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Little Boy
‘He began to understand that his present life was not a life at all, but something that had to be endured before a life could commence. It was as though he was before a window, and could see life, but could not touch it. What he needed, he thought, was to be given the opportunity to live. For he would do great things, he thought, when he had the opportunity.’
It is 1935 and a small boy is found in a mine in what is known as the Belgian Congo. It is a time of ferment; nefarious forces are at play. Against this backdrop, the boy’s discovery draws the attention of men of distinction across the globe – scientists, politicians and army men. Soon enough a race begins to bring the boy into safe custody. After a tortuous journey by train through the continent of Africa, the boy travels by ship to New York, where he is taken into the care of the United States Army. From here our diminutive hero will become swept up in a narrative not of his own making, a narrative that will lead him into the heart of one of the most devastating events of the twentieth century.
Audacious in its conceit, thrillingly readable and profoundly humane, Little Boy is a novel of science and politics, of men and war, of compassion and becoming. In prose of baffled grace, it weaves a path through some of the darkest moments in our collective history. Its ending will leave you, like its protagonist, suspended in mid-air, stunned by the awful things that men have put forth into the world.
"Little Boy is an extraordinary novel, audacious and poignant and superbly well-written. It imagines the unimaginable, finds innocence in awfulness. This is what the literary novel is capable of, and so rarely pulls off."
-- Andrew Cowan, author of Your Fault.
"Bold, audacious, written with surgical precision, quiet lyricism and incredible assurance. This novel hurt my feelings and made me think deeply. As Little Boy says, 'All the time he had spent in institutions, sheltered from the world, when in reality there was no greater threat to him than the institutions themselves.'"
-- Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti.
John Smith is a pseudonym. Little Boy is their first book.
It is 1935 and a small boy is found in a mine in what is known as the Belgian Congo. It is a time of ferment; nefarious forces are at play. Against this backdrop, the boy’s discovery draws the attention of men of distinction across the globe – scientists, politicians and army men. Soon enough a race begins to bring the boy into safe custody. After a tortuous journey by train through the continent of Africa, the boy travels by ship to New York, where he is taken into the care of the United States Army. From here our diminutive hero will become swept up in a narrative not of his own making, a narrative that will lead him into the heart of one of the most devastating events of the twentieth century.
Audacious in its conceit, thrillingly readable and profoundly humane, Little Boy is a novel of science and politics, of men and war, of compassion and becoming. In prose of baffled grace, it weaves a path through some of the darkest moments in our collective history. Its ending will leave you, like its protagonist, suspended in mid-air, stunned by the awful things that men have put forth into the world.
"Little Boy is an extraordinary novel, audacious and poignant and superbly well-written. It imagines the unimaginable, finds innocence in awfulness. This is what the literary novel is capable of, and so rarely pulls off."
-- Andrew Cowan, author of Your Fault.
"Bold, audacious, written with surgical precision, quiet lyricism and incredible assurance. This novel hurt my feelings and made me think deeply. As Little Boy says, 'All the time he had spent in institutions, sheltered from the world, when in reality there was no greater threat to him than the institutions themselves.'"
-- Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti.
John Smith is a pseudonym. Little Boy is their first book.
200 pages, Paperback
Published April 29, 2022
10 people are currently reading
622 people want to read
About the author
John Smith
2 books2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
John Smith was a British Labour Party politician who served as Leader of the Labour Party from July 1992 until his sudden death from a heart attack in May 1994. He first entered parliament in 1970 and was the Secretary of State for Trade from 1978–1979 and then the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer under Neil Kinnock from 1987-1992.
Smith was born in Dalmally, the son of a headmaster, and grew up in Ardrishaig in Argyll and Bute. He attended Dunoon Grammar School (Dunoon, Cowal), lodging in the town with a landlady and going home during the holidays, before enrolling at the University of Glasgow, where he studied History from 1956 to 1959, and then Law, from 1959 to 1962. He joined the Labour Party in 1956.
He became involved in debating with the Glasgow University Dialectic Society and the Glasgow University Union. In 1962, he won The Observer Mace debating competition, speaking with Gordon Hunter. In 1995, after his death, the competition was renamed the John Smith Memorial Mace in his honour.
After graduating, Smith practised as a solicitor for a year. He was then elected to the Faculty of Advocates, and later to the British Parliament as an MP. He became a Queens Counsel in 1983.
John Smith was a British Labour Party politician who served as Leader of the Labour Party from July 1992 until his sudden death from a heart attack in May 1994. He first entered parliament in 1970 and was the Secretary of State for Trade from 1978–1979 and then the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer under Neil Kinnock from 1987-1992.
Smith was born in Dalmally, the son of a headmaster, and grew up in Ardrishaig in Argyll and Bute. He attended Dunoon Grammar School (Dunoon, Cowal), lodging in the town with a landlady and going home during the holidays, before enrolling at the University of Glasgow, where he studied History from 1956 to 1959, and then Law, from 1959 to 1962. He joined the Labour Party in 1956.
He became involved in debating with the Glasgow University Dialectic Society and the Glasgow University Union. In 1962, he won The Observer Mace debating competition, speaking with Gordon Hunter. In 1995, after his death, the competition was renamed the John Smith Memorial Mace in his honour.
