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Fat Man and Little Boy
Two bombs over Japan. Two shells. One called Little Boy, one called Fat Man. Three days apart. The one implicit in the other. Brothers.
Named one of Flavorwire 's best independent books of 2014, and winner of the 2013 Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize.
In this striking debut novel, the atomic bombs dropped on Japan are personified as Fat Man and Little Boy. This small measure of humanity is a cruelty the bombs must suffer. Given life from death, the brothers' journey is one of surreal and unsettling discovery, transforming these symbols of mass destruction into beacons of longing and hope.
"Impressive. . . The novel straddles a hybrid genre of historical magical realism." — The Japan Times
"Meginnis's talent is his ability to make the reader feel empathy for souls who killed so many. . . Many pages in this novel feel like engravings . . . Meginnis has written one of the best, most natural novels about the atomic bombs." —Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions
"[An] imaginative debut. . . Meginnis' story is both surprising and incisive." — Publishers Weekly
Named one of Flavorwire 's best independent books of 2014, and winner of the 2013 Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize.
In this striking debut novel, the atomic bombs dropped on Japan are personified as Fat Man and Little Boy. This small measure of humanity is a cruelty the bombs must suffer. Given life from death, the brothers' journey is one of surreal and unsettling discovery, transforming these symbols of mass destruction into beacons of longing and hope.
"Impressive. . . The novel straddles a hybrid genre of historical magical realism." — The Japan Times
"Meginnis's talent is his ability to make the reader feel empathy for souls who killed so many. . . Many pages in this novel feel like engravings . . . Meginnis has written one of the best, most natural novels about the atomic bombs." —Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions
"[An] imaginative debut. . . Meginnis' story is both surprising and incisive." — Publishers Weekly
176 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2014
17 people are currently reading
610 people want to read
About the author
Mike Meginnis
8 books68 followersMike Meginnis is the author of Drowning Practice (2022, Ecco) and Fat Man and Little Boy (2014, Black Balloon). His short fiction and essays have appeared in Hobart, PANK, The Lifted Brow, Recommended Reading, Booth, The Pinch, The Collagist, The Sycamore Review, Fanzine, American Book Review, and Writer's Digest. His story "Navigators" appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012. He lives and works in Iowa City.
Mike also cohosts the podcast Gift Horse with his partner, Tracy Rae Bowling.
Mike also cohosts the podcast Gift Horse with his partner, Tracy Rae Bowling.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 14, 2020
The work of a sad little man who needs to see the ocean.
April 9, 2017
"There are a hundred ways to make a man into a bomb." But can a bomb become a person?
I really loved this book. I received it as a first-reads giveaway and am providing an honest review. I read it in small pieces, a chapter or two each night. Each chapter was a gem. I saw that some people consider this book to be magical realism, but I don't think that's the right term for it. Magical realism is about the blurring of the line between imagination and "reality" and argues that what we imagine is just as real as anything else. In most MR books, though, there is someone doing the imagining. FM&LB is much more existential. If we really need to categorize this book, let's call it an allegory. Fat Man and Little Boy are the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in this story they take on lives of their own. They become people, brothers, who must make their way out of the wreckage of Japan and into the further consequences of their creation. All of us live with the consequences of having been made, and none of us had any choice in the matter.
The fathers of these bombs gave them human names, if impersonal ones. Language is funny this way. We can't help but picture things that are named. If the universal pronoun is "he," then those who read "he" on the page will picture someone male, or at least will fail to picture someone female, x-ing half the race out of the universal. A little boy is different from a fat man. Already the bombs are assigned personas.
Little boy remains stunted, unable to grow. He is everyone's little brother, even though he is the firstborn. For a long time he is unable to speak. After all, having vaporized 100,000 people is a huge burden for a little boy. Little Boy was a one-off, a projectile-driven explosion. He'll never get an erection. Fat Man never stops expanding. Yet, people are drawn to him, they even fall in love with him. Fat Man was an implosion bomb. His energy is inward. He grows by swallowing. He is the prototype for all the subsequent bombs.
Though Fat Man is nice. He means well. He has an American Innocence about him. Where Little Boy is the American ostrich, the one who doesn't want to know, who just wants to remain little, Fat Man is the friendly, curious, adaptive American, the one who looks but doesn't change. Who thinks or at least hopes that Good Works and Good Intentions can undo many crimes.
