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Nuclear Family |
eBook Available
Violent events, both global and familial, permeate a girl’s coming of age.
In the night her whitened toes / cold sole on his calf / between his palms he warms / a slender foot - / twig bones, taut skin. Jean Van Loon’s father was a metallurgist in an Ottawa lab that contributed to the Manhattan Project. The Geiger counter he brought home exposed her mother’s dinner plate as radioactive. Her childhood friend’s father sold cobalt bombs to the Soviet Union. Unbeknownst even to the family, her mother worked for Canada’s Cold War intelligence service.
Rooted in memory and history, Nuclear Family carries the reader into the sense of impending nuclear doom and the explosions of material wealth that shaped Van Loon’s childhood. Poems come alive with image, sound, and texture, portraying the innocence of childhood games, the worldwide effects of prolonged nuclear testing, and the long-lasting legacy of her father’s suicide - a fallout of radioactive silences.
In Nuclear Family violent events, both global and familial, permeate a girl’s coming of age in a story of cataclysm and, ultimately, recovery.
Rooted in memory and history, Nuclear Family carries the reader into the sense of impending nuclear doom and the explosions of material wealth that shaped Van Loon’s childhood. Poems come alive with image, sound, and texture, portraying the innocence of childhood games, the worldwide effects of prolonged nuclear testing, and the long-lasting legacy of her father’s suicide - a fallout of radioactive silences.
In Nuclear Family violent events, both global and familial, permeate a girl’s coming of age in a story of cataclysm and, ultimately, recovery.
Details
Part of the Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series (number 68 in series)
104 Pages, 5 x 7.5
ISBN 9780228011156
April 2022
Formats: Paperback, eBook
“Brave and carefully wrought, Nuclear Family is a rich, measured, language-spurred depiction of a Cold War childhood, thoughtfully summoning memorable detail within the precarity of historical tensions and family tragedy.” David O’Meara
“It’s taken Jean Van Loon sixty years to unfold the difficult and stirring narration at the luminous core of Nuclear Family. Grief indeed has its own trajectory and schedule and the honouring is prominent.” Catherine Owen
“The memoir is heartbreaking, the history sobering and the poetry that encases both-making the music and emotion of Nuclear Family come to life-is crafted with exquisite care.” Arc Poetry Magazine
“Relying on careful research and individual memory, Van Loon expertly weaves together the threads of household life with cultural moment… The seeming ease with which these poignant associations are made is jarring and disturbing but effective, forcing the reader to contemplate the everyday reproduction of atomic bombs and the subsequent lingering effects.” H-Net
“Jean Van Loon shapes a poem with scientific precision. This cohesive collection explores the half-life of familial love set against the unimagined consequences of our species’ nuclear achievements. Heart-rending and thought-provoking, Nuclear Family asks us all what we can learn from the wrong end of time.” Ottawa Book Award jury
“It’s taken Jean Van Loon sixty years to unfold the difficult and stirring narration at the luminous core of Nuclear Family. Grief indeed has its own trajectory and schedule and the honouring is prominent.” Catherine Owen
“The memoir is heartbreaking, the history sobering and the poetry that encases both-making the music and emotion of Nuclear Family come to life-is crafted with exquisite care.” Arc Poetry Magazine
“Relying on careful research and individual memory, Van Loon expertly weaves together the threads of household life with cultural moment… The seeming ease with which these poignant associations are made is jarring and disturbing but effective, forcing the reader to contemplate the everyday reproduction of atomic bombs and the subsequent lingering effects.” H-Net
“Jean Van Loon shapes a poem with scientific precision. This cohesive collection explores the half-life of familial love set against the unimagined consequences of our species’ nuclear achievements. Heart-rending and thought-provoking, Nuclear Family asks us all what we can learn from the wrong end of time.” Ottawa Book Award jury
Jean Van Loon is an Ottawa-based writer of fiction and poetry, whose first poetry collection, Building on River, was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award.
Hiroshima, After 3
A Man of Few Words 5
They Came 7
Fusion 12
Jane’s Birthday, July 16, 1945 13
Sun Valley Snow Boots 14
Sahtu Lake 16
A rock is a rock is a rock 19
New Brother 20
Ipana 21
Jane Helps Check the Lab 23
Suppertime 24
Big Pile 26
Knucklebones 28
Fission 30
Drill 32
Cipher Clerk 33
Crowned 35
Plunder 36
Fallout (i) 37
Move into New 39
Fallout (ii) 41
Father Lore 42
Carnauba, Queen of Waxes 43
Testing, Testing … 44
Titles 46
Australian Tails 47
God Will Not Be Mocked 49
Fallout (iii) 50
Verge 52
Son and Father 53
Cold Comfort 54
aftershocks 55
What the New Widow Tells Her Nine-Year-Old Son 57
What the New Widow Tells Her Eleven-Year-Old Son 58
Death Talk 59
The Perfumed House 61
Last Wrongs 62
Chinese Food 63
A Kindness 64
Dear Sir: 66
Dark Corners 68
Widow’s Midnight 69
Morality Play 70
Alchemy 71
Eden 73
Gotta Get Out of This Place / Can’t Get No 75
Phoenix 76
Learning You, Dad, from the Wrong End of Time 78
Remembering with Dick 81
Turning Leaves 83
Good Job 84
Peopling the Night 85
Remembering with Teddy 86
Airwaves 88
From Port Radium 89
Notes and Acknowledgments 91
A Man of Few Words 5
They Came 7
Fusion 12
Jane’s Birthday, July 16, 1945 13
Sun Valley Snow Boots 14
Sahtu Lake 16
A rock is a rock is a rock 19
New Brother 20
Ipana 21
Jane Helps Check the Lab 23
Suppertime 24
Big Pile 26
Knucklebones 28
Fission 30
Drill 32
Cipher Clerk 33
Crowned 35
Plunder 36
Fallout (i) 37
Move into New 39
Fallout (ii) 41
Father Lore 42
Carnauba, Queen of Waxes 43
Testing, Testing … 44
Titles 46
Australian Tails 47
God Will Not Be Mocked 49
Fallout (iii) 50
Verge 52
Son and Father 53
Cold Comfort 54
aftershocks 55
What the New Widow Tells Her Nine-Year-Old Son 57
What the New Widow Tells Her Eleven-Year-Old Son 58
Death Talk 59
The Perfumed House 61
Last Wrongs 62
Chinese Food 63
A Kindness 64
Dear Sir: 66
Dark Corners 68
Widow’s Midnight 69
Morality Play 70
Alchemy 71
Eden 73
Gotta Get Out of This Place / Can’t Get No 75
Phoenix 76
Learning You, Dad, from the Wrong End of Time 78
Remembering with Dick 81
Turning Leaves 83
Good Job 84
Peopling the Night 85
Remembering with Teddy 86
Airwaves 88
From Port Radium 89
Notes and Acknowledgments 91
Interview, Pearl Pirie
Review by Catherine Owen
Review, H-Net
Podcast Interview, Writer's Festival
Reading from the Ottawa Book Awards 2023 (YouTube)
Article about Ottawa Book Awards 2023
Ottawa Books Awards 2023 Finalists, Ottawa Library
Review by Catherine Owen
Review, H-Net
Podcast Interview, Writer's Festival
Reading from the Ottawa Book Awards 2023 (YouTube)
Article about Ottawa Book Awards 2023
Ottawa Books Awards 2023 Finalists, Ottawa Library
Winner
Ottawa Book Awards
City of Ottawa
2023
Ottawa Book Awards
City of Ottawa
2023
