TRINITY

I had never heard of novelist Louisa Hall before I read her new book, "Trinity". Set in a range of places from Los Alamos to Princeton to San Francisco, the book tells the story - a story - about J Robert Oppenheimer, developer of the atomic bomb. Hall does this by writing "short stories" as chapters, using narrators who often have a sketchy connection with Oppenheimer and his life. The reader soon realises that some of these narrators are less than reliable in the stories and interpretations they're giving.Who was J Robert Oppenheimer? I'd advise reading a Wiki entry on him to get the broad outlines of his life and accomplishments. Two years ago, I read a biography of Oppenheimer, "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer", by Kai Bird. Bird's book is over 700 pages; Hall's book is about half the size. But Bird has written a straight biography, whereas Louisa Hall has written a novel - with fictional characters providing a lot of information. Is it truth or is it fantasy? Part and part? I read and enjoyed the book but still don't know how to describe it. Maybe the best way to describe it is to say that the overall story is as much about the fictional characters as it is about Oppenheimer..The other question is: does Louisa Hall have an agenda in writing her book? It's very clear that she is bitterly against the development and then dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan to end WW2. She - or her characters - blame Oppenheimer for the dropping of the bombs, yet those decisions were made by President Truman, his cabinet, and the US Army. If you want to blame Robert Oppenheimer for something, blame him for taking the job offered by the government to develop the bombs. Everything Hall writes about the damages done by the bombs concern the Japanese victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who were continually affected by the radiation generated by dropping the two bombs. No where in her book, that I could find, did she write about the pluses of using the bombs - shortening the war and saving possibly millions of lives of Japanese and Allied soldiers who would have died during an invasion of the home islands, as well as the hundreds of thousands of prisoners in China, Indo-China, and other Japanese war holdings who were treated miserably by their captors.(I do want to say that I lived in Santa Fe for eight years and traveled often "up the mountain" to see Los Alamos, as well as taken classes and heard speeches by scientists and historians who say we needed to drop the bombs. I am a life-long liberal who hates the ideas of the bombs, but have come to the conclusion they were needed. A short but superb work of non-fiction I can recommend is "Five Days in August" by Princeton professor of history, Michael Gordin" on the subject.)Okay, to return to Louisa Hall's novel, I can honestly say that I enjoyed it. She's an excellent writer and as long as you're not taking what she writes as gospel, "Trinity" is good reading.

How should we think about Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb? Was he a thirsty seeker of knowledge, a scientist who believed it was one’s ultimate duty to discover what is unknown? Was he a betrayer of friends, his wife, his country, the man who unleashed the mighty power of the ultimate weapon of destruction?Louisa Hall suggests this: that “only in those moments between the slides of the kaleidoscope, those moments of a life that never crystallize into practiced anecdote or reliable knowledge” do we begin to feel “people pass through or, or over us and around us.” She invents seven characters who give testimonials about their own fledgling acquaintances with Oppenheimer – from an Army intelligence officer who tails Oppenheimer during his tryst with his lover Jean to a married Princeton secretary in the throes of an eating disorder to a betrayed journalist who is assigned to interview the scientist in his last dying days.But in circuitously talking about Oppenheimer, they inevitably end up telling their own tale, and the tale is a universal one: it is a tale of insecurity, secrets, the seeking of meaning. Each – including Oppenheimer – is pursued like Henry James’ mythical beast in the jungle, the as-yet-unknowable hunter.Robert Oppenheimer, Louisa Hall suggests, is part of us. We are all inadvertent liars and poor witnesses to history; for example, within the book, there are several versions of Oppenheimer’s affair with Jean Tatlock and similarly, many versions of what Oppenheimer’s inner life must have been like. But more dauntingly, we are all complicit with a program that killed 129,000 people when, according to most historians, the war had already been won – choosing later to accuse him of betrayal instead of a more horrific crime.The novel almost begs you, the reader, to examine your own beliefs about this flawed genius: did he create a weapon that ended World War II early or did he unleash Pandora’s box onto a once-innocent world? I have come to believe the latter, but each of us must decide on our own. This multi-layered and creatively-rendered novel provides fleeting glimpses – not deep dives – into Oppenheimer but its main goal is to use Oppenheimer as a mirror who reflects back to all of us.

