An informative, if unexciting, account of a celebrated scientist’s training and career.
A debut work novelizes the life of physicist Enrico Fermi.
Growing up in Rome in the 1910s, Fermi is a precocious teenager, scouring the book carts in the Campo de’ Fiori for texts about quantum theory and letting the air out of soccer balls in order to increase their trajectory. After the unexpected death of his older brother, Enrico pours himself even more into his books to distract himself from his grief. He soon begins solving problems of projective geometry that have eluded older, better-educated minds. After studying physics at a university in Pisa, he returns to Rome to take up a professorship and meets Laura Capon, who becomes his wife. “You are the physics genius, or at least that is what I have heard,” Laura tells him during their first encounter. “But you certainly don’t act like one.” While in Rome, Fermi makes unprecedented advances in the field of physics, postulating the existence of the neutrino and adding essential discoveries to quantum theory. But the rise of the Fascists forces Fermi and his young family to flee the country (as Laura is a Jew). Arriving in America, he lends his ingenuity to the service of his adoptive country’s efforts to defeat the Axis powers, providing him with the greatest challenge of his professional life: the Manhattan Project. Fuglei writes in an amiable prose that animates key moments of her subject’s life: Fermi “handed Baudino the keys and stepped outside the jeep, but his foot gave way on something soft. It was the carcass of a jackrabbit that had been eviscerated by the blast.” Even so, the book reads less like a novel than a biography, with most of the information given as exposition. The dramatized scenes rarely contain true drama, and the characters are uniformly portrayed as well-meaning folks without serious flaws or depth. The work is part of the Mentoris Project series, the goal of which is to offer flattering accounts of notable Italians. Even so, great novels have been written about historical figures (even physicists), and readers will likely wish Fuglei had taken a few risks.
An informative, if unexciting, account of a celebrated scientist’s training and career.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-947431-00-3
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Barbera Foundation
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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