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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
adventurous
medium-paced
So creative, and does a wonderful job of incorporating emotional and human elements into its high-concept sci-fi story. A fairly long read, but each bit weaves in and contributes well.
Overall: A multi-generational family story focused on mothers and daughters, Atomic Anna stretches across much of the 20th century. The Anna of the title is Anna Berkova, a Soviet nuclear scientist living in Pripyat (the city supporting Chernobyl) at the time of the accident in 1986. When she discovers that the accident caused her to jump through time, confirming theories she’s been working on for decades, Anna decides to build a time machine to both prevent the nuclear meltdown and fix everything that’s gone wrong with her family. In vignettes told from the perspectives of Anna, her daughter Molly, and her granddaughter Raisa, the reader follows Anna’s family from the revolution of 1917 all the way up to the early 1990s, through pre-World War II Berlin, Molly’s journey to Philadelphia with her adoptive parents, her relationship with drugs and alcohol, the birth of Raisa, and Raisa’s adolescence. Please don’t shy away from this book if you don’t usually read science fiction! If you can follow Back to the Future, you can read this one!
Likes: The three narrators’ stories weave together seamlessly, even through multiple jumps of time and perspective. Anna’s a scientist, Molly becomes a struggling artist, and Raisa has a calling for mathematics. The book addresses the Jewish experience in Russia and Europe more broadly as well as the experience of Soviet Jewish immigrants in the United States. It also addresses the complicated relationship between work, motherhood, and personal identity. And there are all kinds of mothers: very young mothers, older first-time mothers, adoptive mothers, eager mothers, reluctant mothers. This is a long book, but towards the end the pace picked up and I could not turn the pages fast enough!
Dislikes: I would have liked to understand a little better why Yasha chose Anna. (Anything more would be a spoiler!)
FYI: one of the characters develops a serious addiction to drugs and alcohol. There are scenes of child neglect and references to Nazi crimes during the Holocaust. There are a couple of very brief scenes related to gun violence.
Likes: The three narrators’ stories weave together seamlessly, even through multiple jumps of time and perspective. Anna’s a scientist, Molly becomes a struggling artist, and Raisa has a calling for mathematics. The book addresses the Jewish experience in Russia and Europe more broadly as well as the experience of Soviet Jewish immigrants in the United States. It also addresses the complicated relationship between work, motherhood, and personal identity. And there are all kinds of mothers: very young mothers, older first-time mothers, adoptive mothers, eager mothers, reluctant mothers. This is a long book, but towards the end the pace picked up and I could not turn the pages fast enough!
Dislikes: I would have liked to understand a little better why Yasha chose Anna. (Anything more would be a spoiler!)
FYI: one of the characters develops a serious addiction to drugs and alcohol. There are scenes of child neglect and references to Nazi crimes during the Holocaust. There are a couple of very brief scenes related to gun violence.
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
adventurous
challenging
inspiring
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“Life is about choices, and no matter which ones you make, I love you. Don’t ever apologize for going one way or another, just know you can always change. You’re living proof of that, aren’t you?”
Look at this little, underrated sci-fi/historical fiction novel finding its way into my TBR pile at the end of the year!
Atomic Anna was a great read. I loved every minute, even if it won’t end up on any best of lists. First of all, we have the compelling historical fiction pillars - Anna Berkova is a scientist at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. We find out later that she secretly sent her best friend and daughter to America, where they live in Philadelphia as Russian Jewish immigrants and all that entails.
These alone could have made for a compelling, pretty standard historical fiction novel, especially since we join Anna on the night of the Chernobyl disaster.
But Barenbaum takes us in a completely different direction and asks us - what if we could prevent disaster?
The shockwave of the explosion sends Anna forward in time - to the night of her daughter Molly’s death, on a mountaintop in 1992. In her dying breath, Molly pleads with Anna to go back in time and save Raisa - Molly’s daughter and Anna’s granddaughter. What follows is a series of misadventures and attempts by Anna to guide Molly toward a different fate - and to prevent the Chernobyl disaster in the process.
Look. We all know enough about time travel stories to know that things do not exactly go as planned, and our main characters learn about how our choices can change the course of history.
If you are skeptical about the time travel aspect, I urge you to still give this a try. This reads like a multigenerational saga of extraordinary women trying to save their family. I loved the political climate - the inherent fear in the scientific community in the USSR as well as the view into Molly’s childhood as a Russian Jew during the height of the red scare in the United States. There were enough historical elements to keep this speculative fiction story grounded.
Look at this little, underrated sci-fi/historical fiction novel finding its way into my TBR pile at the end of the year!
Atomic Anna was a great read. I loved every minute, even if it won’t end up on any best of lists. First of all, we have the compelling historical fiction pillars - Anna Berkova is a scientist at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. We find out later that she secretly sent her best friend and daughter to America, where they live in Philadelphia as Russian Jewish immigrants and all that entails.
These alone could have made for a compelling, pretty standard historical fiction novel, especially since we join Anna on the night of the Chernobyl disaster.
But Barenbaum takes us in a completely different direction and asks us - what if we could prevent disaster?
The shockwave of the explosion sends Anna forward in time - to the night of her daughter Molly’s death, on a mountaintop in 1992. In her dying breath, Molly pleads with Anna to go back in time and save Raisa - Molly’s daughter and Anna’s granddaughter. What follows is a series of misadventures and attempts by Anna to guide Molly toward a different fate - and to prevent the Chernobyl disaster in the process.
Look. We all know enough about time travel stories to know that things do not exactly go as planned, and our main characters learn about how our choices can change the course of history.
If you are skeptical about the time travel aspect, I urge you to still give this a try. This reads like a multigenerational saga of extraordinary women trying to save their family. I loved the political climate - the inherent fear in the scientific community in the USSR as well as the view into Molly’s childhood as a Russian Jew during the height of the red scare in the United States. There were enough historical elements to keep this speculative fiction story grounded.
Gets a little maudlin sometimes, but this is a good story that's part grandfather paradox and part trolley problem, as well as very strong historical fiction.
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I don’t know if I will ever recover from this book. It is so beautiful, emotional, and had me in tears.
I love the historical pieces fitting together with the fictional pieces so seamlessly.
This is a book I wouldn’t sell my soul to read for the first time again.
I love the historical pieces fitting together with the fictional pieces so seamlessly.
This is a book I wouldn’t sell my soul to read for the first time again.
3.5 stars, rounded up. I really enjoyed the big picture here-as much as we'd like to believe our lives could be different if we could go back in time and "change one thing", real change happens over time. However, this book feels like maybe it's 150 pages too long.
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Gun violence, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Dementia, Grief, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Alcohol, War, Deportation