Upcoming Books:
March 19
Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire

April 16 
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Brown & Daniel J Brown

May 21
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

"By investing objects and settings with a history of individual triumphs and disappointments, he wrings surprising emotional depth from the mundane. And by proving that stories too intimate to ever make their way into the history books are nonetheless worth telling, the novel makes a powerful argument that no one is unremarkable." Red Alert - Darragh McKeon's All That is Solid Melts into Air by Anthony Marra, August 7, 2014 The New York Times Sunday Book Review

Author Bio:

Darragh McKeon was born in Tullamore, Ireland in 1979. He currently lives in New York City. This is his first book.
Author Quotes: “With radiation, it’s a long-term, completely invisible phenomenon, and that’s quite interesting for a writer, because the kind of writing I like tends to get under the surface and explore the roots of things. And that whole [Chernobyl] accident happened under the surface. I mean, 9/11 happened and we all knew straight away, it was iconic, and some of the shock and horror of that event was its visual impact. But nobody even knew Chernobyl had happened until a radar in a facility in Sweden started going crazy days later.”  -Darragh McKeon Crime Always Pays blog interview with Declan Burke, July 23, 2014
Read BExtraordinaire Blog for more reviews on our next book club selection. 
is reading "All That is Solid Melts into Air"  written by Darragh McKeon on February 19. 

All That is Solid Melts into Air by Darragh McKeon tells the horrific story of the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Pripyat, Ukraine on April 26, 1986.

"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind,"  is from a passage in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. These are prophetic words, as the Chernobyl disaster is an outcome of the self destructive nature of modernization. It is a time for reckoning. Three years later in 1989, the Iron Curtain comes down and Russia as it was, dissolves. 

The novel revolves around the lives of a young physician, Grigory Brovkin, his ex-wife, Maria and her nephew and child piano prodigy, Grigory is called to the site soon after the explosion to care for those exposed to massive amounts of radiation. 

This epic book vividly portrays the fear, chaos, naivety and disempowerment of the people. 

Growing up, McKeon was aware of the disaster and was inspired to write the novel by the children of Chernobyl who were brought to Ireland by the Irish charity, Chernobyl Children International and by the farmers who were drawn to return home and its contaminated land. I have included below two videos, one depicting the destruction in 1986 and the other of Chernobyl today. 

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster on Disaster Channel

Chernobyl Drone Video: Rare haunting video footage Pripyat exclusion zone by Philip Grossman