After graduating, Smith practised as a solicitor for a year. He was then elected to the Faculty of Advocates, and later to the British Parliament as an MP. He became a Queens Counsel in 1983.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
August 25, 2022
Everyone I know who has read this novel has raved about it, but I put it off for ages because WW2 novels tend to put me to sleep. As it turns out, Little Boy is not what I thought it would be. In fact, it’s like almost nothing I’ve read before. The one comparison that comes to mind is Orwell’s Animal Farm, another book that engages with big historical events through the lens of an absurdist, fairytale-like narrative that is still somehow emotionally gripping.
On the surface, Little Boy tells the story of an apparently orphaned and paralyzed Congolese child (known only as “the boy”) who is subjected to a series of strange treatments by the US government during WW2. However, it is obvious from early in the novel that it is in fact telling the story of the Manhattan Project – the scientific development of the atomic bomb – with “the boy” standing in for the materials of the bomb itself.
As increasingly cruel and violent “treatments” are inflicted on “the boy”, it becomes clear to the reader that his sufferings parallel the sufferings of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The novel is essentially reenacting, again and again, in excruciating slow-motion, the things that were done to innocent civilians (including children) in the name of the United States during the war. In this sense, Little Boy is a disturbingly effective and elegantly constructed antiwar novel.
But I also think there is something deeper going on in this book, I mean beyond the historical debate about nuclear weapons. If I had to put it in one word, I would say that ultimately this is a book about masculinity (it’s right there in the title, after all). Masculinity and its relationship with violence. This comes through not just through “the boy” but the people around him – the scientists and their wives.
Overall, this is a stunningly good book. The prose is beautiful, at various times unexpectedly lyrical, funny, ruthless, heartbreaking. I sometimes found the dialogue a little wooden, but the characters are empathetically and believably portrayed. This is by a long margin the most exciting, original, ingenious novel I have read so far this year. I find it hard to believe that “John Smith” is a debut author (as the cover states) and I would not be at all surprised to learn that he is in fact somebody we have all heard of before…
On the surface, Little Boy tells the story of an apparently orphaned and paralyzed Congolese child (known only as “the boy”) who is subjected to a series of strange treatments by the US government during WW2. However, it is obvious from early in the novel that it is in fact telling the story of the Manhattan Project – the scientific development of the atomic bomb – with “the boy” standing in for the materials of the bomb itself.
As increasingly cruel and violent “treatments” are inflicted on “the boy”, it becomes clear to the reader that his sufferings parallel the sufferings of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The novel is essentially reenacting, again and again, in excruciating slow-motion, the things that were done to innocent civilians (including children) in the name of the United States during the war. In this sense, Little Boy is a disturbingly effective and elegantly constructed antiwar novel.
But I also think there is something deeper going on in this book, I mean beyond the historical debate about nuclear weapons. If I had to put it in one word, I would say that ultimately this is a book about masculinity (it’s right there in the title, after all). Masculinity and its relationship with violence. This comes through not just through “the boy” but the people around him – the scientists and their wives.
Overall, this is a stunningly good book. The prose is beautiful, at various times unexpectedly lyrical, funny, ruthless, heartbreaking. I sometimes found the dialogue a little wooden, but the characters are empathetically and believably portrayed. This is by a long margin the most exciting, original, ingenious novel I have read so far this year. I find it hard to believe that “John Smith” is a debut author (as the cover states) and I would not be at all surprised to learn that he is in fact somebody we have all heard of before…
February 1, 2023
Longlisted for the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize, UK & Ireland
He told Mr Byrnes, in short, that the boys must not go to war. Not only was it unconscionable, it was strategically unpropitious. The boys were of such an unusual nature—their prostheses were so potentially powerful—that their appearance in battle could not but inspire mimicry in the Russians. The result, he explained, would be an escalation of competitiveness between the two nations, to the great detriment of the infirm infants. Helpless boys would be raised in military institutions for years to come. It would send the whole international medical community down the wrong path—the path of exploitation, and irresponsibility, and undeniable danger.
Little Boy is the debut novel by the pseudononymous John Smith and published by Boiler House Press:
The novel opens with the discovery of a little boy in a mine in the Belgian Congo in the mid 1930s:
One morning a small boy was found buried in the ground in the Belgian Congo. He was buried up to the scalp. A tangle of filthy weeds encircled his head. Nothing could be seen of him but a little dome, hard and hairless, fixed like a rivet in the wild grass. The boy was not dead—not quite dead. The sun had singed the dome, deepening its cracks, raising its carbuncles, and it was now an unpleasant shade of yellow.
The man who found him was an Englishman named Robert Sharp. He had been walking in the tall grass with his guide, rifle in hand, on the lookout for roan deer. It was now late morning. The year was 1935. A buried boy was almost the last thing this gentleman had expected to find in this plain, far from human habitation—but such things were not unheard of.
