Snow, the scientist, as novelist writing an insightful (but technically inaccurate) account of British development of atomic bombs and its social environment. ( )

This is the 6th novel in C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers series. Goodness how I have been enjoying these books, which I've been reading through at the rate of one or two per year. The series takes protagonist Lewis Eliot, and English society, from the mid-1920s through the mid-1960s. Eliot is a "self-made man" who has battled his from working class roots into the relatively high echelons of British government work, his early plans to become a high-powered attorney having been short circuited by his love and loyalty to a depressive wife who know will barely see him, so reclusive has she become. Now we are back in the years of World War 2, where we also spent much of The Light and the Dark. Eliot finds himself as, more or less, second in command to a cabinet minister whose portfolio lands Eliot in the midst of gathering funding and manpower for the British attempt to create an atom bomb. The ethics of creating such a weapon, Eliot's relationship with his younger brother, a scientist whom Eliot wishes to help "get on" in ways he himself had not been able to, the gathering of middle age and the interpersonal and power-related relationships of scientists, politicians, friends, brothers and lovers are all deftly handled. Snow was an acute observer of the human condition, a writer with a keen eye to human ego, frailty, desires and strengths. He has the grace not to descend into cynicism. In fact, Nicolas Tredell's study of Snow and his works is entitled C.P. Snow: The Dynamics of Hope. The writing is always low key, with the first person narrative infused with what we Americans, at any rate, would describe as a standard English diffidence. Within this, however, the language is alive with wit and the sort of tiny detail of speech and thought that makes characters really come alive, at least for me. Some might find this writing too slow, I suppose, but for me Snow's writing is entirely delightful. ( )

Een verhaal over atoomgeleerden en de morele dilemma's waarmee ze geconfronteerd worden. ( )

Another re read. CP Snow is so very unfashionable these days, having been very much feted and celebrated at the time, that it is interesting to think why. He is one of very few serious writers who writes about the world of work and affairs - whose major focus is on the political rather than the personal. While the content of the political fades and ages (in this case the world of the atom bomb and nuclear treachery) the motivations and relationships are as real as they were then (the story of how Martin Eliot rises to the top of his research laboratory - and then refuses the prize is particularly fresh). Snow's writing is very limpid - a lack of imagery, a retiring first person single narrator, which sometimes lacks drive - perhaps at the time it was most appropriate for the sensation of the topic, but the novels perhaps suffer for it now...

1893 The New Men, by C. P. Snow (read 20 Dec 1984) This is the sixth volume in the series. It tells the story of men working in England on the atomic bomb, including Lewis Eliot's brother Martin. Much insight, much sensitive exploration of human feelings--all quite profound but not overly exciting or intriguing to a simplicist like me. Martin, on Aug 7, 1945, threatens to send a letter to the Times deploring Hiroshima. Isn't the reaction justified? But I never had it. I remember I was happy because I knew we'd win the war soon--back in those 1945 days when the war was the central event of our lives. ( )