HALF LIFE

Everyone wonders if life would be different if they'd made different choices. Narrator Cassandra Campbell portrays dying Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie as she muses on what life would have been like if she'd continued on in Poland as Marya Zorawski, married to a mathematician, never going Paris and the Sorbonne, never meeting Pierre Curie. Telling the story in alternating narratives, Campbell seamlessly switches between Marie imagining the joys and consequences of her life as Marya and a parallel version of Marie's private and very public life with Pierre. Campbell's French accent is impressive, and her Polish accent is flawless. Whichever life is in focus, the emphasis throughout is on choice, hard work, intellectual curiosity, and independence. Campbell makes this original, imaginative novel top-notch listening. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2021]