But this is no ordinary child, rather some sort of supernatural specimen, and after he is extracted he is left languishing in relative obscurity in a shed, the subject of a few obscure articles in medical journals:
The main piece of the boy—the one comprising his head and trunk—had been successfully extracted and set aside, in a shed. With this action the corporation could well have given up, abandoned the site, and left the rest of the scraps buried out of view. There were some within the leadership who advocated this course of action. But since it had been discovered that his plot coincided with rich natural deposits of various minerals, such as cobalt, silver, nickel, bismuth and arsenic, the argument was made that if the corporation carefully calculated and defrayed its expenses, it was possible to continue extracting the boy’s fragments without adversely affecting its business. So the corporation persisted, and even profited, maintaining a record of what it had recovered of the child and including him each year among the tables and inventories of its annual reports. It did not comment on the nature of the abnormality that enabled him to survive in his most unusual manner, though it reported accurately on his physical condition.
The reports were largely ignored by the general public. There was some small interest outside the Congo, in medical circles. Certain obscure journals advanced the hypothesis that the boy was not the only one of his kind. Other cases were presented and debated—all male, all paralytic, all prepubescent, in similar states of survival, all panting on like him in spite of catastrophic injury to the musculoskeletal, digestive, circulatory and respiratory systems. Theoretical models were proposed to account for the persistence of his consciousness, his extraordinary resilience, his extreme limbic and cortical malleability, his absence of motor control and various other features of his condition.
But the corporation paid no attention to such speculations, and soon the interest waned, his novelty as a medical curiosity began to fade and the medical profession found other things to talk about
The scene then moves to the United States during WW2, where one particular group of doctors, mostly exiles from Europe, fleeing fascism, do take an interest in the little boy, and other similar specimens, but not entirely altruistic as they see the potential to use him for military purposes, and are indeed alarmed that the Nazi regime's doctors may be pursuing a similar project.
In January 1939, a medical conference was held at George Washington University. It had been a most exciting few months in the field of prosthetics. Some doctors in Berlin had just discovered a process for converting neural impulses directly into electrical signals. The news had spread across Europe and was now being discussed for the first time in America. It was widely agreed that it had enormous implications for the creation of prosthetic devices.
The book's blurb doesn't explicitly spell this out, but it's no spoiler to say that this is an elaborate fable of the creation of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project. If the novel's title Little Boy doesn't give that away, the names of the doctors - Szilard, Teller, Fermi and Bethe - will set bells ringing even before they are summoned by Robert Oppenheimer to a summer school in Berkeley.
I suspect the author may have taken inspiration from the two coded messages sent to the US delegation at the Potsdam conference about the successful test of the first atomic bomb, although a little surprisingly these are not included in the novel:
The reader can, if they wish (and I did), spend a lot of time following the links back to the actual story, although this does the novel something of a disservice since it is highly readable in its own right.
It is noticeable that the fable nature tends to come in a range of flavours:
- parts that really only work in the context of the literal, if very unusual, 'little boy' such as when he becomes infatatuated with a young woman on the Los Alamos base, Miss Piles, although the name is I assume a reference to the nuclear piles (the term would later become reactor) used to manufacture plutonium;
- parts where the link is much more explicit, although couched in the terminology of the 'boys e.g. Teller's plans to (in the novel) go far beyond the Manhattan project by fusing two boys together, which in the history was his desire to (and ultimate success in) design what would become fusion or hydrogen bomb; and
- parts that are real conventional historical fiction, such as the power struggles between the scientists, the Szilard petition and growing security concerns around Oppenheimer, including his relationship with Jean Tatlock and its tragic end.
At times that can make for a slightly uneasy mix, and the debates around the morality of the bomb can be a little odd when couched (see the opening quote) in terms of exploitation of the boys.
However, despite its flaws this is a fascinating and thought provoking work.
He told Mr Byrnes, in short, that the boys must not go to war. Not only was it unconscionable, it was strategically unpropitious. The boys were of such an unusual nature—their prostheses were so potentially powerful—that their appearance in battle could not but inspire mimicry in the Russians. The result, he explained, would be an escalation of competitiveness between the two nations, to the great detriment of the infirm infants. Helpless boys would be raised in military institutions for years to come. It would send the whole international medical community down the wrong path—the path of exploitation, and irresponsibility, and undeniable danger.
Little Boy is the debut novel by the pseudononymous John Smith and published by Boiler House Press:
Boiler House Press is a new publisher of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and everything in-between.
We are based at the University of East Anglia, home of the world-renowned Creative Writing MA, and a burgeoning world centre for creative-critical writing studies.
We are passionate about writing that breaks a mould; that surprises; that plays with-and-between the creative and the critical. We want to open and excite your mind.
The novel opens with the discovery of a little boy in a mine in the Belgian Congo in the mid 1930s:
One morning a small boy was found buried in the ground in the Belgian Congo. He was buried up to the scalp. A tangle of filthy weeds encircled his head. Nothing could be seen of him but a little dome, hard and hairless, fixed like a rivet in the wild grass. The boy was not dead—not quite dead. The sun had singed the dome, deepening its cracks, raising its carbuncles, and it was now an unpleasant shade of yellow.
The man who found him was an Englishman named Robert Sharp. He had been walking in the tall grass with his guide, rifle in hand, on the lookout for roan deer. It was now late morning. The year was 1935. A buried boy was almost the last thing this gentleman had expected to find in this plain, far from human habitation—but such things were not unheard of.
