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
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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