Radium Girls by Kate Moore: A Book Review
Genre: Historical Narrative
Moore gives the horrifying true story of the women sentenced to die by their employer. Taking place during the whole timeline of events, the story is quite fast paced and details not only the women themselves, but their families as well. Moore even goes further of detailing hopes and dreams that the girls have – which, I assume, comes from their writings to each other and interviews with their living family members.
Unlike other times, I looked at reviews of the story before finishing the story and feel that I should detail a few things that other reviewers might have missed, the main thing being the importance of the descriptions given by Moore.
Moore describes the girls quite intently, and while their pictures may not match how she describes them, I think it is important to have the distinction of before and after in who they are. Each woman is described as young, beautiful, carefree – people their whole lives in front of them. She describes how they thought their teeth were their best features or shape of their face – which might be anooying if taken at surface value – but I couldn’t help but notice. Their teeth fell out; their faces were rotting from the inside out. Their best features – what made them feel pretty and perhaps even human – were some of the first things to go. They liked dancing. Their illnesses made even dancing hard. Moore details all that the girls had taken from them, but she does it so covertly some might not even notice it.
I am putting this on my must-read shelf. If you read this, let me know what you think. Did she go too in depth with the descriptions?
Plot: 10/10
Characters: 10/10
Writing: 12/10
Editor: 12/10
Total: 44/40
Title: Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
Author: Kate Moore
Edition: paperback with group reading guide, notes, and bibliography
Published: 2017
Publisher: Sourcebooks
ISBN: 9781492650959
If you want to get it: Amazon; Barnes&Noble
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