But this is no ordinary child, rather some sort of supernatural specimen, and after he is extracted he is left languishing in relative obscurity in a shed, the subject of a few obscure articles in medical journals:
The main piece of the boy—the one comprising his head and trunk—had been successfully extracted and set aside, in a shed. With this action the corporation could well have given up, abandoned the site, and left the rest of the scraps buried out of view. There were some within the leadership who advocated this course of action. But since it had been discovered that his plot coincided with rich natural deposits of various minerals, such as cobalt, silver, nickel, bismuth and arsenic, the argument was made that if the corporation carefully calculated and defrayed its expenses, it was possible to continue extracting the boy’s fragments without adversely affecting its business. So the corporation persisted, and even profited, maintaining a record of what it had recovered of the child and including him each year among the tables and inventories of its annual reports. It did not comment on the nature of the abnormality that enabled him to survive in his most unusual manner, though it reported accurately on his physical condition.
The reports were largely ignored by the general public. There was some small interest outside the Congo, in medical circles. Certain obscure journals advanced the hypothesis that the boy was not the only one of his kind. Other cases were presented and debated—all male, all paralytic, all prepubescent, in similar states of survival, all panting on like him in spite of catastrophic injury to the musculoskeletal, digestive, circulatory and respiratory systems. Theoretical models were proposed to account for the persistence of his consciousness, his extraordinary resilience, his extreme limbic and cortical malleability, his absence of motor control and various other features of his condition.
But the corporation paid no attention to such speculations, and soon the interest waned, his novelty as a medical curiosity began to fade and the medical profession found other things to talk about
The scene then moves to the United States during WW2, where one particular group of doctors, mostly exiles from Europe, fleeing fascism, do take an interest in the little boy, and other similar specimens, but not entirely altruistic as they see the potential to use him for military purposes, and are indeed alarmed that the Nazi regime's doctors may be pursuing a similar project.
In January 1939, a medical conference was held at George Washington University. It had been a most exciting few months in the field of prosthetics. Some doctors in Berlin had just discovered a process for converting neural impulses directly into electrical signals. The news had spread across Europe and was now being discussed for the first time in America. It was widely agreed that it had enormous implications for the creation of prosthetic devices.
The book's blurb doesn't explicitly spell this out, but it's no spoiler to say that this is an elaborate fable of the creation of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project. If the novel's title Little Boy doesn't give that away, the names of the doctors - Szilard, Teller, Fermi and Bethe - will set bells ringing even before they are summoned by Robert Oppenheimer to a summer school in Berkeley.
I suspect the author may have taken inspiration from the two coded messages sent to the US delegation at the Potsdam conference about the successful test of the first atomic bomb, although a little surprisingly these are not included in the novel:
Operated on this morning. Diagnosis not yet complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations. Local press release necessary as interest extends great distance. Dr. Groves pleased. He returns tomorrow. I will keep you posted.
...
Doctor has just returned most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky as his big brother. The light in his eyes discernible from here to High Hold and I could have heard his screams from here to my farm.
The reader can, if they wish (and I did), spend a lot of time following the links back to the actual story, although this does the novel something of a disservice since it is highly readable in its own right.
It is noticeable that the fable nature tends to come in a range of flavours:
- parts that really only work in the context of the literal, if very unusual, 'little boy' such as when he becomes infatatuated with a young woman on the Los Alamos base, Miss Piles, although the name is I assume a reference to the nuclear piles (the term would later become reactor) used to manufacture plutonium;
- parts where the link is much more explicit, although couched in the terminology of the 'boys e.g. Teller's plans to (in the novel) go far beyond the Manhattan project by fusing two boys together, which in the history was his desire to (and ultimate success in) design what would become fusion or hydrogen bomb; and
- parts that are real conventional historical fiction, such as the power struggles between the scientists, the Szilard petition and growing security concerns around Oppenheimer, including his relationship with Jean Tatlock and its tragic end.
At times that can make for a slightly uneasy mix, and the debates around the morality of the bomb can be a little odd when couched (see the opening quote) in terms of exploitation of the boys.
However, despite its flaws this is a fascinating and thought provoking work.
February 3, 2023
Longlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize
A novel which I found much better in concept than execution – and which seemed ultimately to me an uncomfortable juxtaposition which mixes a misfiring metaphor with a rather conventional (if very interesting) historical fiction, rather to the detriment of both.
It was written under a pseudonym and published by Boiler House Press – who are based at the UEA in Norwich (famous of course for its Creative Writing course).
The sort opens with the discovery and extraction of the eponymous young male in Congo in 1935 by the real life mining pioneer Robert Sharp, followed three short chapters later by a 1939 medical conference at George Washington discussing that “Some doctors in Berlin had just discovered a process for converting neural impulses directly into electrical signals” and an introduction to two main characters – Edward Teller and Dr Leo Szilard who are then involved with Drs Fermi and Bethe and later General Leslie R Groves and Dr Oppenheimer and gathering at Los Alamos in New Mexico where they continue, under the highest security and urgency, experiments and investigations on the boy.
Its impossible to discuss the book – or to be honest to read more than a few chapters (especially if you either recognise names or locations or Google those unfamiliar) – without realising that the Boy is effectively a deposit of uranium and the experiments and investigations of which he is part are the Manhattan project.
