Transient and Strange

Starred review from November 13, 2023
This artful debut essay collection from NPR science correspondent Greenfieldboyce mixes scientific anecdotes with intimate personal reflections. In “What Else Is There,” Greenfieldboyce describes the achievements of Harvey Nininger, a 20th-century amateur meteorite researcher known for discovering large amounts of space debris on Earth, while framing her own quest to find tiny meteorites on her property as a quixotic attempt to come into contact with “something ethereal that I’m not equipped to recognize and probably won’t ever truly understand.” “A Very Charming Young Black Hole” recounts Greenfieldboyce’s struggle to determine if she should trust a note from her younger self suggesting her first kiss was a 22-year-old who hit on her in a hotel lobby when she was 12, though she can’t remember kissing him. She traces how the scientific understanding of black holes has developed since her birth in 1974 and uses the cosmic entity as a metaphor to interrogate whether her memory of what happened that night is, like anything that enters a black hole, irretrievable. Elsewhere, Greenfieldboyce touches on her son’s fear of tornadoes, her ambivalent efforts to ensure her children didn’t inherit her husband’s genetic kidney disease, and the “symbolic power” of fleas (“Is there not something to be said for the universe and all generations re-created in the small and unremarkable?”). The inventive juxtaposition of science with autobiography yields unexpected insights buoyed by evocative prose. Greenfieldboyce dazzles with her auspicious first outing.