In Rachel Beanland's enchanting third novel, The Half Life, a young navy wife has a sexual awakening and discovers her scientific vocation while stationed on an Italian island.
Twenty-three-year-old newlywed Eileen Archer has never left the U.S.--or even her hometown of Charleston, S.C.--when she and Paul are sent to La Maddalena, an island off Sardinia, in 1974. She joins the spouses' club but forms bonds with locals, too, finding an Italian tutor and helping scientists test the water for contamination from U.S. submarines after the nearby hospital sees several cases of a rare birth defect. She enjoys the research so much that she enrolls in a distance course on biology. Her loyalties are divided: Paul works for RADCON, whose reluctance to share information with the Italian authorities following submarine accidents seems suspicious. But even as time runs short before the Archers' scheduled transfer to Connecticut in 1976, and as the anti-U.S. protests grow increasingly violent, Eileen falls in love with an investigative journalist.
The title cleverly suggests both nuclear fallout and how secrets constrain people. Beanland (The House Is on Fire) adeptly depicts grief, homesickness, and culture shock. Through Eileen's and her friend Laura's varying experiences, she explores choices related to motherhood. The novel also illuminates U.S. and Italian politics of the period, with Eileen shocked to realize that the U.S. presence in the region is about stamping out Communism.
Sensual and intriguing, this belated coming-of-age story reminiscent of Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins and Elizabeth J. Church's The Atomic Weight of Love makes for an absorbing summer read. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck