Scan barcode
A review by matthewcpeck
Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet
4.0
'Oh Pure and Radiant Heart' is a meditation on the irreversible changes to our world after the invention of the first atomic bomb. It's told in the form of a wacky road-trip story about Oppenheimer, Fermi, and Szilard spontaneously finding themselves transported from the spring of 1945 to the 21st century, having 'split off' from their other selves that lived through history and died. It's a credit to Lydia Millet's style that she can tell such a bizarre tale in a stately, dreamlike fashion, rather than as a cartoon.
The three confused scientists shack up with a timid librarian and her skeptical husband in Santa Fe, and ultimately lead a massive convoy traveling the country in support of disarmament, while warding off threats from shadowy government forces and from religious zealots who affirm that Oppenheimer is the second coming of Christ. Throughout this page-turning plot, Millet intersperses the history of nuclear weapons from 20th century to the present day.
As in Millet's subsequent novel 'How The Dead Dream', there is a somber but lyrical obsession with the extinction of a species and with the havoc wreaked on the environment by the human race. There is also an unfortunate tendency in both books to mock the SUV-driving, corn-syrup-eating American masses in a manner that straddles the line between accurate satire and downright misanthropy. But this is mostly overshadowed by OPaRH's haunting, hilarious, epic, and tragic vision. I hope there's a movie.
The three confused scientists shack up with a timid librarian and her skeptical husband in Santa Fe, and ultimately lead a massive convoy traveling the country in support of disarmament, while warding off threats from shadowy government forces and from religious zealots who affirm that Oppenheimer is the second coming of Christ. Throughout this page-turning plot, Millet intersperses the history of nuclear weapons from 20th century to the present day.
As in Millet's subsequent novel 'How The Dead Dream', there is a somber but lyrical obsession with the extinction of a species and with the havoc wreaked on the environment by the human race. There is also an unfortunate tendency in both books to mock the SUV-driving, corn-syrup-eating American masses in a manner that straddles the line between accurate satire and downright misanthropy. But this is mostly overshadowed by OPaRH's haunting, hilarious, epic, and tragic vision. I hope there's a movie.