And that is really the two parts of the novel: the lengthily extended boy/Uranium metaphor and the story of the Manhattan project. The issue with the first for me was that the metaphor simply did not work for me as I never thought of the boy as an actual boy – in fact never as anything other than Uranium. Even in the very first chapter the “boy” is discovered inert in a mine and with parts of him including limbs spread all over the mine – in other words the boy is clearly a deposit to be mined. And the metaphor for me continues to malfunction despite an attempt (as per my quote) to extend the metaphor to the scientific research being some form of brain experiments on children. For example when the boy (and some other “boys”) are taken to Oak Ridge they are fed into a centrifuge with electromagnets – which we are then told is to get them down to “their essential neurological particles”.
And increasingly the Boy sections for me were easily skippable distractions from an easy reading, straightforward and not particularly literary account of the Manhattan Project.
An entertaining enough book, but one which promised so much more
A novel which I found much better in concept than execution – and which seemed ultimately to me an uncomfortable juxtaposition which mixes a misfiring metaphor with a rather conventional (if very interesting) historical fiction, rather to the detriment of both.
It was written under a pseudonym and published by Boiler House Press – who are based at the UEA in Norwich (famous of course for its Creative Writing course).
The sort opens with the discovery and extraction of the eponymous young male in Congo in 1935 by the real life mining pioneer Robert Sharp, followed three short chapters later by a 1939 medical conference at George Washington discussing that “Some doctors in Berlin had just discovered a process for converting neural impulses directly into electrical signals” and an introduction to two main characters – Edward Teller and Dr Leo Szilard who are then involved with Drs Fermi and Bethe and later General Leslie R Groves and Dr Oppenheimer and gathering at Los Alamos in New Mexico where they continue, under the highest security and urgency, experiments and investigations on the boy.
Its impossible to discuss the book – or to be honest to read more than a few chapters (especially if you either recognise names or locations or Google those unfamiliar) – without realising that the Boy is effectively a deposit of uranium and the experiments and investigations of which he is part are the Manhattan project.
And that is really the two parts of the novel: the lengthily extended boy/Uranium metaphor and the story of the Manhattan project. The issue with the first for me was that the metaphor simply did not work for me as I never thought of the boy as an actual boy – in fact never as anything other than Uranium. Even in the very first chapter the “boy” is discovered inert in a mine and with parts of him including limbs spread all over the mine – in other words the boy is clearly a deposit to be mined. And the metaphor for me continues to malfunction despite an attempt (as per my quote) to extend the metaphor to the scientific research being some form of brain experiments on children. For example when the boy (and some other “boys”) are taken to Oak Ridge they are fed into a centrifuge with electromagnets – which we are then told is to get them down to “their essential neurological particles”.
And increasingly the Boy sections for me were easily skippable distractions from an easy reading, straightforward and not particularly literary account of the Manhattan Project.
An entertaining enough book, but one which promised so much more
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September 15, 2022It takes a child to raze a village
June 20, 2022
A Surreal Nuclear Nightmare
A novel that reimagines the first atomic bomb as a sentient, paralysed child, narrated in an almost Dickensian style. This is a wildly original idea that enables the author to deal with some big moral questions. The novel has a dark satirical undertone, with different characters’ voices shining through. Somehow Smith achieves the unthinkable and makes us feel sorry for an inanimate weapon of mass destruction. This is a disturbing book, but there are moments when the writing is achingly beautiful.
A novel that reimagines the first atomic bomb as a sentient, paralysed child, narrated in an almost Dickensian style. This is a wildly original idea that enables the author to deal with some big moral questions. The novel has a dark satirical undertone, with different characters’ voices shining through. Somehow Smith achieves the unthinkable and makes us feel sorry for an inanimate weapon of mass destruction. This is a disturbing book, but there are moments when the writing is achingly beautiful.
April 27, 2023
“Little Boy” was the nickname, during its development and testing, of the first atomic bomb to be deployed in anger, and this novel follows the whole process: from the discovery of its raw uranium ore in the Belgian Congo ten years earlier, to the moment the Enola Gay’s bomb-bay doors opened high above Hiroshima on the morning of August 6th, 1945. The unusual feature here though is that, as well as the cast of mostly familiar characters—Oppenheimer, Teller, Groves and all he rest—we also see these events through the eyes of the bomb itself; or rather, through the eyes of the uranium for which the bomb will be the delivery vehicle; or again, more specifically still, through the eyes of the pent-up power therein.
Several of the depictions of personal tragedies, both large and small, are brilliantly done—Robert Oppenheimer’s reaction to a lover’s suicide for example. So are Little Boy’s first stirrings as the equivalent of a teenager—a mix of unrequited longing and hopelessly unrealistic fantasies. As an entity, Little Boy exists entirely inside his own head; he is pure energy waiting to be unleashed, pure potential waiting to be expressed as a life.
Overall, this novel is mostly a non-technical history of the Manhattan Project, concentrating on the human participants and their families, and it’s arguable how much the “Little Boy” sequences really add to it. It’s an interesting idea though, and some of the writing very good indeed.
