Trinity

by Louisa Hall, John Lee (Read by), Cassandra Campbell (Read by), Charlie Thurston (Read by), Saskia Maarleveld (Read by)

Overview

From the acclaimed author of Speak comes a kaleidoscopic novel about Robert Oppenheimer—father of the atomic bomb—as told by seven fictional characters.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant scientist, a champion of liberal causes, and a complex and often contradictory character. He loyally protected his Communist friends, only to later betray them under questioning. He repeatedly lied about love affairs. And he defended the use of the atomic bomb he helped create, before ultimately lobbying against nuclear proliferation.

Through narratives that cross time and space, a set of characters bears witness to the life of Oppenheimer, from a secret service agent who tailed him in San Francisco, to the young lover of a colleague in Los Alamos, to a woman fleeing McCarthyism who knew him on St. John. As these men and women fall into the orbit of a brilliant but mercurial mind at work, all consider his complicated legacy while also uncovering deep and often unsettling truths about their own lives.

In this stunning, elliptical novel, Louisa Hall has crafted a breathtaking and explosive story about the ability of the human mind to believe what it wants, about public and private tragedy, and about power and guilt. Blending science with literature and fiction with biography, Trinity asks searing questions about what it means to truly know someone, and about the secrets we keep from the world and from ourselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982554866
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/16/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Louisa Hall grew up in Philadelphia. She is the author of the novels Speak and The Carriage House, and her poems have been published in The New Republic, Southwest Review, and other journals. She is a professor at the University of Iowa, and the Western Writer in Residence at Montana State University.

John Lee, a stage actor and writer and a coproducer of feature films, has narrated more than one hundred audiobooks of every conceivable genre, earning forty-four Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award.

Original bio sent from Cassandra:

Cassandra Campbell began doing voice overs as the voice for Calvin Klein's Italian commercials. This was followed by commercial and documentary recording in both English and Italian. She has recorded many audiobooks and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie(R) Award nomination. As an actress and director, she has worked at the Public, the Mint, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stagewest, Theatreworks, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Millmountain Theatre, the National Shakespeare Company, and the New York Fringe Festival.

Charlie Thurston is an actor and Earphones Award-winning narrator. He holds an MFA in acting from Brown University / Trinity Rep and has appeared on stages across the country with Trinity Repertory Company, Chautauqua Theater Company, Creede Rep, and at Riverside Theatre and Redmoon Theater, among others. His favorite roles include Edgar in The Completely Fictional-Utterly True-Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen in The Long Christmas Ride Home, Tuzenbach in The Three Sisters, and Tony in You Can't Take It with You.

Saskia Maarleveld is an experienced voice-over actress and Earphones Award-winning narrator. Raised in New Zealand and France, she is highly skilled with accents and dialects, and many of her books have been narrated entirely in accents other than her own. In addition to audiobooks, her voice can be heard in animation, video games, and commercials.

David Colacci is an actor and director who has directed and performed in prominent theaters nationwide. His credits include roles from Shakespeare to Albee, as well as extensive work on new plays. As a narrator, he has won numerous Earphones Awards, earned Audie Award nominations, and been included in Best Audio of the Year lists by such publications as Publishers Weekly, AudioFile magazine, and Library Journal. He was a resident actor and director with the Cleveland Play House for eight years and has been artistic director of the Hope Summer Rep Theater since 1992.

Brittany Pressley has won several Earphones Awards as well as the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration in 2018. She has recorded over one hundred titles and has received several nominations for American Library Association's annual list of Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults. She is also an accomplished singer-songwriter and voice actress. Her voice can be heard on national and international TV and radio commercials as well as several animated series and video games. She is a graduate of Columbia University.

Amy Landon, Earphones Award-winning narrator, is a voice artist and classically trained actress with numerous film, television, and off-Broadway stage credits. Her voice can also be heard on many television and radio commercials. She has an easy facility with dialects, which she also coaches and teaches, and she is happy to find her lifelong obsession with books pairing up with her acting and vocal work. Her narration of Texts from Jane Eyre placed as a finalist for the Audie Award for Best Humor Narration in 2016.

Yetta Gottesman, an audiobook narrator, actor, and director of Puerto Rican and Jewish heritage, was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Brazil. She is completely fluent in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. She is a lifetime member of the prestigious Actors Studio and LAByrinth Theater Company.

Coming soon...

Editorial Reviews

…brilliant…Rather than resorting to the familiar tricks of biography-lite—dramatizing tired anecdotes, larding the narrative with undigested research about particle physics and Oppenheimer's persecution during the McCarthy era—Hall has shaped a richly imagined, tremendously moving fictional work. Its genius is not to explain but to embody the science and politics that shaped Oppenheimer's life…Oppenheimer's deepest secrets would remain as hidden as anyone else's, if Hall relied only on biographical data. What shocks us into a new understanding of this complex and secretive soul are his psychological ties to the invented main characters. Hall uses them to perform seven thought experiments, as if Oppenheimer, like a subatomic particle, could be revealed only indirectly, through his collisions with others. As if, as one character reports him saying, "any given entity can only be defined as a function of its observer." The resulting quantum portrait feels both true and dazzlingly unfamiliar.

