Product Description

Acclaimed author Lydia Millet's latest novel is a black-comic tour de force depicting atomic bomb creators Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard. Despite being dead, these scientists are spotted in Santa Fe by a shy librarian named Ann. She becomes convinced they are real and, to the dismay of her husband, devotes herself to them. The trio quickly acquire a sugar daddy — a young pothead millionaire from Tokyo — and a vast cult following of hippies, Christians, New Agers, bikers, A-bomb survivors, and curious anthropologists who join them on an RV pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. Heroes to some, lunatics or con artists to others, the scientists finally become messianic religious figureheads to fanatics who believe Oppenheimer is the Second Coming. This imaginative novel, rich with incident, brilliantly marries their journey to a history of atomic and thermonuclear weapons and to the emotionally intimate tale of a middle-class couple trying to stay hopeful about the future as they grow close to the men who gave birth to the nuclear threat.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #454140 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 506 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. What if Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, the primary physicists from the Manhattan Project, returned to contemporary America to survey their atomic legacy? That question forms the heart of Millet's excellent fourth novel, in which the souls of the three take earthly form in the present-day Southwest. Ann, a New Mexico librarian, spots the reincarnated Oppenheimer and Fermi at a restaurant near her home; Szilard soon joins them; Ann persuades her garden-designer husband, Ben, to take them all in. Subsequent trips to Los Alamos and (with the help of a rich UFOlogist) Japan to view the monuments at Hiroshima persuade the three to work for disarmament. Army surveillance ensues; at one rally, shots are fired; and Christian Fundamentalists try to take things in a more rapturous direction. It takes considerable talent to pull off a conceit like this, and for the most part Millet makes it look easy, drawing full-blown, dead-on portraits of the three scientists that don't diminish their characters or their work. Her threads on weapons buildup, the topsy-turvy mosaic of contemporary American political culture and the difficulties of marriage feel realistically motivated and nicely argued. Millet gives a whimsical conceit real depth, and the result, if a bit pious in spots, is a superb, memorable novel. (July)
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From The New Yorker
In Millet's surreal fifth novel, three physicists—Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard—are transported from their posts during the Second World War to the year 2003. After overcoming the usual time-travel quandaries—shock at children shouting expletives, unfamiliarity with power steering—the trio, being geniuses, quickly adapt. Szilard starts quoting rap lyrics. In penitence for their contributions to the creation of the atomic bomb, they set off on a mission to promote world peace, only to have their message hijacked by religious fanatics who believe that Oppenheimer is a herald of the Second Coming. The scientists want to stop nuclear proliferation, but it's the proliferation of stereotypes—relentlessly chipper New Agers, soulless Wall Street executives, militant evangelicals—that sabotages the author's attempt at lyrical transcendence.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From The Washington Post
History as we know it came to an end on July 16, 1945. On that day, the first atomic bomb was detonated on a test site dubbed Trinity in Los Alamos, N.M. At the exact moment of the flash, three of the scientists responsible -- Leo Szilard, Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi -- were propelled forward in time to modern-day Santa Fe, where they must come to terms with the legacy of their creation. Or so runs the conceit of Lydia Millet's complex and affecting (if sometimes maddening) fifth novel, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart.

Taken in and cared for by a disaffected librarian named Ann and her skeptical husband, Ben, the three scientists soon realize that nothing but complete worldwide disarmament will prevent Armageddon. They swiftly land their first apostle -- a conveniently wealthy sensualist named Larry, who brings with him a motley assortment of disciples, including trippy Japanese club kids and ex-Deadheads. Larry is rich enough to bankroll the whole peace movement, and before Ann can say "Left Behind," two of the scientists have moved out of her house and into fancy new digs. Soon the growing entourage takes its show on the road, bound for a massive march on Washington. When their message gets co-opted by a cabal of radical Christians who believe Oppenheimer is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy, the stage is set for an apocalyptic conclusion.

Millet has staked her novelistic reputation on taking chances. She is the author of George Bush, Dark Prince of Love and the PEN/USA award-winning My Happy Life, about a naive young woman abandoned in a mental institution. Oh Pure and Radiant Heart may be her biggest gamble yet; it also promises to have the largest payoff because, while its premise seems absurd at first, its message is anything but. Here Rapture takes on many guises, and it is fitting that in a novel exploring the lives of those who set out to play God, Millet would playfully mirror the New Testament, giving us everyone from a John the Baptist walk-on named Eugene to a wannabe Mary Magdalene documentary filmmaker and a Judas among the camp followers.

For the most part, the religious undercurrents are apt. Oppenheimer, who sincerely believed he was serving humanity by ending World War II, was later crucified by the anti-communists for his political leanings and opposition to the hydrogen bomb. Millet's portrait of him is the most complex in the book, as he reluctantly accepts the mantle of doomed prophet almost as penance for what he has brought into the world.

But Millet devotes too many pages to the wearying multitude of followers, most of whom we get to know only as deeply as their salient satirical traits: Sheila the New Age babbler, Webster the contortionist, Adalbert the Belgian food activist.

