Category Archives: post-apocalypse fiction

The Monday Book: THE DISAPPEARING SPOON by Sam Kean

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thedisappearingspoonMy publisher and agent are constantly warning all their authors against books that lack a narrative arc. (In other words, the book is a series of short stories or anecdotes that don’t build into one big story.)

And I like these kind of books, although per their advice I’m trying not to write them. So I LOVED The Disappearing Spoon. It’s a series of anecdotes connected by the periodic table’s geography: the column of noble gasses, to one side of them the alkalis, to the other the acids, each bent on negating the other.

Kean makes explaining how atoms are put together simple, like Venus Flytrap once famously did on the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. He explains their layers, how they all want eight neutrons (I think it was neutrons) in their outer layer and every action they take is designed to make that balance happen. How these actions are interrelated to the rest of the universe, making stuff go or stop.

And then there are the funny stories about the scientists: bitter, driven, sweet, under-rated, over-rated: the people who discovered the stuff, and whether it made them happy or not. LOVE the people stories.

Then there are the the little bits like the title anecdote, about lab assistants making spoons out of gallium (which melts at 84 degrees) and serving tea with them. (Wonder how many wives, mothers, and girlfriends got gallium poisoning in the early 1900s? Wonder if there’s such a thing as gallium poisoning?)

But my favorite thing about this book is how he uses the periodic table columns to show how related elements are grouped, and how they are grouped next to things that are either very like or so opposite that they are inevitably paired in life and in our minds. It’s fascinating to dip into.

This is not a narrative you read in one sitting, but a bedside book you dip into. I’ve even read fluffy books between chapters of Kean’s denser, yet not frighteningly so, stories. He makes the ideas accessible, and the explanations simple. Like sitting down for tea with your favorite 9th grade science teacher. Just don’t use the spoon he gives you.

117 stars for The Disappearing Spoon, although a few of these have swift half-lives.

The Monday Book: UNWIND by Neal Shusterman

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So yeah, most readers have a secret fondness for at least one area of YA fiction. Mine is dystopians and fantasy. And frankly, as far as I can tell, these days all YA fantasy IS dystopian.

I picked up UNWIND by Neal Shusterman to shelve it, from a box that came in for trade. And got intrigued with the premise on the back cover, about the last American war (The Heartland War) being fought over reproductive rights. And how now life begins at conception but from 13-18 a child can  be “unwound,” body parts farmed out for all sorts of operations for all sorts of reasons. It’s a boon to the economy and really a good deal for everyone except the Unwound Kids.

And it all goes from there. The book follows three kids, one whose parents give up on him, one a ward of the state, and one a tithe, from a family who has ten kids. Shusterman actually begins the four sections of this novel with quotes from ebay, denying someone the right to sell his soul (because if it doesn’t exist it’s fraud, and if it does exist it’s body parts, which they don’t allow), another about Ukranian orphans being organ harvested in 2003 (mass grave found outside the orphanage and shut down after outrage) and a third about Einstein and consciousness.

Shusterman’s book is intended to be more terrifying than gross. It goes for the jugular. And of course it has parts that just don’t hold up, but one really needs to enter this dystopia with a little willing suspension of disbelief, or what’s the point? And once you have, it’s a lot like reading Sheri Tepper. The exquisite sarcasm crafted so carefully in the words of those who escape Unwinding, reflecting back the odd slogans about bodies and rights, is funny. Dark, but funny.

It’s a creepy book, but well-plotted, with solid characters that don’t just serve as straw men. You know the people in this novel, which makes it all the more disturbing how some of them meet their end.

Two thumbs up (both still attached, thanks) for UNWIND.