Fat Man and Little Boy

August 11, 2014
This imaginative debut novel from Meginnis, the 2013 winner of the first Horatio Nelson Prize for Fiction, tells the story of anthropomorphic brother bombs that were “born” from the blasts of the atomic bombs Fat Man and Little Boy, which were dropped on Japan in August 1945. Fat Man resembles a “shaved bear,” while his brother, Little Boy, who is older by three days, appears “pale and pink.” While the two brothers (American like the bomb they were born from), search for food and money, they plot to leave hostile postwar Japan for France, and adopt the aliases John and Matthew for their forged passports. Their snappy dialogue, including their arguments over which brother should be in charge, is often funny. Once they arrive in France, the brothers take menial jobs working in a restaurant until they run afoul of the police due to their lustful misdeeds. They meet Rosie Cummings, who runs a hotel in southern France, and she hires the brothers to come work for her. Over time, Fat Man grows larger, decides to marry Rosie, and they have a daughter, Maggie, whom Little Boy adores. By 1956, with their shady past catching up to them, Fat Man and Little Boy relocate with their family to the U.S., and ultimately end up in Hollywood. Meginnis’s story is both surprising and incisive.

September 1, 2014
Bombs become people: That's the premise of this first novel, in which the two U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan convert themselves into human survivors. Little Boy hit Hiroshima, Fat Man Nagasaki; those really were, historically, the bombs' names. In post-apocalyptic Nagasaki, Fat Man is struggling with birth trauma. He's a bloated mass, naked and hairless. Little Boy, a runt, finds him in a shelter and decides they are brothers. Among the ruins, Fat Man says, "I think we were put here for a reason." But what exactly? There's the rub. Meginnis has created an existential problem for which he has no solution. The novel will dip a toe into various genres (science fiction, magical realism, detective story) without settling into any of them. Thus the brothers impregnate a virgin, a farmer's daughter, purely through their proximity. Her babies are stillborn; Fat Man kills her enraged father in self-defense. Through a GI, the brothers procure new identities and board a ship for France, where they're taken in by a married woman. She too, without sexual contact, will bear a child (two-headed). The phenomenon is explained by a Japanese medium. The brothers are haunted by their Japanese victims, who are hoping to be reborn. Not to worry; once the brothers fall in with an American peacenik, a war widow establishing a hotel, there'll be no more unpleasant births. Fat Man will even make a normal baby with Rosie, the widow. Years later, he's still a tub of lard and Little Boy's still a preteen runt, and there's been no development that might absolve them of their guilt or make them agents of atonement. Meanwhile Meginnis has concocted another storyline involving two French cops pursuing the innocent Fat Man for the murders of pregnant women. A bold concept poorly executed.

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November 1, 2014

Inside a bunker, a fat man guarded by Japanese soldiers lies pinkly naked. Something strange is happening: "He remembers how it was to explode. It was everything coming out everywhere. Shit and piss and puke and blood and scream. It was being the world.... It was like being born." Then he's rescued by a skinny little boy who says, "So, you are my brother." Yes, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have come to life and bond closely as they stumble through a smoking, hostile landscape, trying to make sense of the world. Eventually, they flee to France and then America to submerge their dark past. VERDICT Not for fans of routine war novels, this Horatio Nelson Prize winner is an imaginative and surprisingly intimate look at the consequences of our actions and the costs of war.

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