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Trinity
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Overview
From the acclaimed author of Speak comes a kaleidoscopic novel about Robert Oppenheimer--father of the atomic bomb--as told by seven fictional characters
J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant scientist, a champion of liberal causes, and a complex and often contradictory character. He loyally protected his Communist friends, only to later betray them under questioning. He repeatedly lied about love affairs. And he defended the use of the atomic bomb he helped create, before ultimately lobbying against nuclear proliferation.
Through narratives that cross time and space, a set of characters bears witness to the life of Oppenheimer, from a secret service agent who tailed him in San Francisco, to the young lover of a colleague in Los Alamos, to a woman fleeing McCarthyism who knew him on St. John. As these men and women fall into the orbit of a brilliant but mercurial mind at work, all consider his complicated legacy while also uncovering deep and often unsettling truths about their own lives.
In this stunning, elliptical novel, Louisa Hall has crafted a breathtaking and explosive story about the ability of the human mind to believe what it wants, about public and private tragedy, and about power and guilt. Blending science with literature and fiction with biography, Trinity asks searing questions about what it means to truly know someone, and about the secrets we keep from the world and from ourselves.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780062851963
- ISBN-10: 0062851969
- Publisher: Ecco Press
- Publish Date: October 2018
- Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
- Page Count: 336
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Trinity
Author Louisa Hall’s third novel employs an ingenious and creative tactic to paint an image of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.” In theater, actors comb through scripts to answer the question, “What are the other characters saying about me?” It is through this Stanislavskian, indirect characterization that Hall’s Oppenheimer is revealed. A scientist who became (some would say) a mass murderer, he was a conflicted man with a varied public image who never seemed to decide how he actually felt about it all. In this staggeringly beautiful novel, he is fragmented, shown only through the eyes of people who are all struggling with their own existences.
Hall brings her seven narrators to life through rich and fascinating backstories. Their accounts span from 1943 until 1966—from two years before the Trinity test (the first detonation of a nuclear weapon) until one year before Oppenheimer’s death. We meet Oppenheimer as a potential communist sympathizer, an aloof physicist, an old friend, a mercurial boss and an insect crushed underfoot. The image Hall paints of him is in watercolor—blurry, overlapping, at odds with itself.
There are more similarities between the narrators than there are differences, despite their various backgrounds and roles in Oppenheimer’s periphery. Each grapples with the cold realization that people are infinitely separate. Shared memories often differ between those who share them. People come together for mere moments, and sometimes a flash of bright light allows us to glimpse each other’s bones.
Oppenheimer was a man obsessed with reading and quotations. Years after the Trinity test, in anticipation of an interview, he scrambled to retrieve his copy of the Bhagavad Gita to provide the famous quote, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Trinity itself is a name inspired by a John Dunne poem—but two decades after the test, Oppenheimer still could not fully explain his choice.
Hall has not captured Oppenheimer’s character, as to do so would be to lose his very essence. Instead, she brilliantly creates a fertile spot in her reader’s imagination, allowing us to draw conclusions based on our own realities. Trinity is a masterpiece.
This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
Trinity
Author Louisa Hall’s third novel employs an ingenious and creative tactic to paint an image of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.” In theater, actors comb through scripts to answer the question, “What are the other characters saying about me?” It is through this Stanislavskian, indirect characterization that Hall’s Oppenheimer is revealed. A scientist who became (some would say) a mass murderer, he was a conflicted man with a varied public image who never seemed to decide how he actually felt about it all. In this staggeringly beautiful novel, he is fragmented, shown only through the eyes of people who are all struggling with their own existences.
Hall brings her seven narrators to life through rich and fascinating backstories. Their accounts span from 1943 until 1966—from two years before the Trinity test (the first detonation of a nuclear weapon) until one year before Oppenheimer’s death. We meet Oppenheimer as a potential communist sympathizer, an aloof physicist, an old friend, a mercurial boss and an insect crushed underfoot. The image Hall paints of him is in watercolor—blurry, overlapping, at odds with itself.
There are more similarities between the narrators than there are differences, despite their various backgrounds and roles in Oppenheimer’s periphery. Each grapples with the cold realization that people are infinitely separate. Shared memories often differ between those who share them. People come together for mere moments, and sometimes a flash of bright light allows us to glimpse each other’s bones.
Oppenheimer was a man obsessed with reading and quotations. Years after the Trinity test, in anticipation of an interview, he scrambled to retrieve his copy of the Bhagavad Gita to provide the famous quote, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Trinity itself is a name inspired by a John Dunne poem—but two decades after the test, Oppenheimer still could not fully explain his choice.
Hall has not captured Oppenheimer’s character, as to do so would be to lose his very essence. Instead, she brilliantly creates a fertile spot in her reader’s imagination, allowing us to draw conclusions based on our own realities. Trinity is a masterpiece.
This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.