The Atomic Weight of Love

The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church (1st Novel)Single Sentence Summary: The remarkable life story of a brilliant woman who falls victim to the expectations of the times she lives in, while still searching for her role in the world as it changes.Primary Characters: Meridian Wallace – a woman of science from the time she was a child. Meridian is both ahead of her time and trapped inside of it. Alden Whetstone – the very accomplished physics professor that Meridian marries. He is 20 years older than she is. Clay – a much younger man and a Vietnam veteran who Meridian meets in her forties.Synopsis: Growing up in a small Pennsylvania town, Meridian Wallace was ten when she was given her first book about birds. At eleven it was Darwin’s Origin of the Species. She was a woman who reveled in science, and especially ornithology. At 17, in 1941, Meridian set off for the University of Chicago where she was a gifted student, always challenging herself to learn more. While there she met and fell in love with her physics professor, Alden Whetstone. His mind never failed to draw Meridian in.When the call of WWII and developing the nuclear bomb drew Alden to Los Alamos, he and Meridian quickly married. She temporarily gave up her plans for a graduate degree in ornithology to follow Alden to Los Alamos. One year became two, and two became three, until Meridian realized the dreams of her own advanced degree had ceded to Alden’s greater calling. Through the years Meridian kept up her “science” by researching crows. She met people who influenced her life and understood the doubts she had about compromising her dreams to Alden’s. One of those people was Clay, a Vietnam veteran, who opened up Meridian to many new possibilities. Throughout the 60’s, 70’s and beyond, Meridian was challenged to change with the world or be left behind.Review: I really loved this debut novel by Elizabeth Church. It was a little slow in the first few chapters, but then it took off and soared! The whole time I was reading The Atomic Weight of Love, I was thinking of my own mother and my grandmother. Meridian would fall roughly between their ages, and so much of what she experienced, the women in my family must also have experienced. Today, a woman as brilliant as Meridian would go off and get as much education as possible. She’d be out in the world using all she had learned to discover new things, write books, educate others.In the 40’s and 50’s, it was the expectation that a woman would follow her husband and his career path even if it meant giving up her own. Most of the women at Los Alamos had abandoned careers and dreams for their husbands’ “greater” contributions. When talking with a friend about the “assumed compliance” of the wives living in Los Alamos Meridian comments,“What I mean is that the entire culture assumed, right along with our husbands. It was understood. And while they might well respect us, sometimes even be a tad less intelligent than us, by marrying them we tacitly agreed to a contract in which we would sublimate. They did not have to subjugate – we did that for them.”Meridian struggled with her lost career her entire life, but for most of it she couldn’t see her way clear to do things any differently. Like my grandmother, and to a lesser extent my mother, Meridian’s destiny was rooted in her husband’s choices.I loved the changes in Meridian as she began to evolve with changing times. Clay, a much younger man, challenged Meridian to put herself first and look at what she wanted and needed most in her life. Church did a brilliant job of developing the female characters in The Atomic Weight of Love, even the lesser ones. You knew them well and understood the choices they made and the demands the times placed on each. The men seemed a little bit one-dimensional, but it was really Meridian’s story so that can be forgiven.The author titled every chapter after a species of bird, telling what that species is called as a group and relating a small detail about each species. I grew to look forward to that little tidbit at the start of each chapter. Well done! Grade: A

