Universe of Two

Kiernan’s lackluster fourth novel (after 2017’s The Baker’s Secret) concerns 19-year-old mathematician Charlie Fish, who’s called away from his sweetheart, Brenda, to play a pivotal role in constructing the atomic bomb. Charlie bonds with Brenda at her family’s Chicago music store during his breaks from working on a secret government project at a nearby university. When Charlie is recruited as part of the team sent to Los Alamos, Brenda doesn’t understand the scope of Charlie’s work, and doesn’t cope well with his absence and cryptic letters. Despite this, the two pine for one another, and Brenda accepts a job as a Santa Fe church organist to be closer to him. Burdened with guilt over his work’s destructive power and sworn to secrecy, Charlie relies on Brenda for strength before and especially after the bombings in Japan. The details of Los Alamos are fascinating, but characterization isn’t Kiernan’s strong suit; he only scratches the surface of his protagonists, and the story of their courtship, which takes up a good chunk of the novel, falls flat. This feels like a generic love story with the Manhattan Project tacked on for emotional heft. (Aug.)