and remembered. [A] terrific first novel . . . . A sidelong glance at history that, thanks to its Greek Chorus, becomes rivetingly personal and urgent. In this fascinating and artful debut, TaraShea Nesbit gives voice to the women closest to one of the gravest and most telling moments in our collective history: the development and testing of the nuclear bomb at Los Alamos. Tender and mundane details of marriage and domesticity quietly collide with the covert and solemn work at hand. With chilling implications and charged, sure-footed prose, this is a novel - and a writer - of consequence. Hypnotic and filled with elegiac details; Nesbit offers fascinating and disturbing insight into the secret life of the Los Alamos families. The author's writing - by turns touching, confiding, and matter-of-fact - perfectly captures the commonalities of the hive mind while also emphasizing the little things that make each wife dissimilar from the pack. Engrossing, dense, and believable. Nesbit brings alive questions of war and power that dog us to this day. Nesbit artfully accumulates the tiny facts of an important historical moment, creating an emotional tapestry of time and place. An evocative, intelligent novel. This well-researched and fast-paced novel gives a panoramic view of the lives of ordinary women whose husbands worked on the atomic bomb during World War II. Recommended both for its important subject matter and for the author's vivid storytelling. [An] intimate yet artfully distanced narrative . . . . The book is an immersive experience that feels, in hindsight, more like a collection of monologues than a novel using a collective voice. It’s an interesting and beautiful achievement. Expand reviews