A PHYSICIST PUTS HER PASSION INTO PROSE

Muneeza Shamsie reviews Only the Longest Threads by Tasneem Zehra Husain in Newsweek Pakistan:

Her novel is framed and juxtaposed by the growing friendship between Sara Byrne, a theoretical physicist, and Leonardo Santorini, a science journalist. They are both in Geneva on July 4, 2012, among an expectant and excited crowd, to witness a historic event: proof of the Higgs boson’s existence. This elusive subatomic particle so crucial to the understanding of the universe and its building blocks is revealed onscreen in an auditorium and becomes reality when the underground Large Hadron Collider creates such a high-speed collision of protons that it releases energy and shortlived particles, akin to the Big Bang—the birth of the universe.

Sara, heady from the jubilation of the moment, encourages Leo to move beyond the immediacy of journalism to the imaginative realms of fiction. He wants to recreate those moments of intensity and joy which impelled scientists in their search for answers. Sara says, “Theoretical physics is largely a private matter, a life lived out in the mind.” Leo captures this in the six stories he creates. In each, he employs a different narrator. In each, he welds scientific ideas of the era in which the narrator lives with the language, intonations, references, and lifestyle of that time. Hussain enhances her narrative by creating an email exchange between them that gives further context to Leo’s stories. He sends all six to her for comment in three installments. He then asks her to write the seventh one, on string theory.

More here.