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Summary and Reviews of The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth Church

The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth Church

The Atomic Weight of Love

by Elizabeth Church
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Readers' Rating (7):
  • First Published:
  • May 3, 2016, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2017, 368 pages
  • Reviewed by BookBrowse Book Reviewed by:
    Rebecca Foster
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About This Book

Book Summary

In the spirit of The Aviator's Wife and Loving Frank, this resonant debut spans the years from World War II through the Vietnam War to tell the story of a woman whose scientific ambition is caught up in her relationships with two very different men.

For Meridian Wallace - and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s - being ambitious meant being an outlier. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother's sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn't expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. When he's recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him.

What began as an exciting intellectual partnership devolves into a "traditional" marriage. And while the life of a housewife quickly proves stifling, it's not until years later, when Meridian meets a Vietnam veteran who opens her eyes to how the world is changing, that she realizes just how much she has given up. The repercussions of choosing a different path, though, may be too heavy a burden to bear.

Elizabeth Church's stirring debut novel about ambition, identity, and sacrifice will ring true to every woman who has had to make the impossible choice between who she is and who circumstances demand her to be.  

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

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Church has a deep understanding of how marriage works: its constant sacrifices and compromises, and how much we can define ourselves by and depend on our partners. Passages recounting the everyday dilemmas and conversations of a marriage feel very true to life. This would make an excellent book club read. There is so much to think about and discuss – especially relationships, women's rights, and moral decisions...continued

Full Review (734 words)

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(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).

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Beyond the Book



Crow Facts and Bird Group Names

Crows generally mate for life In Elizabeth Church's debut novel, The Atomic Weight of Love, Meridian Wallace studies crow behavior over the course of decades. The Corvid family – which includes crows, rooks, magpies, ravens, and jays – is often considered to have the highest intelligence and most remarkable habits in the bird world. Here are some facts that help explain Meri's fascination:

  • Corvids have a high brain to body ratio, nearly as high as primates and cetaceans (whale, dolphin or porpoise).
  • Corvids can be taught to talk.
  • Crows ranging between 100 and hundreds of thousands roost together for protection, warmth, mate finding, and information sharing. In recent years roosts have started to move into urban areas. The birds return to the same ...

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