May book - The Wives of Los Alamos

I have now finished the book and like my namesake milli I found the collective accounts frustrating. I wanted to know more about the poor woman who had had a still birth and then given birth successfully, more about the break up of a marriage, more about the sad families whose brothers were "repatriated" as they say these days. etc.etc.

As I said in my previous message, my overall feeling was one of depression, and not because it was the Atom Bomb - oddly enough I began to feel happier toward the end of the book when all that became clear. I think it was the style, although as EatEndGranny said it was easy to read.
I hope the author is not hurt by these negative remarks.

Incase anyone wonders what I was on about in my previous message - it was a response to someone who noted they toasted the queen but in fact we had a king during the war.

I have finished the book. I found it easy to read but as others have mentioned the style didn't particularly appeal. However, I did think it was very effective for the subject matter and left me with a better understanding of what it must have been like for the wives than if it had been based on a small group of wives. I did feel there was a sort of rhythm to the writing.

Did Tara Shea talk to women who had been there or did she base her novel on written accounts?

Well spotted! I remember reading that but forgotten that the King was on the throne then.

I have now finished reading the book, which I was grateful to receive, but didn't enjoy. The use of the collective accounts meant that it was less involving - interesting as social history, but it didn't draw me in, as an individual's account might have done.
I wondered when I began reading the book if the format might change as the story progressed. When it didn't, I found myself skipping a lot of the accounts of daily life as they were often no more than lists and remained impersonal even though names were attached to some 'individuals'.
Obviously a great deal of research went into it, but I felt that if it had focused on a few people only, it could have been harder hitting. Was the author's device a means of avoiding such character development?

It is a very strange book. I didn't think I was going to like it but then found I couldnt put it down. I was still.thinking about it days after I had finished it.

Thanks Greenfinch, as usual I hadn't read the instructions properly

Square brackets needed Milly

OH I thought if I put (confused) I would get a little funny face in its place.
Obviously I didn't do the right thing!
I am not confused, just depressed!!

I've been away for a couple of weeks and was delighted to find The Wives all ready for me when I returned, but have to catch up with the rest of you.
I started it this evening and found the style very unusual but compelling, however it is making me feel slightly depressed,(confused) I dont know why, shall continue to the end and see how I feel then.

Really looking forward to reading this book. Thank you.

Thank you for my copy, unfortunately I have not had time to read it yet, but hope to start this weekend. I will give some feed back eventually.

I was delighted to receive this book as I recently visited Los Alamos when visiting family and granddaughter in the US. The road trip holiday we had took us to New Mexico and Santa Fe, and we went to Los Alamos to visit the museum there. So, I started reading this book with excitement and anticipation. Yes, the descriptions of the amazing sparse mountainous desert were all there, and I felt as though I was really into the story very quickly because I could picture so much of the place as I read.

The anonymous PO Box which was the address is all true and TaraShea has done a brilliant job with the research. Having watched a film at the museum, the description of Oppenheimer in his pork pie hat is spot on.

I was a bit disconcerted at first by the collective "we" method of telling the story, but on reflection found it an interesting device to use to convey the all in it togetherness of the wives in that situation. I'd like to ask TaraShea if

a) She chose the collective voice deliberately as a kind of Greek chorus to tell the story. It also reminded me of the chorus of women who tell the story in T.S.Eliot's play "Murder in the Cathedral".

b) Did she visit Los Alamos and the museum and the surrounding area? I think she must have done as she describes the New Mexico desert so well and conveys a realistic feel of what it's like there.

I really liked the bitchy catty snippet about the women who "accidentally" forgot not to flush the loo when water was short, just to annoy the hostess. That was very real. (no I wouldn't do anything like that!)

Thank you, I enjoyed it very much.

I was somewhat bemused when I first started reading this as I had never come across the narrative style before. It is written in the collective voices of the women whose husbands designed and built the atomic bomb.

It was engaging and very much gave me as a reader the flavour of the range of experiences of the women and the challenges they met in keeping their families together, how they coped with their fears and dealt with their isolation. However, I found the style to be distracting. I would have preferred an in-depth narrative approach as I wanted to know more about individual stories rather than the 'skimming the surface' collectivity presented by the text.

I'm glad I read it because there were imaginative insights into the women's lives but I'd probably avoid any future books written in this style.

Thankyou for my copy of the book. I too have never read writing in this style before. I found it very strange and a little uncomfortable at first. I am halfway through, and enjoying it but would like to ask the author if she was at all worried about alienating readers by choosing this writing style? It certainly was a brave choice !

Thank you so much for my copy of The Wives Of Los Alamos, really looking forward to reading it.

As others have mentioned, the narrative written in the plural is unusual but effective - it enforces the " we're in this together" feeling very well. I enjoyed the book a lot. I knew nothing about Los Alamos, and have since read up a little on it.
Tarashea, have you visited Los Alamos? Were you able to stay there? Have you met any members of the original families involved?

Found the style of writing unusual but also that it was easy to read quickly.

I would like to ask the reasons behind wanting to write this book. It's an interesting subject and I'd not thought about the wives and children involved before.

Thankyou for my free copy
I have just finished this book its very different..the style of writing took a bit of getting used too but never the less I couldn't put it down and finished it very quickly.
I would like to ask the author if this will be made into a tv serial I think it could be adapted quite well and would prove to be very interesting..or if it already has been a tv program that I may have missed?

Querky, not query! I'm not asking! I'm saying!

Unusual, query, but quite fascinating.

A very good book, once you became accustomed to the quirky writing style. It was thought provoking and absorbing and informative of a situation of people I had previously not given a thought to ! Thank you.

Many thanks to Gransnet and Bloomsbury for my copy. What a delightful read. I found the style of writing in the plural original, clever, and extremely effective as a way of portraying the different thoughts and actions of the women as a group whilst not singling out one person's opinions, which would have made it controversial. It was also witty and very funny in places. It was obviously well researched but I would have liked TaraShea to do a bibliography to highlight this, instead of just including sources in the acknowledgements.

I'm glad that the book arrived for the bank holiday weekend and I have had time to read it all on the same day. It was a compelling read, the style of writing and the organisation of the text was very usual but effective.
I will recommend it to my book group as I think the subject matter and the style of writing will generate a lot of discussion.

I have just finished it and found it a thoughtful book and in a style I have never read before.
I would never have chosen it but I learned a lot and enjoyed it.
As pattieb has asked, what promoted the author to write about this particular subject? Did she have family involved?

Half way through