Universe of Two, by Stephen P. Kiernan

A beautiful and carefully constructed tale of survivor’s guilt.

The woman narrator in Universe of Two is the perfect person to tell a difficult story. Brenda is both young and old, the story being told in retrospect by the older woman and the plot in which she participates occurring primarily in the War World II years, beginning when she is nineteen. That story begins as a romance with an eighteen year old mathematician, Charlie, working on a secret project for the war effort in Chicago. He is actually a second protagonist in the novel. Brenda is outgoing, vivacious and strong-minded. Charlie is a nerd and innocent, so much so it isn’t until halfway through the novel, after he is sent to New Mexico, that it occurs to him that he is working on a component of a weapon that will kill hundreds of thousands of people at once. Brenda follows Charlie to New Mexico, where she witnesses the positive attitude that she has fostered in him go sour. The two each then endure a crisis of conscience.

The plot of Universe of Two is predictable. There is not much mystery here. Who doesn’t know the story of the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos? The characters drive the story, which is a beautiful and carefully constructed tale of survivor’s guilt. Brenda’s story is presented in the first person point of view, told years after the event, but carefully presented to keep the reader engaged with her being, at first, a self-centered brat, and then a woman who falls in love and discovers responsibility. Charlie is presented in a third person point of view. It is a bit unconventional to mix points of view like this, but it’s a brilliant device employed by the author to illustrate the differences between Charlie and Brenda. Simply said, she is comfortable talking about herself and taking risks, not to mention making observations about him. He is awkward when it comes to interactions with his self and unsure of why she would love him. As the subject is related to math, think of their relationship in the terms of a formula, the combination of fixed numbers and variables. And consider whether Brenda is, in fact, the third person narrator telling Charlie’s story.

And, finally, there is music. Those who love music in novels shouldn’t miss this one. The icing on the cake is the construction of organs, a lifetime of doing so, which Charlie and Brenda pursue to right the wrong of Charlie’s atomic detonator. At the end, Brenda is not a brat when she sits at the last organ Charlie designed and thinks, “Don’t fear your mistakes as long as you learn humility from them.” She is speaking for both of them.

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