Reviews

The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit

dsbressette's review

4.0

I did not think I would like the first person plural perspective of this novel, but I got used to it quickly and even forgot about it after the first chapter or two. This was a really good book and I have just returned from Santa Fe, I knew a lot of the places discussed in the book.

kategci's review

4.0

This is my second try at this review.....I was reminded of this book by Russell of Ink and Paper blog on a video of 5 backlist books that should be read. This is written in the "we" voice in shortish chapters. The wives were asked, taken or dragged to the new town of Los Alamos by their husbands who were scientists (mostly physicists) during World War II. They were recruited from elite universities to work on a top secret project that became the atomic bomb. TaraShea Nesbit writes so well about the primitive surroundings that New Mexico provides as well as the unusual living situations these women found themselves in. They were not allowed to have extended family visit them, they all had the same address, their husbands were keeping secrets from them and they were mostly reduced to the roles of housewife and mother as they were really not allowed to work outside their home or the compound they lived in. Despite being civilians, many of the aspects of their lives were proscribed by the military. As most of them were in their mid-twenties, there were a lot of babies born in the 2 1/2 years most of them lived there. There were a lot of parties, because there was little else for them to do. Nesbit succeeds in portraying the weirdness in their lives due to so many secrets being kept from them as well as how they all became great at keeping all their own secrets. Thanks to Russell for reminding me about this great story.

mrskoefoe's review

2.0

I like the subject matter a lot - and having spent some time in Los Alamos I was excited to read this story...but I just couldn't connect to the way in which the story (if you could call it that) was written. Rather disappointed, especially because I really wanted to enjoy it.

secreteeyore's review

4.0

It is hard to get past the pov- "we"- an unassigned and collective "we" that jumps around from each Los Alamos wife's perspective.

I liked the subject matter, however, I just wish it were better executed.

jeremypmeyers's review

4.0

I'm fascinated by the history of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project. This is an unconventional book: it's really more of a history than a novel, told in the first person plural from the point of view of the wives of the scientists and engineers whose families were uprooted and moved to The Hill. The author does a good job of connecting the reader to the isolation and strangeness of the town of Los Alamos.

ebralz's review

4.0

This was a very interesting book. it's told in passive possessive third person (if that's even right) signaled a bit to get used to it. But once you get started you're hooked.

sarahmkennedy32109's review

4.0

Ooh my New Mexico book surprised me! The Wives of Los Alamos was a powerful story, one I wasn’t familiar with at all. It’s a historical fiction novel about the women who had to move to Los Alamos when their physicist husbands were enlisted to create the atomic bomb in the 1940s. They were told nothing, not where they were moving to, nor what their husbands would be doing, and were even given new names to go by. Their mail was censored, they could not keep cameras or diaries for the 3 years they lived there, and couldn’t tell their families where in the US they were now living. Just that they were “out west” and had a P.O. Box. For 2-3 years their husbands would go into a warehouse for 8-14 hours a day and never were allowed to tell their wives what they were working on. Until that August morning when the first bomb was dropped. Then they were forced to live with the aftermath of their husband’s involvement and their feelings of either pride or shame or guilt at what they had inadvertently been a part of.
.
The powerful thing about this novel is that the entire thing is written in the first person plural. It’s told through the lens of “we.” You never have one main character, in fact very few names are ever mentioned. It took a bit to get used to that but after the bomb is dropped the power of what “we” did and the reckoning of what “we” had to face was striking. This one was an excellent read.

maryfrances_odea's review

2.0

what a bummer, such an interesting subject and I could not get past the point of view this book is written in. I finally struggled long enough and gave up. Two stars only because of the subject.

loreleimoxon's review

1.5

Let me just give you a framework that summarizes at least 75% of this book. “Sometimes we did nothing. Or we did something. Or we thought of doing something but didn’t end up doing it.” You can come to your own conclusions on how entertaining that is to read over and over again for 230 pages.

I’m honestly impressed with how many ways the author was able to say “yeah these women didn’t know what tf was going on, how frustrating.” The weird group perspective this was written from didn’t really help expand on the logical assumptions that I could have made before reading this book about what it would be like as a wife of a scientist on a secret military base. 

Also for a book that asserts itself as well researched and based in reality, the author probably should have known that there was not a queen on the throne of England until like 1953, so her British characters should probably not be toasting to the queen.

sleightoffeet's review

3.0

This book, in a way, reads like poetry. It has a definite style which took me a few chapters to get used to.

I must admit, I was unaware of what happened at Los Alamos (I just knew it happened "somewhere"), and I never actually thought about how it affected the wives. This book gives a really different perspective on that.