2010, reprinted 2015
Before reading Radioactive, I would have confidently called it a graphic novel.
But for one thing, it's not a novel, it's non fiction. Redniss tells the biographies of Marie and Pierre Curie leading up to their marriage, tells of their work together and marriage, and continues telling Marie's story after Pierre dies. She also tells a lot about radium and polonium, and interlaces the biography with vignettes of information about different "events" in the history of radioactivity, from the Radium Girls to Hiroshima to Chernobyl, at least a dozen in all. Redniss uses a lot of direct quotes, which makes her writing style feel journalistic.
Radioactive is illustrated, but it's also not a comic. There are no panels, and the art isn't sequential. Each page is a full-page illustration with text, like an artist's book. Redniss drew each page by hand, then photocopied it onto a transparency, then used that to develop a cyanotype - a kind of photograph where areas exposed to light turn blue, and the covered parts remain white. Some pages are orange, presumably from using a computer to invert the color, and others employ photographs in collage. Redniss also designed her own font and arranged the text on each page.
Marie Curie worked hard and made incredible discoveries about radioactivity, a term she coined. She won two Nobel prizes, one with Pierre in physics, and one alone in chemistry. After Pierre died, she had a love affair with a married scientist. Her children carried on her work, and as adults, her lover's son with his wife ended up marrying Marie and Pierre's daughter, and they also won a joint Nobel. Marie Curie's story is interesting in its own right, and Redniss's book is accessible and visually fascinating.
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