Several of the depictions of personal tragedies, both large and small, are brilliantly done—Robert Oppenheimer’s reaction to a lover’s suicide for example. So are Little Boy’s first stirrings as the equivalent of a teenager—a mix of unrequited longing and hopelessly unrealistic fantasies. As an entity, Little Boy exists entirely inside his own head; he is pure energy waiting to be unleashed, pure potential waiting to be expressed as a life.
Overall, this novel is mostly a non-technical history of the Manhattan Project, concentrating on the human participants and their families, and it’s arguable how much the “Little Boy” sequences really add to it. It’s an interesting idea though, and some of the writing very good indeed.
October 8, 2022
4.5 rounded up to 5 stars
This is a fascinating look at the creation and deployment of the first atomic bomb, including the concerns of the scientists who worked on it.
"Little Boy" was the name of the first atomic bomb deployed. It destroyed Hiroshima, killing tens of thousands of civilians and devastating the city. In this novel, the Little Boy is personified as a little boy. The boy "was found in the ground in the Belgian Congo. He was buried up to the scalp." The boy was "rescued" by the company mining in the area and placed in a shed. He had no eyelids and could not close his eyes. He could not speak. But he could see and hear. The mining company reported what it had recovered and the boy's physical condition. The general public paid no attention but some obscure medical journals did. The boy's condition, while rare, had been discovered in other boys -- "all male, all paralytic, all prepubescent." But soon he was forgotten. For four years he remained in the shed, until it was discovered that neural impulses could be converted to electrical impulses and the implications of this on the development of prosthetic devices. At this point, in 1939, the interest of Dr. Leo Szilard and Dr. Edward Teller was aroused.
And so was my interest as I knew those names and I must say that the blurb about the book had not led me to think it was going to about the development of the first atomic bomb and the ethical concerns with its deployment.
I thought the use of the boy to tell how he was perceiving what was going on was interesting. He saw it all as an adolescent boy. He fell in and out of love. He wanted his prothesis, that he thought would be his way to manhood and entry into the world, to make him tall. The boy had no idea he was being given a prothesis that would make him the most destructive bomb ever.
But we did not get just the boy's view. We had the view of Dr. Szilard, Dr. Teller, and others, including Teller's wife, Dr. Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer's wife. We saw the paranoia of the Intelligence community and the eagerness of the military commander in charge of the program. Dr. Szilard led the discussion on the moral issue of deployment when there was little doubt the war was won. The opposing view was delivered by a civilian advisor to President Truman.
The use of nuclear weapons remains an issue. Did their use of the atomic bombs at the end of WWII make credible the argument that the destructive nature of nuclear weapons will prevent countries that have them at their disposal from using them?
This is a fascinating look at the creation and deployment of the first atomic bomb, including the concerns of the scientists who worked on it.
"Little Boy" was the name of the first atomic bomb deployed. It destroyed Hiroshima, killing tens of thousands of civilians and devastating the city. In this novel, the Little Boy is personified as a little boy. The boy "was found in the ground in the Belgian Congo. He was buried up to the scalp." The boy was "rescued" by the company mining in the area and placed in a shed. He had no eyelids and could not close his eyes. He could not speak. But he could see and hear. The mining company reported what it had recovered and the boy's physical condition. The general public paid no attention but some obscure medical journals did. The boy's condition, while rare, had been discovered in other boys -- "all male, all paralytic, all prepubescent." But soon he was forgotten. For four years he remained in the shed, until it was discovered that neural impulses could be converted to electrical impulses and the implications of this on the development of prosthetic devices. At this point, in 1939, the interest of Dr. Leo Szilard and Dr. Edward Teller was aroused.
And so was my interest as I knew those names and I must say that the blurb about the book had not led me to think it was going to about the development of the first atomic bomb and the ethical concerns with its deployment.
I thought the use of the boy to tell how he was perceiving what was going on was interesting. He saw it all as an adolescent boy. He fell in and out of love. He wanted his prothesis, that he thought would be his way to manhood and entry into the world, to make him tall. The boy had no idea he was being given a prothesis that would make him the most destructive bomb ever.
But we did not get just the boy's view. We had the view of Dr. Szilard, Dr. Teller, and others, including Teller's wife, Dr. Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer's wife. We saw the paranoia of the Intelligence community and the eagerness of the military commander in charge of the program. Dr. Szilard led the discussion on the moral issue of deployment when there was little doubt the war was won. The opposing view was delivered by a civilian advisor to President Truman.
The use of nuclear weapons remains an issue. Did their use of the atomic bombs at the end of WWII make credible the argument that the destructive nature of nuclear weapons will prevent countries that have them at their disposal from using them?
February 10, 2023
kind of like if the new "Oppenheimer" movie was a Sylvain Chomet animation
September 19, 2022
utterly heartbreaking.
June 15, 2022
Dark, strange, and twisted.
