Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout

[Stergios Botzakis]

I am not going to lie. I was geared up to hate this book. I saw it first in an airport in the graphic novels section but did not preview it. Always on the lookout for science graphic novels, I ordered it sight unseen from Amazon. When I got it, I opened it up and immediately thought, "Oh man, it's a picture book. What a ripoff!" So I set it aside for a few months. Now reading it, I see why it was put in with the graphic novels even though it really is not one. This book defies easy categorization, but I can tell you it's beautiful, informative, moving, and wonderfully strange. It is like a pictorial
Moby Dick, a collection of disparate items and styles that hang together to give different aspects to complex narrative.

Ostensibly, this book is about two things: the lives and love of
Marie and
Pierre Curie, which act as the narrative thread connecting the second topic, the history of radioactivity. The Curies discovered
polonium and
radium, pioneering study of the elements and radioactivity. For their efforts they won
Nobel Prizes, but they also fell victim to health problems from being exposed to radiation over long periods of time. They were titans of the field, lending their name to an
elementary unit and beginning study of a phenomenon that has transformed the world, leading to
medical advances,
renewable energy,
terrible disasters, and the
most destructive weapons on the face of the planet. This book touches on all of these areas, and more. Today, Marie Curie is remembered unfairly as a
token female scientist, and Pierre as her husband/collaborator, but as this books shows, such slight regard is unfounded and insulting. This book reanimates their stories and celebrates their lives and achievements in appropriate fashion.


Lauren Redniss, this book's creator, is an author and artist who has been published regularly in
The New York Times. She also is the author of the book
Century Girl: 100 years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Liv....
From 2008-2009 she was a fellow at the
Cullman Center for Scholars & Writers at the New York Public Li..., and she became a
New York Institute for the Humanities
fellow in 2010. Redniss speaks extensively about her impetus for creating this book
here.

Redniss's artwork is beautiful and haunting. Much of the artwork is
cyanotype, a photographic printing process that produces a ghostly effect meant to echo the glow of radium or an x-ray. She also makes good use of collage to portray historic and informational text pieces. From the artwork, her account of the artistic process, and the copious footnotes in the end pages of the book,
Radioactive
is an obvious labor of love for her.


This book has garnered some impressive praise. It was a
2011 National Book Award Finalist.
Dwight Garner raved that "the word 'luminous' is a critic’s cliché, to be avoided at all costs,
but it fits Ms. Redniss’s book pretty snugly. This is a story with a
hefty half-life." Dr.
Mary Jo Nye called it "a book that truly is out of the ordinary, and it is well worth reading and contemplating."
Marcia Bartusiak added, "Finishing the book, I went back to the beginning and read it again. Just as I did with my favorite picture books as a child."
Kathy Ceceri called
Radioactive
"a rich and complex story of life, love, and science told
through narrative and imagery. It is a powerful and beautiful book."

Some preview pages are available from the author
here. The book's publisher
HarperCollins provides numerous links
here.


more links at http://graphicnovelresources.blogspot.com

[Nick Sousanis]

Hey Stergios - nice writeup. This was one of my favorite books of the last few years (though i agree, it's not a comic, but it takes advantage of a lot of what makes comics work in ways beyond a picture book - that's for sure!) I think it shows off how uniting visual-verbal and scholarly-aesthetic can create something more fully dimensional than either alone. Stunning book.

I like the XKCD cartoon - but i've never thought of Curie as a token - she's always seemed like a giant. ah well.

lastly, i'm assuming you've seen the cover in the dark? Caught me by surprise, but it's perfect for the book. 

thanks, Nick 

[Stergios Botzakis]

Thanks for the kind words and the smart way of summing up this book, Nick!

And I did not know until just now about the cover. It is cool, eerie, and totally apt.

I hope to see you at Sequential SmArt!