Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

Darragh McKeon has chosen an ambitious topic for his debut novel All That Is Solid Melts Into Air — the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Told from multiple view points, the novel deals with the fallout from the disaster — social, financial, physical, psychological, emotional and nuclear — on the lives of ordinary people. There’s Grigory, a gifted surgeon sent to deal with the casualties; his ex-wife Maria, a former dissident journalist now working in a factory; her nephew Yevgeny, a troubled musical prodigy who is being bullied by schoolmates; and Artyom, a young Ukrainian boy now living in the transit gulags set up for refugees of the disaster. There are many praiseworthy aspects of this novel: the prose is hauntingly beautiful; each of McKeon’s characters are believably rounded; and the stark brutality of the disaster and the official response to it is are both handled with a skill. This is an accomplished debut.