Transient and Strange

Starred review from November 13, 2023
This artful debut essay collection from NPR science correspondent Greenfieldboyce mixes scientific anecdotes with intimate personal reflections. In “What Else Is There,” Greenfieldboyce describes the achievements of Harvey Nininger, a 20th-century amateur meteorite researcher known for discovering large amounts of space debris on Earth, while framing her own quest to find tiny meteorites on her property as a quixotic attempt to come into contact with “something ethereal that I’m not equipped to recognize and probably won’t ever truly understand.” “A Very Charming Young Black Hole” recounts Greenfieldboyce’s struggle to determine if she should trust a note from her younger self suggesting her first kiss was a 22-year-old who hit on her in a hotel lobby when she was 12, though she can’t remember kissing him. She traces how the scientific understanding of black holes has developed since her birth in 1974 and uses the cosmic entity as a metaphor to interrogate whether her memory of what happened that night is, like anything that enters a black hole, irretrievable. Elsewhere, Greenfieldboyce touches on her son’s fear of tornadoes, her ambivalent efforts to ensure her children didn’t inherit her husband’s genetic kidney disease, and the “symbolic power” of fleas (“Is there not something to be said for the universe and all generations re-created in the small and unremarkable?”). The inventive juxtaposition of science with autobiography yields unexpected insights buoyed by evocative prose. Greenfieldboyce dazzles with her auspicious first outing.

Starred review from November 1, 2023
The large and small phenomena revealed in this collection of essays fit into two categories; the natural world (black holes, meteorites, tornadoes, the beating heart, fleas) and the author's personal life (pregnancy, motherhood, young children, aging parents, husband). NPR science reporter Greenfieldboyce metaphorically stitches these two realms together. An essay on meteorites striking the earth conjures her concern over elderly parents also falling to the ground. A discussion of black holes gobbling up pieces of the galaxy calls to mind her adolescent lies that disassembled truth. A treatise on twisters introduces the curiosity and fears of her two youngsters. A few of these essays fizzle out, such as an homage to her parent's toaster, a look at doodling, and contemplating a spider. But the final essay, ""My Eugenics Project,"" is a masterpiece jam-packed with ethical considerations, multiple kinds of love, and grace. It weaves together her husband's genetic polycystic kidney disease and the couple's desire, trepidation, and attempts to get pregnant. She writes, ""Our marriage now had become two simultaneous medical campaigns, one to produce a kid and one to procure a kidney."" The collection's title is borrowed from a phrase in a Walt Whitman poem. He surely would be pleased to be linked to Greenfieldboyce's display of inquiry and imagination, inevitability and possibilities.

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