Rachel Barenbaum’s sophomore novel, Atomic Anna, has been receiving rave reviews, including starred reviews from both Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.
Atomic Anna follows three generations of women who must work together to travel through time to stop the Chernobyl disaster. Steeped in science and full of strong female characters, Barenbaum’s latest is a page-turning adventure story that combines history, romance, and comic books to bring this story of redemption to life.
Author Lara Prescott writes, “Epic, ambitious, and gripping, Atomic Anna is a wildly inventive novel that teems with life and grapples with the big questions of science, art, love, and humanity.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
Our long-time followers might remember that we interviewed Rachel in 2019 when she published her first novel, A Bend in the Stars (also historical fiction). We’re delighted to continue our conversation with Rachel in the following interview, which includes a special video about Atomic Anna. Congratulations, Rachel, on your truly wonderful novel!
Don’t miss Rachel’s in-person reading at the Howe Library in Hanover, New Hampshire, on May 26 at 7:00 pm.
Literary North: What attracts you to writing historical fiction?
Rachel Barenbaum: Imagining what if is something I love to do. Sometimes it feels like life happens too quickly and I don’t really have time to live in a moment and do everything I want to do. Looking back and writing historical fiction allows me to press pause and stretch into an event or piece of history where I want to spend more time. That’s also why Atomic Anna is the story of three women who build a time machine. I love the dream of going back to fix mistakes, of thinking about what else could have happened. But time travel is a love/hate idea for me. I am as fascinated as I am terrified of the dream of time travel and I think of it as the ultimate form of historical fiction.
LN: Did you find the process of writing Atomic Anna different from writing A Bend In the Stars?
RB: Yes and no. Drafting A Bend in the Stars and Atomic Anna was a similar process. I wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages that were never used, but that I needed to write in order to get to the good stuff. That part of the process was the same. I even had many of the same early readers so all of that felt familiar.
The real difference between the two novels was that I knew a little bit more of what to expect during the editing and marketing process the second time around. With A Bend in the Stars I was flying blind, waiting for my agent and editors to tell me what was happening next. With Atomic Anna I knew the drill—including how edits started big and got smaller and smaller with less of a chance to make changes.
The biggest and best difference was really around the blurb process. For A Bend in the Stars I didn’t know many authors. Every one I knew blurbed me! Once that book was published, and once I started my podcast (Debut Spotlight) and writing more for LA Review of Books, I met many other authors. I built a community and that has been amazing. So, when it came time to ask authors for blurbs this time I had many new friends to ask! It was so much easier this time around.
LN: Can you tell us about how you approached the research for this book? Were there any sources that were of particular inspiration or use?
RB: I did a lot of research for Atomic Anna. I had so many sources that I loved and I learned so much it’s hard to chose a favorite. But since you’re asking, I’ll point out three books/writers that really inspired me.
First, Trina Robbins. She is the mother of the women’s comix movement and the most incredible historian of women in comics. I recommend all of her books. They really helped me shape and understand my character, Molly, who is a comic book artist.
Second, Steve Sheinkin’s book Bomb was an enormous inspiration. I listened to the book with my kids and then bought a copy and read and re-read it. He really captured the fear and push to build American’s first nuclear weapon, and the frenzied spies who risked their lives to steal America’s work on the Manhattan Project.
Third, Adam Higginbotham’s book Midnight In Chernobyl laid out the catastrophe of the accident and was why I started Atomic Anna where I did—at Chernobyl. His research and work is unbelievable. Everyone should read it.
Rachel also found inspiration on these pages:
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Mount Aragats and the real life cosmic ray station
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Toby Smith’s National Geographic photos of Mount Aragats
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Pripyat Swimming Pool Azure
LN: Atomic Anna also has an element of science fiction. How did it feel writing these sections of the novel? Freeing? Risky? Did you have any science fiction touchstones to guide you as you wrote?
RB: It’s funny to hear you asking about sci-fi in Atomic Anna because I never ever thought of that classification for the book until I started seeing booksellers listing it for pre-sale in their sci-fi sections. I know that sounds surprising because Atomic Anna is about building a time machine, but there are as many sci-fi elements in my novel as there are in The Time Traveler’s Wife. My book is really about love, family, and healing. And the way into those themes is through a true generational saga. Time travel is just one side point to the characters. For me it was never the true center of the novel.
As a side note, I think the idea of time travel is as freeing as writing fiction. I love to write fiction because I can just make things up. I can read history and, when things seem strange or I don’t like them, I can change them. I love that. With a time machine, I found I could do the same. I could re-write a scene in history or in my character’s lives by sending them back and changing things. It was incredibly fun.
LN: What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep? How does a typical writing day begin for you?
RB: I am a creature of habit and I write six days a week, starting early every morning. I am not a night owl! I force myself to write everyday—and to write a lot—even when I know my writing that day is bad because the only way through bad writing is more writing. Writers block—being stuck in a story—is all about being afraid of terrible pages. For me, I just keep going and eventually I find my way. All of that is to say I generate a lot of pages that never see the light of day!
LN: Which contemporary writers do you find exciting and why?
RB: I love to read books by all types of writers from all over the world. I love new voices and ideas I’ve never considered the most. For my podcast I interview debut writers because I really love their energy and excitement, and the moment I find a new take on an old theme. Some books I’m excited to read that publish soon include Katie Gutierrez’s More Than You’ll Ever Know, Kelly Ford’s Real Bad Things, and EB Bartel’s Good Grief. Check them out—and keep reading.
LN: Thank you so much, Rachel, for taking the time to share Atomic Anna with the Literary North readers.
Since Rachel creates wonderful videos for her podcast/video series, Debut Spotlight, we thought it would be fun to share a brief video about Atomic Anna. In this clip, you’ll meet Rachel, the three main characters in her book, and the illustrator Emily Ree.
Rachel Barenbaum’s debut, A Bend in the Stars, was named a New York Times Summer Reading Selection and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. It is also a Boston Globe Bestseller. Rachel is a prolific writer and reviewer whose work has appeared in the LA Review of Books, the Tel Aviv Review of Books, LitHub, and DeadDarlings. She is an Honorary Research Associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University and is a graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator. She is also the founder of Debut Spotlight and the Debut Editor at A Mighty Blaze. In a former life she was a hedge fund manager and a spin instructor. She has degrees from Harvard in Business and Literature and Philosophy. She lives in Brookline, MA.