Fat Man feels deeply. He's moved by the memorabilia found in the hotel he helps build--on the site of a German concentration camp in France. This may be the worst thing that ever happened, he says of the Holocaust to Little Boy, a comment worth pondering. Was it? In terms of what, numbers (Stalin killed more)? The singling out of an ethnic/religious group (though the Germans had it in for the Slavs too, and were already well on their way to eliminating the Roma (in fact they took more, percentage-wise, of the Roma than of the Jews, and for some reason having nothing to do with eugenics, Jehovah's Witnesses)? Or was this what Fat Man needed to tell himself, what Americans need to tell themselves, about his existence? That the bombs are not the worst thing? It's not clear, nor does it need to be. It's enough to have these two holocausts in contact with one another on the page. (And note the hotel, built by an American, on the site of a concentration camp. Happy-face American Innocence again... as an aside, in The People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck discusses a family that does great evil to one of its children without any apparent awareness of what it's doing. I bring this up only because Peck's argument, which resonates with me, applies, I feel, to American Innocence in general: that evil done unconsciously may be the greatest of all.)
As the brothers move from Japan and through France, they infect everything they touch with mold and spores. Without touching women, they impregnate them... at first this seems odd. How can the agents of such destruction be so generative. But their creative energy is warped. They spew decay. The children, at first, are born disfigured, unfinished, tumor-laced. Finally, a Japanese mystic explains. The spores, the babies--all attempts by the souls lost in the explosion to reincarnate. They were ripped too suddenly from their lives and they're fighting for a way back in.
That would be karma for you.
And of course, as Fat Man and Little Boy (now called John and Matthew, both names that translate roughly as gift from God) settle into their lives in France, the nuclear arsenals are multiplying worldwide. Their family is growing. The corruption is spreading.
Meanwhile, the more human these bombs become, the more they are integrated into our lives, the more they are accepted. And the more the thousands of lost souls accept their fate. The more used to themselves the bombs become. People come from all over the world to conceive children at this hotel on the site of a concentration camp. But now they are born in a more natural way. The babies are healthy.
All along Fat Man and Little Boy have been trying very hard not to explode again. Then the brothers take a trip to America....
I had a couple of nits... didn't like how the author would sometimes refer to John and Matthew as "the brother bombs," instead of just sticking with the conceit of "brothers." Also, it took them entirely too long to figure out how to bathe. I couldn't believe that people--women, in France--would invite them into their homes in the described-at-length filth in which they first appeared. I suppose this might be a metaphor for how easily we DO accept what's filthy into our lives, but if so it needed something else to make me understand how easily they were accepted into society... invited into homes, hired at restaurants, with very little recoil from other people.
Nevertheless, a good part of the story is the journey from corruption and into mainstream, which of course is the story of the bombs. Something that was unmitigatedly bad became complex and sometimes useful, if not good. For that reason, the grotesquerie of the first half of the book is important, if challenging to some readers, and then the long period of well-being is all the more horrifying.
Which brings me to my only substantive criticism of the book. The long period in France did seem a to lag a bit. Almost as if the author, as well as his characters, were afraid to face the music. Or, in this case, the movie. Because to reckon with America, and to what it's made of the bombs, you have to reckon with Hollywood, no?
Which is what does happen in the book, eventually. There's nothing wrong with the basic arc, but I thought the time spent on the middle vs the ending sections was a possibly a little disproportionate. I also wasn't sure why France (vs, say Russia, or otherwise tracking the adoption of nuclear weapons technology around the world), except that perhaps France is the nation that's grown most comfortable with nukes. Or else it has something to do with existentialism, not sure. It does seem significant that the brothers fatten or at least grow comfortable in a Western country, far from the ruin they've wreaked. I thought there might be more tension in having these personified bombs encounter the paradoxes of post-bomb American culture earlier and at more length. This happens to some extent, but I thought there might have been more opportunities. I wondered if the author held back a bit so as not to become too heavy-handed with the allegory. Perhaps the strengths and limitations of allegory both served and disserved the story. I only know that I chafed a bit when we wandered more deeply into the brothers' lives, and perked up when there seemed to be more that was being said about history and culture and society.
But I was entranced by this book, chapter-by-chapter. It's a fresh look at ourselves. And the writing is gorgeous, too. I found myself, like many of the people in the book itself, wanting the best for these two lost souls.
Some samples. Keep in mind that we're talking about nuclear bombs. Read a few of these and you'll probably see why I gave this book 5 stars:
"He remembers the mother squatting on the toilet as her daughter squats now in what is like their living room. He remembers the frenzy of the pigs, their midnight meal, a feast of night soil. It all must be connected but the only connection he can find is that he saw all these things."
"The baby rolls like an empty jar. Little Boy knows what it's like to explode. It's like this."
"Fat Man knows that he is screaming, has known from the start. He means to continue."
"What he means is that he only knows a little [Japanese]. What he means is that it was no use. What he means is he rejects the language. He rejects the country. He rejects the evidence case and everything within, not because it's wrong but because it's not enough."
The soon-to-be hotelier to the Japanese medium: "...is it your experience that the dead are, on the whole, more wise than the living?" "Not at all," says the medium.
