An Atomic Romance

by Bobbie Ann Mason

Book Overview

This provocative, rollicking story is the much-anticipated new novel-the first in over a decade-from acclaimed author Bobbie Ann Mason. In An Atomic Romance we meet Reed Futrell, a sexy, thoughtful... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375507191
• ISBN13: 9780375507199
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

AN EXPLOSIVE BOOK! Sweeping landscape. Touching love story.

I purchased this book for two reasons: I liked the author's name. It took me back to my childhood with my sisters in Ohio: Dottie Sue, Billie Mae, and Gladdie Jo. Of course, I was Betty Lou in those days. The second reason is because the book is set in my parents' birthplace, Kentucky. Silly reasons to buy a book, but am I ever glad I did! This was my first introduction to this well-known author and I find her style to be endearing in every aspect. Her characters are well-drawn, sympathetic and real. The plot is an old one: company man on the lower echelon of the pecking order, goes up against his BIG BAD company to protect the workers, and to add to the enjoyment, he finds true love along the way. What makes this book so unique is this talented author's masterful writing. I couldn't put it down. Thanks, Ms. Mason for an enjoyable few hours. P.S. I am a proud member of the great charitable organization, THE KENTUCKY COLONELS, an honorary order of the Governor's office.

A Glowing Novel About An Atomic Man and Radioactive Rutabagas

Bobbie Ann Mason in her first novel in many moons has created a very likeable and most ordinary of heroes, one Reed Futrell who we learn in the first sentence "still went camping in the Fort Wolf Wildlife Refuge, but he no longer brought along his dog." We soon find out why this once favorite place of Reed's is now off limits to his beloved Clarence, described as a collie-shepherd combo. Reed is in his forties and the divorced father of two "normal" adult children who have moved away from the never-named town where most of this story unfolds although it apparently is somewhere in Kentucky. He exercises daily, rides a motorcycle for pleasure, and is much attracted to a lot of women who also find him desirable, although he has recently met and fallen for an unusual woman named Julia who works at a cytopathology lab and wants to "save the world from sinister diseases like Ebola and anthrax." Reed is a second generation employee of a nuclear plant where his father died in a chemical accident when his son was only six. Reed's employment-- he was exposed to dangerous chemicals in 1986 although he has never told Julia and has not had a physical in five years-- and Julia's fear of what is actually going on at the plant and her distrust of both corporate America and the U. S. Government provide the major conflict for this beautifully crafted novel. Ms. Mason has a great ear for the dialogue of people and customs from "around here" and gets it all down on paper with flair. One of Reed's fellow workers has a wife who says that going to a mall on weekends is spending "quality time" together. At the lounge in the hospital where his mother is recovering from a stroke, Reed meets a "wide-bodied family." (Of course Mississippi recently beat out Kentucky and the other Southern states for having the most obese citizens.) When he is home he sits on a "dog-abused" sofa. An ex-stripper whom Reed sees occasionally has a "Botox-frozen forehead." His mother, embedded in an assisted living facility called Sunnybank where she feels like a "helpless donkey in a stall," has hanging on her wall a striking bird clock-- a necessary item in the homes of people of a certain age and class-- where a different bird sings out each hour and the clock invariably strikes at the wrong times. (I once bought one for my own mother for Mother's Day.) The author also adroitly turns nouns into verbs. Reed has to be careful not to "pancake" down a canyon," and while wearing sweatpants and shower clogs "flip-flopped into the den." Reed is so much like a lot of us, who along with many of his fellow-workers, either has a fatalistic attitude about what may be going on in the chemical plant, the "if I'm already exposed to radiation, I do not want to know about it since there's nothing I can do about it" attitude, or denying that the amount of radiation he surely has been exposed to is lethal. He is a little like the farmers in Kentucky and other southern states who for generations raised and smo