September 13, 2025
Incredibly harrowing and raw but easily one of the best books I have ever read and ever will read
August 14, 2023
To preface this, I’m not sure if actually I would rather give this five stars instead of four. I suspect I read it too quickly and potentially to its detriment. This is an imagining of the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan, partially told from the perspective of Little Boy, which you will recognise as the code name for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima—in this framing of events, literally a deformed little boy who seems to have appeared in the ground from origins quite outside the usual, paralysed and silently observing, with his body broken in pieces through the surrounding land. There are many such boys dug up in similar mysterious circumstances, across the globe. The opening paragraph reads:
“One morning a small boy was found buried in the ground in the Belgian Congo. He was buried up to the scalp. A tangle of filthy weeds encircled his head. Nothing could be seen of him but a little dome, hard and hairless, fixed like a rivet in the wild grass. The boy was not dead—not quite dead. The sun had singed the dome, deepening its cracks, raising its carbuncles, and it was now an unpleasant shade of yellow.”
The story starts with the Hungarian-American physicists (in this alternative telling, doctors in the medical sense) Edward Teller and Leo Szilard, who believe they have a brilliant and innovative new theory for a prosthesis that could be developed for these stunted and afflicted boys. They subsequently receive notification that the government believes this to be of considerable strategic value to the American military; in other words, that they believe these boys, when outfitted with the new experimental prosthetics, could decisively affect the outcome of the war. More doctors are called in, and several unusual boys’ school of sorts are established in secluded locations, one of these being atop the mesa of Los Alamos. The rest of the events are history. The development of the prosthetics proceeds, pushed at brutal and efficient speeds. The narrative is passed between the eyes of the boy and the doctors working on him, briefly rendering in abstract but cutting strokes the home lives of the Oppenheimers and the Tellers, General Groves with his wife; brief anecdotes, including an intense fascination that the mute and paralysed boy holds for a girl he meets eyes with in a window one day.
Central to the intention of the novel, in this horribly detached inhumanity of obsessively building and demonstrating power, the weapons—bombs—boys—are shown to be as blameless and as lacking a hand in their own accomplished devastation as those individuals who were annihilated in the final blasts. If not fully depicted as pitiful, then as unaware of what is happening to them. Of course it is nonsense—weapons are inanimate, the blood is universally understood to finally rest on hands of those who ordered them used, but this bold, absurdist anthropomorphism separates the roles of each party to clear effect, prompting a re-comprehension of the scope of that appalling tragedy which was created by human hands.
To say that this book makes an emotional appeal to the sensitivities of the reader also is not entirely correct. A final crucial component of the novel is its tone: related in such a matter-of-fact way, clinical yet sweepingly beautiful, that the effect produced is extraordinarily magnetic. Things remain quite surreal, disturbing in a blunted and blurred way, the sentences at once clipped and graceful like a hammer striking piano strings, the images pulled past in twisted streams of slowed nerves and running water.
All in all, Little Boy is a very imaginative and compelling look at the atomic bomb development project, and the writing is wonderful, somehow contriving to sound at once both old-fashioned and elegantly modern. Still, when it comes to a rating, I’m divided. There is no such thing as a perfect book, but there are books where you would be hard-pressed to say there is a clear trajectory for improvement, which you then conclude to be at least approaching perfection. Little Boy, to me, was not one of those; I’m forced to conclude that there’s something unsatisfying about it, something unquantifiable. That perhaps the narrative felt empty, that the pacing was not compelling enough, no rising and falling, no resolution of the characters’ thoughts, or perhaps that occasionally the prose felt simultaneously under-packed and yet progressing too quickly (like in my head I could hear the words being read aloud, but the voice is fast and high-pitched, like a recording placed at 2x speed that I can’t turn back to a normal speed). This is my reason for my eventual rating.
“One morning a small boy was found buried in the ground in the Belgian Congo. He was buried up to the scalp. A tangle of filthy weeds encircled his head. Nothing could be seen of him but a little dome, hard and hairless, fixed like a rivet in the wild grass. The boy was not dead—not quite dead. The sun had singed the dome, deepening its cracks, raising its carbuncles, and it was now an unpleasant shade of yellow.”
The story starts with the Hungarian-American physicists (in this alternative telling, doctors in the medical sense) Edward Teller and Leo Szilard, who believe they have a brilliant and innovative new theory for a prosthesis that could be developed for these stunted and afflicted boys. They subsequently receive notification that the government believes this to be of considerable strategic value to the American military; in other words, that they believe these boys, when outfitted with the new experimental prosthetics, could decisively affect the outcome of the war. More doctors are called in, and several unusual boys’ school of sorts are established in secluded locations, one of these being atop the mesa of Los Alamos. The rest of the events are history. The development of the prosthetics proceeds, pushed at brutal and efficient speeds. The narrative is passed between the eyes of the boy and the doctors working on him, briefly rendering in abstract but cutting strokes the home lives of the Oppenheimers and the Tellers, General Groves with his wife; brief anecdotes, including an intense fascination that the mute and paralysed boy holds for a girl he meets eyes with in a window one day.
Central to the intention of the novel, in this horribly detached inhumanity of obsessively building and demonstrating power, the weapons—bombs—boys—are shown to be as blameless and as lacking a hand in their own accomplished devastation as those individuals who were annihilated in the final blasts. If not fully depicted as pitiful, then as unaware of what is happening to them. Of course it is nonsense—weapons are inanimate, the blood is universally understood to finally rest on hands of those who ordered them used, but this bold, absurdist anthropomorphism separates the roles of each party to clear effect, prompting a re-comprehension of the scope of that appalling tragedy which was created by human hands.
