In the wake of the critical success of HBO’s Chernobyl, many people have been prompted to revisit the 1986 tragedy. Chernobyl is especially topical, since we continue to be in the middle of a pandemic, where governments around the world have given increasingly alarming advice contrary to medical science. Rachel Barenbaum’s latest book, Atomic Anna, is one of the most recent re-visitings of Chernobyl, this time from a fictional perspective. The story itself is enthralling. And it comes paired with a sobering reminder of the lengths those in power will go to to maintain the status quo.
This book has everything. Time travel, romance, Jewish representation, comic books, and historical fiction are all wrapped up in one package. It’s a rare enough talent, to see an author able to balance a combination of genres in a single story. At first, I admit to being skeptical that it could be done. Barenbaum is more than up to the task. The end result is a suspenseful, enthralling journey that doesn’t let up from the first page.
The book is an intergenerational story, beginning with Soviet nuclear physicist Anna Berkova, her daughter Molly, and granddaughter Raisa. The story spans pre-nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States. These women struggle with love, loss, and finding their place in the world in their own respective times. The ways that their stories continue converging are discombobulating but in the best possible way. Shining a spotlight on these characters as individuals, and then bringing them together, is the best way to tell this story.
The book handles the Chernobyl story itself with the utmost sensitivity. It’s so clear that Barenbaum intimately understands the very real lives that were impacted by this preventable catastrophe. Barenbaum never sensationalizes the disaster, instead using it as a plot device in a larger story. Like the show based on the true events, this fictional story captures how the Chernobyl disaster happened. There’s also a really lovely tribute to Valery Lagasov, who was among the first to blow the whistle on the causes of the Chernobyl disaster. He appears several times in this story, and his real-life heroic legacy is acknowledged.
Atomic Anna also contains fantastic Jewish representation. This story is a perfect example of why we need more Jewish authors telling Jewish stories. Barenbaum so perfectly captures the experience of Soviet Jews, both within the Soviet Union and in the diaspora. The story of refusniks, Soviet Jews who were denied immigration, is a tragic one. Barenbaum also accurately captures the relationship between Soviet Jews and the Soviet State. It was a long and tumultuous relationship, to say the least.
Throughout the entire story, Barenbaum never implies that the experience of the Soviet Jewish community in the U.S. is universal. This is one of many stories that make up the story of the Jewish people. The Jewish community contains multitudes, with the Soviet Jews making up a fundamental part of the Jewish community in the United States, Israel, and worldwide. Understanding the story of the Soviet Jews who made it to the U.S. is essential to understanding the broader community.
The time travel itself in the story works as well as the best time-travelling stories we have. Rather than taking a page from Marvel’s playbook and taking the “that’s not how it works” approach, Barenbaum instead focuses on the trauma that hypothetical time travel would cause in real life. While time travel may be a long term vision for all of humanity, collectively, we haven’t considered nearly all of the ways in which this could go wrong. Barenbaum paints a stark picture. And before we collectively open the Pandora’s Box of time travel, it’s a message we should listen to.
Finally, Barenbaum tells the heartbreaking story of addiction and the pain of intergenerational trauma. She presents characters, living with an illness that impacts countless lives, without judgement and with nothing but compassion. Even those who are less than sympathetic are shown as part of a broader context, including unresolved trauma that gets passed down to each subsequent generation. The ending especially brings an endearing resolution that too few are fortunate enough to experience.
Atomic Anna is an ethereal journey through time, and a topical meditation on grief, loss, and healing. Throw in a comic book story that Marvel needs to option immediately, and you have a literary journey that’s more than worth taking. The talent required to so deftly balance not only the characters and stories themselves, but the multiple genres is massive. Rachel Barenbaum is clearly just getting started.
Atomic Anna is available now.