Three brilliant women.
Two life-changing mistakes.
One chance to reset the future.
ATOMIC ANNA by RACHEL BARENBAUM
Series: standalone
Publication date: April 5, 2022
Published by: Grand Central
Genre: historical fiction
SYNOPSIS
In 1986, renowned nuclear scientist, Anna Berkov, is sleeping in her bed in the Soviet Union when Chernobyl’s reactor melts down. At that exact moment she tears through time—her first jump – and it’s an accident. When she opens her eyes, she’s landed in 1992 only to discover Molly, her estranged daughter, shot in the chest. Molly, with her dying breath, begs Anna to go back in time and stop the disaster, to save Molly’s daughter Raisa, and put their family’s future on a better path.
In the ‘60s, Molly is coming of age as an adopted refusenik in a Russian enclave of Philadelphia. Her family is full of secrets and a past they won’t share. She finds solace in comic books, drawing her own series, Atomic Anna, inspired by her birth mother, and she’s determined to make it in the world as an artist. When she meets the volatile, charismatic Viktor, their romance sets her life on a very different course.
In the ‘80s, Raisa, a math prodigy, is a lonely teenager with her mother lost to a life of drugs. She devotes herself to studying until a quiet, handsome boy moves in across the street and an odd old woman claiming to be her biological grandmother begins asking for her help. As Raisa finds new issues of Atomic Anna in unexpected places, she notices each comic challenges her to solve equations leading to one impossible conclusion: time travel. And she finally understands what she has to do.
Atomic Anna is a sweeping journey across time, space and the many forms of love. As these remarkable women take responsibility for their choices and work together to prevent the greatest nuclear disaster of the 20th century, they grapple with the power their discoveries hold. No one can control how knowledge is used when it’s out in the world, and just because you can change the past, does it mean you should?
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Praise for Atomic Anna:
“Atomic Anna is a dazzling work of ingenuity and imagination.”
―Téa Obreht, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Inland
"A novel of love, suspense, and nuclear technology. Breathtaking."
―Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends
"Barenbaum burnishes her reputation as an up-and-coming talent with this audacious time travel story... 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."
―Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“In Barenbaum’s skillful hands, a complex concept and structure work beautifully. The book is an incredible achievement with a heartfelt human theme… As ambitious as a Greek tragedy and just as lyrical and unflinching.”
―Kirkus (Starred Review)
“Deftly plotted and thrillingly paced, Atomic Anna combines unforgettable characters, historical intrigue, and time travel in a remarkable tour de force that shines a new light on an old story. If you’re looking to be transported, this book is for you.”
―Anna Solomon, author of The Book of V.
“Epic, ambitious, and gripping, Atomic Anna is a wildly inventive novel that teems with life and grapples with the big questions of science, art, love, and humanity. Rachel Barenbaum is a propulsive writer who takes readers on a journey through time via the lives of three generations of extraordinary women who come together to try to change the course of history and undo the mistakes of their past. Atomic Anna is a trip through time well worth taking. I couldn't put it down.”
―Lara Prescott, New York Times bestselling author of The Secrets We Kept
“The only thing I love more than nuclear physics, time travel, comic books and stories with a decided Russia accent, is Barenbaum’s latest splendid novel, a multi-generational tale with strong, passionate female leads. Brilliantly written, it truly makes you believe in the mysteries of both the universe, time, and the human heart.”
―Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and With or Without You
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Barenbaum is a graduate of Grub Street's Novel Incubator program. In a former life she was a hedge fund manager and a spin instructor, before moving to the New Hampshire woods to write. She has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and an AB in Literature and Philosophy from Harvard College. A Bend in the Stars is her first novel.
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REVIEW
Atomic Anna by Rachel BarenbaumMy rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
As a huge fan of Rachel Barenbaum's A Bend in the Stars, I probably would have been excited to read her follow up regardless of what the plot happened to be. I was extremely impressed with her writing and was already looking forward to seeing what she came out with next. Then I read the synopsis for Atomic Anna and this book became one of my most anticipated reads this year. Why? Because I'm kind of obsessed with time travel novels and there aren't nearly enough out there for me to get my hands on. Beyond that, what really excited me was the prospect of weaving multi-generational female family relationships into that time travel plot. How would time travel help or hinder these women's relationships? Their careers, personal lives, their personal demons? Anna made a lot of bad choices that affected her own personal happiness as well as the generations to follow. The question was whether or not she could pinpoint where so much began to go wrong and reverse it before it even happens.
I'm going to be real when it comes to my feelings about Anna. She was a brilliant woman academically, but when it came to her personal life, she was hopeless. I had a really difficult time liking her for the majority of the book. I admired her intelligence and strength of spirit, however, she was quite selfish in many ways which made it really hard to feel an attachment to her. There were many points of view in this novel, but Anna's is really the central point to everything. Anna's mistakes in regards to her husband Yasha, and their child Molly would ruin so many lives. Yulia and Lazar contributed by being secretive and controlling with Molly causing her to spiral down into addiction, which in turn led her own daughter to suffer because of it. While I did sympathize about Anna's experiences leading up to this, because of the way the storyline is set up, Anna doesn't really go through a gradual progression of enlightenment. She tries to fix things without digging very deeply within herself for the answers, and because of that always seems to fall short of making significant progress. It happens all at once, at the climax of the story, so things felt quite rushed in that regard.
Anna's daughter Molly grows up in America, but she doesn't feel at home there. She's too American to be Russian like Yulia and Lazar who raised her, and she's too Russian to acclimate with the other kids in her school. She loses herself in her art and rebels against the traditional, boring boundaries her parents try to keep her in. If there was any kind of communication and honesty between them, so much could have been avoided. She feels unsupported and unloved and goes looking for it in the worst place possible. From Molly's chapters, you witness so many mistakes on her part you just want to shake her. And that brings us to Raisa, my favorite character of the book.
Raisa was brilliant like her grandmother, but unlike Anna, she was not at the root of the disastrous events in her life. She suffered because of her mother and grandmother, none of it was from her own making. She was a genius, really, and deserved the chance for the bright future she had every capability of achieving. Out of the three women, she was also the only one to have a healthy romantic relationship instead of a toxic one. Raisa had a maturity about her that was so refreshing to read, and I realized I was looking forward to reading her chapters the most. I loved seeing her sweet relationship with Daniel develop, as well as watching her forge a path back to her mother and grandmother before the conclusion.
I thought that the plot was very intricate and it all came together in the end, however it became somewhat chaotic with the different POV switches, multiple timelines, and alternate realities. This book is the opposite of linear. It's kind of a jumbled, jarring, knot of time that you have to pick apart one tiny, twisted piece at a time. That may not be a downside for some readers, but for me personally it caused my reading pace to lag at times. Overall, I did enjoy Barenbaum's writing style once again, and she impressed me with her very original story. It's definitely unlike any other time travel book I've read before so it gets major points for that. I'm very excited to see where this author takes us in the future.
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