Reviews tagging 'War'
Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss
2 reviews
mswarning's review against another edition
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Radioactive was chosen as my employer's (community college) book to read this school year. Our theatre department put on a related play, which I attended. And I decided I wanted to attend the author's presentation.
I went into this book knowing 1) it was about Pierre and Marie Curie and 2) it utilized cyanotype. That was it. Wow, I was really blown away by the layout of the images and text, the color scheme, and the way the narrative jumped around to include the Manhattan Project, Hiroshima, nuclear testing in Nevada, cancer treatment, and Chernobyl. The story focuses on the Curies and their love story as well as the unfortunate consequences their discoveries have had on the world in recent decades.
This book gets categorized as a graphic novel. The author prefers to describe it as visual storytelling. At first I thought that was kind of a snobby thing to say, as if the author was criticizing comics or denouncing comics as art. Upon reflection, I read too much into what she said. It's not a traditional book with panels and dialogue that you come to expect from comics. It's almost more like a children's book with illustrations, except that the subject matter and writing is for adults.
Anyway, I found this book to be both sad and beautiful.
I went into this book knowing 1) it was about Pierre and Marie Curie and 2) it utilized cyanotype. That was it. Wow, I was really blown away by the layout of the images and text, the color scheme, and the way the narrative jumped around to include the Manhattan Project, Hiroshima, nuclear testing in Nevada, cancer treatment, and Chernobyl. The story focuses on the Curies and their love story as well as the unfortunate consequences their discoveries have had on the world in recent decades.
This book gets categorized as a graphic novel. The author prefers to describe it as visual storytelling. At first I thought that was kind of a snobby thing to say, as if the author was criticizing comics or denouncing comics as art. Upon reflection, I read too much into what she said. It's not a traditional book with panels and dialogue that you come to expect from comics. It's almost more like a children's book with illustrations, except that the subject matter and writing is for adults.
Anyway, I found this book to be both sad and beautiful.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Sexism, Misogyny, Cancer, and Blood
Minor: War
ehmannky's review
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This book is gorgeous. The art is vivid, creative, unique and emotionally powerful. And beyond being beautiful to look at it, it's also a beautifully written biography of Marie and Pierre Curie. And not only is a really touching look at their lives and their work, but it is interspersed with multiple perspectives helping put their legacy in context. There are cancer survivors and those who found ways to use this technology for good and then there are victims of the Hiroshima bombings and Chernobyl meltdowns. It's truly a gorgeous book from top to bottom written by someone who clearly knows the power of graphic novels as a medium and shows that they are works of art.
Content Warnings
Moderate: War and Death
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