I enjoy Kate Atkinson’s novels. She is one of those authors whose books I will always read when she publishes something new, but I was a little hesitant to read Normal Rules Don’t Apply because it is a collection of short stories, and I just don’t get short stories.
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The Book of Negroes is a novel about an African woman who was sold into slavery, and who spends the rest of her life fighting for a tenuous freedom that takes her full circle back to her country of birth. It is a bleak story, of course, but not as violent in its depiction of the slave trade as it could have been, so I found it to be a more palatable read than some other books about slavery that I have read. What I found most interesting about The Book of Negroes, though, was the details about the African slave trade that do not get discussed much. If anything, I recommend reading The Book of Negroes for the history as you can tell Lawrence Hill put much effort into researching this novel.
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The Radium Girls is a nonfiction account of the incredibly horrifying story of the radium-dial factory workers in the United States. Their job was to paint watches, clocks and military dials with a luminous substance made from radium, but what they did not know is that radium is a dangerous element that would eventually kill them. I had heard of the Radium Girls before reading this book, but Kate Moore’s book really hits home the mistreatment of these women by the companies they worked for, medical professionals, and even their own communities.
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