The New York Times Book Review - Andrea Barrett

Brilliant… Hall has shaped a richly imagined, tremendously moving fictional work. Its genius is not to explain but to embody the science and politics that shaped Oppenheimer’s life…. The resulting quantum portrait feels both true and dazzlingly unfamiliar.” — New York Times Book Review

“Triumphant.... Each of the anecdotes functions as a compelling story in its own right, and only becomes more powerful when taken together as a complete narrative. With beautiful specificity and nuance, Hall interrogates such major issues as ethics in scientific discovery and breaching the chasm between public and private selves.” — Vanity Fair

“[Hall has] earned acclaim for her ability to wield language with unusual precision.... Trinity [is] a brilliant imagining of how the details omitted from one notorious man’s story might define him more fully than the broad strokes we already know....Trinity sounds a wake-up call.” — Time

“A startling novel that asks how well we can ever really know anyone else, no matter how much we scrutinize them.... Trinity is a dizzying, kaleidoscopic marvel of a book, and a beautiful reflection on the impossibility of creating a truly accurate narrative of any person’s life.” — Texas Observer

“Intelligent, elegant.... [Hall tells] his story through the eyes of seven fictional characters with whom [Oppenheimer] comes into tangential contact.... The emotional weight of their sections lies in their own hurts and betrayals, their own flailing attempts to understand how, precisely, their own lives have somehow come to this.” — Washington Post

“A narrative exploration of the gap between public and private selves, as the novel makes plain that people are unreliable, and that betraying others is inextricably linked with betraying ourselves.... Hall’s book ambitiously takes on far-reaching issues at Los Alamos in a passionate, personal way.” — Santa Fe New Mexican

“Using real events to frame the narrative, Hall creates visceral vignettes using science, history, and biography to create three-dimensional characters pouring forth their own stories.... Highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“Ingeniously structured.... [Hall] excels at creating distinct characters whose voices illuminate their own lives and challenges, as well as the historical period that saw Oppenheimer’s fall from grace.” — Publishers Weekly

“[Hall] explores themes of guilt and betrayal as well as the fallout from lies and self-delusion—in the process bringing Oppenheimer, an often aloof, conflicted man, to vivid life.… Lushly written, this is an ambitious, unsettling novel that takes on big issues in a passionate, personal way.” — Kirkus Reviews

“With war, McCarthyism, and nuclear proliferation as backdrop, Hall’s observers paint a picture of not just one man but of humanity.... Each narrator has a unique and convincing voice in this compelling novel.” — Booklist

“Louisa Hall’s Trinity is an intelligent and sweeping account of the characters—some real, some fictional—swirling around the testing of the first atomic bomb. It is also an affecting meditation on the ways in which we betray others and, in the process, ourselves.” — Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs

“[Hall] employs an ingenious and creative tactic to paint an image of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb”.... In this staggeringly beautiful novel, he is fragmented, shown only through the eyes of people who are all struggling with their own existences.... Trinity is a masterpiece.” — BookPage

From the Publisher

[Hall has] earned acclaim for her ability to wield language with unusual precision.... Trinity [is] a brilliant imagining of how the details omitted from one notorious man’s story might define him more fully than the broad strokes we already know....Trinity sounds a wake-up call.

Time

A narrative exploration of the gap between public and private selves, as the novel makes plain that people are unreliable, and that betraying others is inextricably linked with betraying ourselves.... Hall’s book ambitiously takes on far-reaching issues at Los Alamos in a passionate, personal way.

Santa Fe New Mexican

Triumphant.... Each of the anecdotes functions as a compelling story in its own right, and only becomes more powerful when taken together as a complete narrative. With beautiful specificity and nuance, Hall interrogates such major issues as ethics in scientific discovery and breaching the chasm between public and private selves.

Vanity Fair

A startling novel that asks how well we can ever really know anyone else, no matter how much we scrutinize them.... Trinity is a dizzying, kaleidoscopic marvel of a book, and a beautiful reflection on the impossibility of creating a truly accurate narrative of any person’s life.

Texas Observer

Intelligent, elegant.... [Hall tells] his story through the eyes of seven fictional characters with whom [Oppenheimer] comes into tangential contact.... The emotional weight of their sections lies in their own hurts and betrayals, their own flailing attempts to understand how, precisely, their own lives have somehow come to this.

Washington Post

Brilliant… Hall has shaped a richly imagined, tremendously moving fictional work. Its genius is not to explain but to embody the science and politics that shaped Oppenheimer’s life…. The resulting quantum portrait feels both true and dazzlingly unfamiliar.

New York Times Book Review

With war, McCarthyism, and nuclear proliferation as backdrop, Hall’s observers paint a picture of not just one man but of humanity.... Each narrator has a unique and convincing voice in this compelling novel.

Booklist

[Hall has] earned acclaim for her ability to wield language with unusual precision.... Trinity [is] a brilliant imagining of how the details omitted from one notorious man’s story might define him more fully than the broad strokes we already know....Trinity sounds a wake-up call.

Time

Intelligent, elegant.... [Hall tells] his story through the eyes of seven fictional characters with whom [Oppenheimer] comes into tangential contact.... The emotional weight of their sections lies in their own hurts and betrayals, their own flailing attempts to understand how, precisely, their own lives have somehow come to this.

Washington Post

With war, McCarthyism, and nuclear proliferation as backdrop, Hall’s observers paint a picture of not just one man but of humanity.... Each narrator has a unique and convincing voice in this compelling novel.

Booklist

[Hall] employs an ingenious and creative tactic to paint an image of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb”.... In this staggeringly beautiful novel, he is fragmented, shown only through the eyes of people who are all struggling with their own existences.... Trinity is a masterpiece.

BookPage

Louisa Hall’s Trinity is an intelligent and sweeping account of the characters—some real, some fictional—swirling around the testing of the first atomic bomb. It is also an affecting meditation on the ways in which we betray others and, in the process, ourselves.

Karan Mahajan