Atomic Anna

November 1, 2021

From Barenbaum, author of Barnes & Noble Discover pick A Bend in the Stars, Atomic Anna features a renowned nuclear scientist who is sleeping as Chernobyl melts down in 1986 and rips through time to meet her estranged daughter Molly in 1992, shot in the chest and begging her to go back and change the past (50,000-copy first printing). In Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, Evie Grace Devlin tries to leave vaudeville behind to become a nurse in 1930s Galveston, TX, but encounters setbacks and instead gets caught up in the shady world of dance marathons; following the Dublin International Literary Award long-listed Above the East China Sea (75,000-copy first printing). In Spur Award-winning Dallas's 1918 Denver-set Little Souls, sisters Helen and Lutie care for the daughter of a flu victim, and an abusive man's murder is covered up by leaving his body on the streets with all the other corpses to be collected (30,000-copy first printing). PEN/Robert W. Bingham finalist Llanos-Figueroa explores 19th-century Puerto Rican plantation society through Pola, A Woman of Endurance, captured in Africa and brought to Puerto Rico to bear babies subsequently taken from her and enslaved (40,000-copy first printing). First in a tetralogy, Scurati's internationally best-selling, Strega Award-winning M.--short for Mussolini--explores the rise of fascism in Italy (40,000-copy first printing). In The Good Left Undone, the New York Times best-selling Trigiana returns to Italy, where Matelda, the dying matriarch of a Tuscan artisan family, reveals her mother's love of the Scottish sea captain that fathered Matelda during World War II.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 10, 2022
Barenbaum (A Bend in the Stars) burnishes her reputation as an up-and-coming talent with this audacious time travel story. Anna Berkova, a Soviet nuclear scientist who works at Chernobyl, is asleep on the morning of the meltdown in 1986. The catastrophe transports her to 1992 Mount Aragats, Armenia, where she finds a trail of blood leading to her dying daughter, Manya, who’s been shot. Before dying, Manya reveals that the amplifier her mother was working on had pulled her through a ripple in space-time, and that Berkova must travel farther into the future to save a teenage granddaughter, Raisa, she’s never known. Barenbaum then unfolds the three women’s stories, each of which is laced with tragedy and unfulfilled aspirations. Chapter headings counting down to Manya’s death maintain tension, as her efforts to express herself as a comic book author with Atomic Anna, a superhero modeled on what she knows of her mother, play out against her battle with substance abuse. Raisa, a math prodigy, also must overcome challenges, such as being placed in foster care after Manya’s conviction for drug possession, to reach her potential. The threads build toward a deeply satisfying denouement, and the author uses the sci-fi plot device to explore parent-child relationships and questions about the morality of changing the past. Barenbaum dares greatly, and succeeds. Eve Attermann, WME.

February 1, 2022
Artist Molly names her superhero character Atomic Anna after her birth mother. She has picked up bits and pieces of Anna's story from her adoptive parents, Soviet refuseniks who treat Life magazine as a handbook to acting American in 1960s Philadelphia. Molly knows Anna's research was key to the development of the atomic bomb. Later she will learn about Anna's other research into riding ripples of time as her mother unexpectedly appears at different points of Molly's life, including at the hour of her death. In this inventive and extensive time-travel drama, Anna struggles between her desire to stop the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor she designed and the possibility of saving her daughter and the granddaughter she never met. From 1930s Berlin to the Cold War on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Anna's quest for answers ripples through the lives of her loved ones. They push the limits of what is possible and confront the idea that although you can change the past, that doesn't necessarily mean you can fix it.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 1, 2022
A Soviet scientist responsible for the Chernobyl disaster invents a time machine so she can change not only that fatal accident, but also her own destiny. Anna Berkova grew up applying her brilliant scientific and mathematical brain to questions of nuclear power. A star of the Soviet Union, she designed the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, taking care to work through numerous safety protocols. Of course, it's not enough, and when the reactor melts down on April 26, 1986, her life is only saved by an accidental jump through time. She finds herself in 1992, on top of a mountain, holding a bleeding woman who claims to be the daughter she gave away as an infant and who tells Anna she must use her time-traveling power both to stop Chernobyl and save her own granddaughter. From this striking, emotional beginning--which gives rise to a thousand questions--the novel follows three generations of Anna's family, itself jumping around in time to explore the lives of Anna, her daughter, Molly, and her granddaughter, Raisa. All three struggle to find their places in the world as talented, strong, independent women, and all three will play a pivotal role in Anna's quest to change the future--or is it the past?--not only to protect those who perish in the nuclear disaster, but to empower, and ultimately save the lives of, her family. In Barenbaum's skillful hands, a complex concept and structure work beautifully, as the novel is slowly constructed one painstakingly detailed chapter at a time. The book is an incredible achievement with a heartfelt human theme: It's never too late to let go of psychological baggage and heal past wounds. As ambitious as a Greek tragedy and just as lyrical and unflinching.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.