Several years ago, I visited the museum in Los Alamos. It was a profound experience which I remember well. Therefore, reading aboutOppenheimer, the brain behind the bomb, was very interesting. The whole Los Alamos thing is amazing— the fact that it was so secret that the employees families did not know where they were or what they were working on. Being a pacifist, I think that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was very wrong.

This is a beautifully written, complex and engaging novel about characters whose lives interfaced with Oppenheimer at different times in his life. It is as much a book with deep character development as an intimate look at Oppenheimer though the eyes of the seven narrators. It illuminates the history of the time, the conflicted feelings about the results of Oppenheimer’s work, the atmosphere at Los Alamos at the time of the Trinity test, and the deep contradictions and complexities of Oppenheimer’s character. It is a story told on many levels - very thought provoking and affecting. I recommend it highly.

First off, a great point is made several times in the book about Oppenheimer's pork-pie hat; yet the book cover shows a man (him I guess) in a "regular" hat. So it started off wrong pretty quickly..The story is not much about Oppie, could have been contained in a short article. Didn't learn anything I hadn't heard before. The views expressed are about a person who has a vague connection to Oopenheimer. Certainly I do not wish to make marital infidelity a trivial thing, but the last interview just goes on and on and on about it. The author's ability to continue to dissect the event is tedious. My atoms weren't split at all by this book.s'

The subject matter of this novel is engrossing on many levels. The book handles some topics which are unimaginably large and significant, but it successfully maintains it’s focus on the human condition and it’s comparative frailty. As a result, these big topics stay eminently approachable and importantly, the book remains very readable. This ‘readability’ factor may partly be the result of the author’s use of a collection of ‘eye witnesses’ to narrate the story. Whilst the bulk of the book is, I think, based on accurate historical fact and biography, these narrators are fictional - something I didn’t initially understand - and this device allows the author some flexibility in how she curates the life of her main character, Robert Oppenheimer, at a very human level. This largely works well, but I struggled with the final section, which for me became a little unbalanced in favour of the narrator’s story and missed the opportunity to conclude the novel in the equivalent of a cinematic close-up of a reflective and potentially unconfined Oppenheimer.

The main thing to realise before embarking on this fine book is that, as it states on the hardback cover, it’s a novel. It’s in no way a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, though it is factually based. Instead we meet Oppenheimer at points in his career from developing the atomic bomb, via the McCarthy interrogations to his declining years through the instrument of a series of fictional characters. Their glancing contacts with Oppenheimer do more to illumine their own lives in this reader’s eyes than they illumine his; if anything, Oppenheimer remains a shadowy, enigmatic figure as they winnow their recollections for fact and belief.“Sometimes a man’s life goes to pieces. Then, if he has it in him, he pulls a life together again, though it’s usually not in the same shape it once was.” Louisa Hall’s novel is well written and intriguing; if not quite an all-out triumph I know I’ll be re-reading it one day to see if my opinion holds.

A lot of people have said that if you want a biography that The Modern Prometheus is the way to go. And it is. But this ISN'T a biography. I think that's what confuses most people. This is a fictionalised novel set around Oppenheimer's life, and takes real characters and instances, and then steps into the realm of creative liberty with them, showing off the parts of Oppenheimer that can't be exhibited in a biography.I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting Louisa Hall and discussing this book, and as well as being wonderfully written and edited, heartfelt and emotionally charged, it's also an excellent, and honest portrayal of a man who, for all his gifts, was tormented and followed by what he'd done, and more importantly, the price he paid to do it.For anyone who likes well written fiction, this is a great choice.

This is a terrific novel. Using the story of Robert Oppenheimer's stewardship of the first Atomic Bomb named Trinity the book looks into the fallout in the lives of the people around Oppenheimer as the bomb gets ready to be tested. It was the only test before the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is a great read and I highly recommend it.