Shelley Emling
Category: Nonfiction:
Biography; Science
Synopsis: The
biographies of physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Marie Curie, and her
daughters, Irene and Eve.
Date finished: 20
September 2014
Rating: ***
Comments:
This book. This book. THIS BOOK! Oh book, you could have
been so great in another writer’s hands.
This book made me SUFFER. Suf-fer. The research was well-done
and thorough, but the writing was terrible. There was so much repetition, so
much clumsy language, so many bad transitions. And it’s so too bad, because
Madame Curie, and both of her daughters, deserve better.
I read Madame Curie
in high school and credit it with turning me on to biographies. That book
changed my life in so many ways. I’ve felt a reverence for Marie Curie (and the
well-turned biography) ever since. The things this woman accomplished in her
time, in a male-dominated field, are astonishing. She
won not one but two Nobel Prizes, the
only person to this day to win two science Nobels in two subjects (physics and
chemistry). She discovered two elements, radium and polonium. She was the first
female professor at Sorbonne. And the world’s first treatment of tumors with
radiation was done under her direction.
But I had no idea that her daughters, too, were just as
accomplished. Elder daughter, Irene, married a physicist and, having discovered
artificial radioactive isotopes, they won a joint Nobel Prize. Their
discoveries were used to help solve the problem of how to release energy from
the atom, one of the greatest and most horrific scientific discoveries of
modern time.
Younger daughter Eve wrote one of the best-selling
biographies ever written (Madame Curie)
in 1937. She won the National Book Award. Eve’s husband was ambassador to
Greece and then the executive director of UNICEF where he accepted a Nobel
Prize for the organization. Eve was the only member of her family to not
receive a Nobel. Her mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, and husband all
accepted the prestigious prize.
See? The information in the book is wonderfully fascinating.
But is the book worth its tortured prose? I guess that
depends on your tolerance for subpar writing. The information is top notch, how
it’s laid out is deeply flawed.
Would you recommend this to a friend?
If you can get past any prejudice you have about books being well-researched and well-written, go for it. I learned so much.
You might also enjoy:
Madame Curie
Oh no. How sad that such fascinating personalities did not get due justice in this book. Reading your review reminds me that I should pick up Madame Curie myself, and possibly also share this book with my daughter.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think I want to re-read it, too. Haven't read it for 20 years!
ReplyDelete