🌟🌟 & 1/2
Recommend to history lovers.
I’ve had my eye on this book for some time, and I was excited to start it, but the reality was a bit disappointing.
The story recounts what happened to the female dial-painters who worked in factories painting luminous watch dials with radium-laced paint. It is a story filled with pathos. However my biggest beef and distraction was this author’s writing style. The book read like an extended 10th Grade research paper. The characters (many of whom were ripe for good non-fiction) lay as flat as the paper they were written on.
The prose was riddled with cliches and weird dun-dun-dun moments and started, by the middle of the book, to feel like a harangue. You don’t need to rile my moral indignation for a story like this. I know what radium can do to the human body; I bring my moral indignation with me to the story. It started to feel campy and repetitive by the end, which just left me annoyed that these women’s stories had been handled that way.
The most interesting part in the book (and I still maintain this was the author’s failing not the reality of the story itself) was the post script!
The true story is interesting so if you can find some other work connected to it, I would recommend that.
Seeking Prose 
What caused you to “have your eye on it?”
My Mom is 93, with one eye, so large print only. She reads historical romantic novels.. “without the sex!”
She loved the non-fiction novel, The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown. I did too.
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I’ve always enjoyed historical books whether fiction or nonfiction, too. When I was a teen I read a lot of historical romances myself. As an adult, I discovered if you hit the right non fiction author, the books are just as good 😄
I’ll have to search for The Boys in the Boat.
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I came close to buying this one a few times. I believe it was made into a movie.
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I think it was. I believe it’s on Netflix.
The story is quite good. My person problem was with the writing style, but everyone’s preference is different. I would say if you can find it at a library (which is how I read it) give it a try 😄
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