Millet's humor is far better showcased in the understated irony of the atomic history she weaves through the narrative, such as this advice offered in an educational filmstrip: "The Atomic Energy Commission says the best defense against an atom bomb is to BE SOMEWHERE ELSE when it bursts." Or there's the chilling tidbit that the majority of workers who staffed Pantex (the endpoint for assembling most American nuclear weapons) were born-again Christians who believed they were doing God's work in speeding along the Rapture.

Yet for all its zaniness, this book is a serious indictment -- not so much of the pothead zealots and religious End-Timers (they, at least, have embraced their own idiosyncratic raptures) but of Ann, Millet's perpetually sleepy and dreaming protagonist. Describing her girlhood reluctance to leave her warm bed and set foot upon a cold floor, she tells her husband, "There was this static feeling right then, this feeling of being frozen . . . torn between doing something and doing nothing. . . . I didn't recognize it back then but now I see what it was. . . . It was how I was going to spend the rest of my life." If the Anns of the world remain paralyzed, Millet seems to argue, agents of darkness will make their decisions for them.

In his last speech, delivered to the crowd but directed at Ann, Oppenheimer poses the book's central issue: "The question is not, who is the enemy. . . . The right question is: What is it in me that delivers the world into the hands of the enemy?" Sixty years after Trinity, with our own government developing nuclear "bunker busters" and conducting subcritical underground tests, it is a question Millet believes we should all be asking.

Reviewed by Sheri Holman
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful Writing
After reading Lydia Millet's latest book, "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart," I bought all her books. In a week I devoured "George Bush, Dark Prince of Love" and "Everyone's Pretty." Sadly, I have just finished "My Happy Life" and am down to the last, "Omnivores." I admit I am obsessed with Millet's writing: It is exquisite, flowing, the subject matter jarring, disturbing, crazy-ass weird and captivating. I haven't been this enthralled with a writer since I discovered Vonnegut as a teenager(before that, of course, there was Judy Blume and, I'm sort of embarrassed to say, V.C. Andrews). Millet is a brilliant, beautiful writer. I am so grateful for her work and can't wait for her next feat.

A Remarkable Breakout
In this marvelous book, a Santa Fe librarian named Ann has strange dreams about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called "father of the atomic bomb." She thinks of it another sign of her disrupted sleep patterns, but this is before an armed man comes into the library and begins shooting it up. Before he is killed by one of his own ricocheting bullets, he tells Ann that "the old ones are coming."

Shaken, Ann goes to a friend's restaurant for a drink. Next to her at the bar is a man reading a biography of Oppenheimer who looks just like the Oppenheimer in her dream. He is joined by an elfin man speaking Italian. They talk about what will happen to them in the future. The Italian, now speaking accented English, will die in 1954. The tall, skinny Oppenheimer-type, will live until 1967, and they will both die of cancer. They joke about this uneasily, and then leave.

They are not alone. In author Lydia Millet's vision, both Oppenheimer and the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi disappeared from the Trinity nuclear testing site at the moment the test bomb went off, and reappeared in Santa Fe on March 1, 2003. In Chicago, a fat rude dynamo named Leo Szilard awakes under a table in the undergrad dining room at the University of Chicago at the same moment. Szilard and his buddy Albert Einstein had written a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 warning him about German research into an atomic weapon, thus starting the race for the bomb. Szilard, as brilliant as he is exasperating, puts two and two together faster than the other physicists and hops a bus for New Mexico; the train is too expensive for his 1945 dollars.

Ann is already fascinated by the three, and before long the scientists are living at her house, smoking, surfing the Web, and inhailing donuts, barely tolerated by her tolerant husband. The scientists have been researching what happened post-Trinity. They need to see it for themselves. What ensues is part personal revelation and part world circus as the scientists and a growing number of acolytes take what they've learned and head for Washington.

Millet's graceful writing and wry humor bring her story exploding to life. Those iconic men of science Fermi, Oppenheimer, and Szilard are rendered human and are no less brilliant for their frailty and quirkiness. If the detonation of the atomic bomb brought forth Godzilla, couldn't it also propel its very creators into another time zone? She informs, teases, moves, and enchants her readers with this masterful work of imagination and heart. This novel is terrific reading and shoud not be missed.

Wonderful premise, too long for its own good.
I read about Oh Pure and Radiant Heart in a blog that is on my regular reading list. The blog writer was more enthusiastic about this book than I have ever heard him be about any other book he discussed. On that basis, I thought it was worth giving it a try.

I *loved* the book for the first 150 pages. I could not believe how much I loved the writing, and how connected I felt to the characters. It is really magical how Millet is able to make the surreal situation so very real. I really dreaded the moment when the book would end.

Be careful what you wish for, right? The second half of the book is unfortunately nowhere near as compelling as the first. It had a little bit the feel of a book where the author had painted herself into the corner. It felt as though Millet did not really know where to go with the wonderful premise that she had imagined. I may be wrong about that, but I can at least say that as a reader it was very difficult to hold on to the thread. I cannot help but wonder if a little bit more help from an editor would have prevented the problem.

In any case, Millet is hugely impressive as a writer. I certainly will not be giving up on her work. Recommended (with my caveats above) for fans of smart speculative fiction. If you like a lyrical tone to your prose, Millet should appeal to your taste.