To say that this book makes an emotional appeal to the sensitivities of the reader also is not entirely correct. A final crucial component of the novel is its tone: related in such a matter-of-fact way, clinical yet sweepingly beautiful, that the effect produced is extraordinarily magnetic. Things remain quite surreal, disturbing in a blunted and blurred way, the sentences at once clipped and graceful like a hammer striking piano strings, the images pulled past in twisted streams of slowed nerves and running water.
All in all, Little Boy is a very imaginative and compelling look at the atomic bomb development project, and the writing is wonderful, somehow contriving to sound at once both old-fashioned and elegantly modern. Still, when it comes to a rating, I’m divided. There is no such thing as a perfect book, but there are books where you would be hard-pressed to say there is a clear trajectory for improvement, which you then conclude to be at least approaching perfection. Little Boy, to me, was not one of those; I’m forced to conclude that there’s something unsatisfying about it, something unquantifiable. That perhaps the narrative felt empty, that the pacing was not compelling enough, no rising and falling, no resolution of the characters’ thoughts, or perhaps that occasionally the prose felt simultaneously under-packed and yet progressing too quickly (like in my head I could hear the words being read aloud, but the voice is fast and high-pitched, like a recording placed at 2x speed that I can’t turn back to a normal speed). This is my reason for my eventual rating.
December 12, 2025
This book has received a great deal of praise for its innovative central metaphor. The Little Boy of the book is not really a boy at all, but the deposit of uranium that would be transformed into the eponymous World War II atomic bomb. I went into the reading of the book knowing this, and it is not a big spoiler (which is why I allowed myself to repeat it). The boy is written as metaphor throughout, but it is obvious from the opening pages, where the boy is found in a mine, buried and spread all over, that we are clearly dealing with metaphor and not an actual boy.
That's probably a good thing, because as the story progresses, and the boy is transported to America and subjected to tests and procedures, there is nothing very real about any of it. Some have likened this story to Animal Farm, but somehow I found the animals of Animal Farm more believable than this metaphor (in the sense of "willing suspension of disbelief"), but I see the similarity. Bith books are quite obvious in what the metaphor refers to.
And so, reading all the passages of the boy as uranium, it became a reasonably interesting discourse on the Manhattan Project, with a side dish of exploration of the negative effects of the exploitation of science to create weapons of mass destruction.
It was good enough, but I was far from blown away (forgive me!) by this book. It is well written, and well researched, but for me, the choice of metaphor, or else its execution, was clumsy.
That's probably a good thing, because as the story progresses, and the boy is transported to America and subjected to tests and procedures, there is nothing very real about any of it. Some have likened this story to Animal Farm, but somehow I found the animals of Animal Farm more believable than this metaphor (in the sense of "willing suspension of disbelief"), but I see the similarity. Bith books are quite obvious in what the metaphor refers to.
And so, reading all the passages of the boy as uranium, it became a reasonably interesting discourse on the Manhattan Project, with a side dish of exploration of the negative effects of the exploitation of science to create weapons of mass destruction.
It was good enough, but I was far from blown away (forgive me!) by this book. It is well written, and well researched, but for me, the choice of metaphor, or else its execution, was clumsy.
May 8, 2023
So beautifully written, such a good perspective
June 14, 2022
"the endless junipers, the blue cacti, the deer, the mesquite, the mesas turning red at sundown, the windswept plains of grass in the caldera, the hidden creeks and the fields buoyant with mariposas and the choirs of white admirals that fluttered from the fringes of the trails"
An astounding book. The Manhattan Project as a weird Victorian gothic novel.
June 1, 2022
Not sure why this has no reviews. One of the strongest novels of the year so far. Starts slow but eventually finds its feet and really takes your breath away at the end.
June 16, 2022
Superbly written. Great character development for what is essentially a chunk of uranium, a wonderful allegory.
May 24, 2023
Brilliant read. A scary tale of actual events leading up to one of the worst events in modern history. More scary because it happened and worse, it could happen again. Incredible to believe this is a debut novel, the writing style is very readable and the author tells a great tale. This is a book of the worst example of human capability and a strong reminder that just because you can do something, does NOT mean you should. Definitely recommend.
June 17, 2022
Amazing premise but I found the authorial voice too intrusive
June 23, 2022
Never heard of this author. Good concept but idk if I enjoyed it cover to cover. 3.5
June 24, 2022
waste of time
September 9, 2022
Found it a bit contrived at first but blimey what an ending!
Read
July 20, 2023Abandoned as metaphor was too obvious and the writing felt like it was AI (too neat & clipped). Disappointing.
September 5, 2023
4.5 stars
March 5, 2023
Little Boy is a haunting work. The story begins in the 1940s in the Belgian Congo where a boy is discovered at the now-infamous Shinkolobwe mine. This boy, the little boy of the title, is at once a metaphor for the uranium used in the Manhattan Project while also taking on characteristics of children who were victimized by the deployment of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The prose is outstanding, the story engaging, and the imagery searing. The metaphors do get stretched a bit thin as the book goes along and I'm not sure that filling in details of the lives of side characters was necessary. Although this might have worked better as a sleeker work, I was nevertheless engaged from start to finish and find myself recalling some of the haunting imagery several months after I finished.
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