The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard
by Ellen Prentiss Campbell
“Beard’s story explores a unique domestic backstory in the development of the atomic bomb as experienced by both witting and unwitting participants.”
Ellen Prentiss Campbell is the author of the novels Frieda’s Song (2021) and The Bowl with Gold Seams (2016, winner of the Indie Excellence Award for Historical Fiction), as well as the short story collections Known By Heart (2020) and Contents Under Pressure (2016, nominated for the National Book Award). Her short fiction has been featured in numerous journals, including The Massachusetts Review and The MacGuffin. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, her essays and reviews appear in Fiction Writers Review, where she is a contributing editor, the Washington Independent Review of Books, The New York Journal of Books, and others.
“Beard’s story explores a unique domestic backstory in the development of the atomic bomb as experienced by both witting and unwitting participants.”
“Clarity, energy, and humor are indeed part of this dark novel. But hope? Yes, it’s there, too”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Nathan Englander’s latest novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth.
“So here, in his creative and affectionate treatment of both Larkin and Hull, the author reminds us to look more deeply”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Jonathan Tulloch’s new novel, Larkinland, out this month from Seren Books.
“A voice may change over time, but fingerprints endure, and Gordon’s mark these new pages”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Mary Gordon’s There Your Heart Lies, published this summer by Pantheon.
“Lucy’s the disturbing stone thrown into a still, dark pond”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, Anything Is Possible.
“Haigh presents no over-simplified white hats and black hats in her story. Instead, Haigh gets inside frackers, locals, and activists alike, finding flawed, warm individuals in all camps.”
“And what a fun read this is”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s debut novel about family and money, The Nest.
“Thank you, Louise Erdrich, for heartbreak mitigation”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Erdrich’s latest novel, LaRose.
“There’s also story-telling magic at work in this incantatory book; it sparks resonant memories of stories heard and internalized: once-upon-a-time-stories, fables, fairy tales, and myths, as well as those from Shakespeare and the Bible.”
“Barker creates her story, her vision of world events with emotional as well as factual depth, filing her fictional dispatches from well-researched historical moments in time.”