I have mixed feelings about the title. Too me, it suggests a romance, perhaps even a YA novel about finding first love in the physics lab. Some, even more cynical than myself, might find the title a cheap shot at the Bombs. Whatever, it drew my attention to the book and I'm glad it did. While "The Atomic Weight of Love" by Elizabeth J. Church devotes a lot of its focus on Meri's relationship with her much older husband, and later her relationship and sexual awakening with her much younger lover, it is more about a woman coming of age in the 1940's, 50's, 60's and beyond, struggling to deal with her personal career choices and sacrifices. And even more critically, personal development sacrifices. Meri meets Alden, a prof at U of Chicago where she is an undergrad, and is strongly attracted by his maturity and zeal for his scientific field. They marry; she stays behind to finish her degree while he answers the call to assist in the development of the atomic (see the title connection?) bomb in New Mexico. She temporarily passes on a scholarship to pursue a graduate degree in ornithology at Cornell and becomes a Los Alamos wife. Years and years later, still in Los Alamos, she meets Clay as she is perched in the desert studying her beloved crows.The problems that Meri faces day-in, day out during the 20+ pre-Clay years - no career, no respect neither from others nor herself, no academic achievements, no goals, no financial independence - are mired in the social mores of that time. And so her husband doesn't understand her frustrations. From his perspective she has an easy life, after all she is provided for. Only some of her fellow house wives get it. Meris is ultimately faced with a difficult choice. Does she escape from Los Alamos with her lover, or does she focus on building a life for herself, a career that will challenge her and make a contribution.So, no "The Atomic Weight of Love" is not a romance. And the issues are not new, women deal these same issues today. But Church's very good book gives an excellent view of how different it was then and where we have all come from. It is very well written; I'm not sure why I gave it a four and not a five, maybe because I thought some plot elements were a tad of a stretch. I'll look for next book.

Superb multilayered book. Found it hard to put down and missed it after I had finished. A beautiful story told around a situation I knew little about. Excellent thought provoking and indeed empowering book!

There is so much in this book. My favourite for 2023. A bit of everything, mystery, romance and all in a very interesting era. Who knew how intense Oppenheimer’s research was

Interesting story about the times of the Atom Bomb creation

I wasn't sure if I'd like this as I started the story of a young woman marrying a much older man in the 1940s. He stymied her career in academia and controlled her life - but despite that this is a compelling story of how Meridian finally found the sort of love that sets you free to be yourself. I cried off and on through the book, testament to the power of the writing and the way Elizabeth Church drew me in to even minor characters, human and avian.Well worth buying.

This novel is profound, and profoundly moving. It’s a long time since I’ve cried so much when reading a book. It follows the life of Meridian Wallace from a childhood marred by the death of her father (of a heart attack at the young age of forty three), to college in Chicago in 1941, to old age in Los Alamos, New Mexico.Meridian is very bright. She studies biology and plans to become an ornithologist studying crows. But dazzled by the intellect of the much older Alden Whetstone, she finds herself married young. Alden is a physicist who gets a job at Los Alamos working on the atomic bombs that ended WW II. The inevitable happens: Meri moves out to join him and ends up yielding her place at Cornell and her chance of a master’s degree. In the 1950’s this was so much more inevitable than it is today, but the masculine assumption that it will be so still hurts. Alden often displays the kind of classic male superiority complete with derogatory put downs that featured in Fay Weldon’s early work. The kind of thing that would have you throwing the book across the room and saying to yourself “Yes. That’s exactly how they do it.” Meri is no shrinking violet, but it’s a case of one woman against the patriarchy, so guess who wins?Salvation of a sort comes when she meets Clay, a young geologist and Vietnam vet. They fall deeply in love, despite the age difference, and Meri has her own sexual revolution. She is set to follow him to Berkeley and resume her studies when Alden becomes very ill. It’s terminal, and Meri can’t in good conscience abandon him. Author Elizabeth Church makes us see that life is complicated. Meri sees that Alden loved her as best he could. So: men are just as much victims of patriarchy.In her eighties, Meridian sets up an organisation called Wingspan, which helps young women broaden their horizons. And every birthday she receives thoughtful gifts from the now-married Clay. She boxes up her crow journals; the ones she kept during the earlier years of her marriage, and sends them to him.This is a story that will resonate with many women, particularly those of us old enough to have been faced with these kinds of choices. It’s a beautifully written book, complex and deft. These are issues our societies still need to sort out.