Harriet Alida Lye (Britney Townsend)

A complex and magnificent drama is about to be explained. This is the promise of Let It Destroy You as the novel opens on physicist August Snow on the eve of his trial for war crimes. 

It is 1945, and the visionary Hungarian Jewish scientist begins his explanation of how he invented the devastating cobalt bomb – presumably the cause of the ash that is falling outside his cell window. His story conveys a passionate, driven intellect, but also a man with great love for his family and humanity. As August awaits trial in The Hague, his ex-wife June arrives from England to testify, with their young daughter Leora in tow. June has her own story to tell.

The plot concerns itself with remarkable scientific discoveries – August conceives of the nuclear fission chain reaction, invents a refrigerator with Einstein, and patents a radiation box to cure his daughter’s cancer with a technology that has the potential for great destructiveness – but it is skeletal; the focus of the narrative is on thoughts, emotions, and fears. This deep concentration on the characters’ internal worlds creates nuanced, flawed, authentic people in the figures of June and August. The setting is Europe as it rumbles toward the Second World War and, later, wartime America where refugees are not welcome. The backdrops to their lives are vibrantly created through recollection rather than description – the sense of time and place palpable.

Let It Destroy You is inspired by the lives of Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, who conceived and patented the idea of nuclear chain reaction, and his wife, Trude Weiss. Their biographies are Lye’s imaginative launching pad, and the central device is mined from “My Trial as a War Criminal,” a short fiction written by Szilard in which he  imagined himself on trial for crimes against humanity, and used literature to warn against atomic warfare. Most of August’s inventions do exist (though the cobalt bomb was never successfully built); Lye’s prose conjures them as dreamy, almost magical technologies. Lye, the author of a previous novel, The Honey Farm, and a memoir, Natural Killer, handles the source material deftly, fictionalizing and inventing while honouring the kernels of historical fact. 

Lye’s great achievement is the creation of two very different and fully realized first-person narrators, and her storytelling style luxuriates equally in their interiority and their extraordinary circumstances. June is practical and earthy – a caring doctor, a protective mother, a devoted lover. She cannot forgive August for his cold rationality; he is a brilliant scientist but a long-distance husband and father who dedicates his time to work instead of family. As for August, he observes, “I was not distracted by the unknowability of others; I accepted it, and didn’t try to cross the distance in order to understand.” He does not perform love, and fails to understand June’s need for domestic ritual and attention. As both wonder how the trial will affect their futures, they relive their shared past, in a sort of fugue state of intense self-awareness.

It may seem trite to observe that science itself is not good or evil, but when August’s life hangs in the balance, the culpability of scientists becomes a vital question. While conducting experiments he reflects, “Radioactivity is neither good nor bad but can be involved in both creation and destruction. It can kill and it can heal, it can be toxic as well as generative, but as a concept, it is as neutral as a sock.” This is true of everything in the story: love, ambition, science, energy, loyalty. Late in the novel, August shares a saying that has accompanied him since childhood: “Find what you love, and let it destroy you.” This tendency toward destruction might look like failure, but for August and June, the beauty of scientific discovery and personal connection remains cause for celebration.