Trinity

August 6, 2018
Hall’s ingeniously structured novel is a fictionalized biographical portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the controversial director of the Manhattan Project, as witnessed by seven individuals who came in contact with him at different points in his life: a conflicted army intelligence agent, a romantically beset Women’s Army Corps member at Los Alamos, an old academic friend with a faulty memory, a married Princeton secretary suffering from an eating disorder, a closeted lesbian neighbor on the island of St. John, an impressionable New England prep school student, and a female journalist recovering from a broken marriage. Through their eyes, readers see Oppenheimer sneak a tryst in San Francisco in 1943, count down to the day of the Trinity Test, protest the development of the hydrogen bomb during the Red Scare, and try to repair his reputation after his security clearance is revoked. Hovering in the background of all these stories is Jean Tatlock, his Communist lover, who committed suicide in 1944 and whose ghost seems to haunt Oppenheimer’s every move. Hall (Speak) excels at creating distinct characters whose voices illuminate their own lives and challenges, as well as the historical period that saw Oppenheimer’s fall from grace. Taken together, they only burnish the endlessly fascinating enigma of the flawed genius who became known as the father of the atomic bomb.

Starred review from September 1, 2018

Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb, put science front and center in his life, though he was conflicted about other things--his Communist friends, his love life, and the testing and use of atomic bombs in general. Hall (Speak) begins with a prolog from the FBI agent assigned to follow him in the days before the testing of the first atomic bomb, followed by testimonials from seven different narrators reflecting on what they knew of Oppenheimer at different times in his life. The narrators all reveal something of their own lives while chronicling their relationship with Oppenheimer. Using real events to frame the narrative, Hall creates visceral vignettes using science, history, and biography to create three-dimensional characters pouring forth their own stories. An anorexic secretary, a reporter suffering from a marital breakup, a colleague's lover, and a Communist expatriate friend in Paris are some of the people providing the brushstrokes resulting in a brilliant canvas revealing life's complexities and the enigmatic character who inspired the narrative. VERDICT Readers who enjoy fiction concerning real people and general readers of fiction will enjoy this book. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 4/9/18.]--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2018
Seven fictional characters tell the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the A-bomb, reflecting on his complicated legacy as they talk about their own lives, which intersect with his.Much has been written about Oppie, as friends called him, the renowned physicist hailed as a hero for his work on the bomb, then pilloried for his left-wing views and Communist Party connections during the McCarthy era. (After JFK was elected in 1960, Oppenheimer's reputation was rehabilitated.) But in this boldly imagined, multilayered novel, author Hall (Speak, 2015, etc.) takes a new approach. Through her invented narrators, she explores themes of guilt and betrayal as well as the fallout from lies and self-delusion--in the process bringing Oppenheimer, an often aloof, conflicted man, to vivid life. Among those offering "testimonials" as she calls them: Sam Casal, a military intelligence operative, who one evening in 1943 tails the married Oppenheimer from the Rad Lab in Berkeley, California, to the San Francisco apartment of his (real-life) former lover, Jean Tatlock. Then there's Grace Goodman, a young WAC assigned in 1945 to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the A-bomb was built and tested under Oppie's supervision. Only the last story, narrated by Helen Childs, a journalist who comes to interview the disillusioned and fatally ill scientist in 1966, goes on too long and strains to make the necessary connection with the man himself. Oppenheimer chose the code name "Trinity" (a reference, apparently, to a John Donne poem Jean Tatlock introduced him to) for the A-bomb test that preceded the historic August 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the beginning of each chapter, as a framing device, the author provides a glimpse of Oppenheimer at work in Los Alamos in the tense hours and minutes leading up to the test.Lushly written, this is an ambitious, unsettling novel that takes on big issues in a passionate, personal way.

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September 1, 2018
Most think of Robert Oppenheimer solely as the father of the atom bomb. Hall's (Speak?, 2015) literary novel attempts to elucidate this multifaceted man more fully. Hall alternates short, third-person vignettes from the day of the first detonation of a nuclear device, the Trinity test, and seven longer testimonials, first-person chapters told by various people who knew Oppenheimer from the 1940s to the 1960s. This book is as much about those narrators?a troubled young wife, a former academic from Berkley, a secret service agent?as it is about Oppenheimer. These individuals are complex. Most are damaged in some way, Oppenheimer included, and some teeter on the edge of sanity. With war, McCarthyism, and nuclear proliferation as backdrop, Hall's observers paint a picture of not just one man but of humanity. What are the secrets we keep? What price will we pay to keep them? Can anyone truly know another human being? Each narrator has a unique and convincing voice in this compelling novel centered on the man who saw himself as "Death, the destroyer of worlds."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)