The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church

I believe he thought she would appreciate them. rebeccarĬompare and contrast the gifts Meridian receives from Alden and from Clay.Īlden's gifts demonstrate how little he really knew her.

Much like the scene in the movie Somewhere in Time where Christopher Reeve's character finds the modern day coin in his pocket and is jolted out of the past, there was one anachronism for me on page 144 when there's a joking reference to. 'Tidbits' (the word used in the comment above) is exactly what I had in mind. Here are some of the comments posted about The Atomic Weight of Love. Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain spoilers! The repercussions of choosing a different path, though, may be too heavy a burden to bear.Įlizabeth Church's stirring debut novel about ambition, identity, and sacrifice will ring true to every woman who has had to make the impossible choice between who she is and who circumstances demand her to be. And while the life of a housewife quickly proves stifling, it's not until years later, when Meridian meets a Vietnam veteran who opens her eyes to how the world is changing, that she realizes just how much she has given up. What began as an exciting intellectual partnership devolves into a 'traditional' marriage. When he's recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him. But she didn't expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother's sacrifices to send her to college pay off. For Meridian Wallace - and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s - being ambitious meant being an outlier.

The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church