This week we are pleased to introduce Darragh McKeon, author of All That Is Solid Melts into Air.
Under a crimson sky, Artyom Telvatnikov stands in a field of cows, his fingertips glistening with the warm blood that streams from their ears. It is April 1986, and ten miles away, above the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, swathes of sparks flood the air, forever changing a cluster of ordinary lives that pass their days in supermarkets and railway tunnels, in factory floors and recital rooms, inciting them to actions of violence, strangeness, and terrible beauty.
In his debut novel, Darragh McKeon spotlights one of the most enduring tragedies of recent history and reveals its contribution to the fall of the Soviet Union. The book delicately weaves an array of real and imagined characters into an intricate tapestry of a society undergoing the first moments of its unraveling, in a place where all natural order has been distorted, and at a time where nothing is so incredible that it cannot be true.
This noveldramatizes the immense human cost of the Chernobyl accident through the interconnected stories of some of its survivors: there is Grigory, a doctor from Moscow who is sent to the region to deal with the radiation victims; Maria, his estranged wife who comes to the attention of the authorities due to some ill-advised articles she has written for underground papers; and her nephew, Yevgeni, a nine-year-old musical prodigy who has suddenly lost his sense of rhythm. Chernobyl and its aftermath will change their lives forever.
Darragh has already made a name for himself as a major theater talent, and now he is transitioning his skills to the page with All That Is Solid Melts into Air, which you can check out on Edelweiss.
-Amanda