The medium to her audience: "Women, guard your wombs. This man and this boy are haunted, haunted by tens of thousands. They killed them all, ladies... Now these people and children follow them wherever they go, jostling for a chance to be born again near them, whether as infants or livestock or rot. Do you want a ghost in your belly?"
"He fills his glass. The water smells a little strange out here, he's noticed. Water's different everywhere, and no one wants to talk about it."
"She's always been pretty, just as her mother was always pretty, and they discussed--in hushed, secret tones--the horror and the tragedy of life as an Ugly Person. 'Everyone is beautiful inside,' said her mother, 'but most people don't take the time or trouble to find out. I would hate to be the sort of person you had to know to love.'"
On the names they've acquired, John and Matthew: "Why oh why did I name myself John?" "What's wrong with John?" says Little Boy... "[John] means 'Yahweh is gracious,'" says Fat Man. "I don't see what's wrong with that. What does mine mean?" ... Fat Man flips to the M's. "It means 'Gift of Yahweh.' Ugh. Yours is even worse." "They're like the same thing." "Yours states specifically that you were given to the world by God, but does not specify a reason or an end. It's the worst thing you could be called."
"Fat Man cannot explain...why he didn't tell about the gun; there was guilt in being on the wrong end of a weapon."
"Widows ought to get more for what we give up," says Rosie. "If he'd have lived after he hung from his parachute in the that tree--if they'd shot him just enough times that he could still be saved--they would have had to spend probably thousands patching him up, keeping him in the hospital, attaching prosthesis. Then training him in the use of his new hands. They're lucky he died. They only have to pay me my allowance. They're better off if the wounded soldiers die. That's called a perverse incentive."
The medium (who is also a failed kamikaze pilot): "Firebombing held no mystery for him. It was a stupid way to kill another person. No risk, no romance, only a city become an oven."
"And the sun rises yellow, and the sky is clear. The grass tilts in the breeze, and people forget the war, or they remember everything else."
"He was my soul mate. It didn't make me happy. ... I've told you how I begged him not to go to war. I've told you how, when I heard that he was dead, I was as relieved as I was miserable. Sometimes the perfect thing is the wrong thing." "But do I make you happy?" "You don't make me happy," says Rosie. "Nobody makes anybody happy. That's not how it works." "What makes people happy then?" "Nothing does. They feel about the same from the beginning to the end, regardless of what happens to them and who they meet. We cause only little fluctuations in each other, I think. I have always been mostly unhappy and afraid. Sometimes you give me happy fluctuations. Sometimes sad ones. I'm grateful for both."
I really loved this book. I received it as a first-reads giveaway and am providing an honest review. I read it in small pieces, a chapter or two each night. Each chapter was a gem. I saw that some people consider this book to be magical realism, but I don't think that's the right term for it. Magical realism is about the blurring of the line between imagination and "reality" and argues that what we imagine is just as real as anything else. In most MR books, though, there is someone doing the imagining. FM&LB is much more existential. If we really need to categorize this book, let's call it an allegory. Fat Man and Little Boy are the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in this story they take on lives of their own. They become people, brothers, who must make their way out of the wreckage of Japan and into the further consequences of their creation. All of us live with the consequences of having been made, and none of us had any choice in the matter.
The fathers of these bombs gave them human names, if impersonal ones. Language is funny this way. We can't help but picture things that are named. If the universal pronoun is "he," then those who read "he" on the page will picture someone male, or at least will fail to picture someone female, x-ing half the race out of the universal. A little boy is different from a fat man. Already the bombs are assigned personas.
Little boy remains stunted, unable to grow. He is everyone's little brother, even though he is the firstborn. For a long time he is unable to speak. After all, having vaporized 100,000 people is a huge burden for a little boy. Little Boy was a one-off, a projectile-driven explosion. He'll never get an erection. Fat Man never stops expanding. Yet, people are drawn to him, they even fall in love with him. Fat Man was an implosion bomb. His energy is inward. He grows by swallowing. He is the prototype for all the subsequent bombs.
Though Fat Man is nice. He means well. He has an American Innocence about him. Where Little Boy is the American ostrich, the one who doesn't want to know, who just wants to remain little, Fat Man is the friendly, curious, adaptive American, the one who looks but doesn't change. Who thinks or at least hopes that Good Works and Good Intentions can undo many crimes.
Fat Man feels deeply. He's moved by the memorabilia found in the hotel he helps build--on the site of a German concentration camp in France. This may be the worst thing that ever happened, he says of the Holocaust to Little Boy, a comment worth pondering. Was it? In terms of what, numbers (Stalin killed more)? The singling out of an ethnic/religious group (though the Germans had it in for the Slavs too, and were already well on their way to eliminating the Roma (in fact they took more, percentage-wise, of the Roma than of the Jews, and for some reason having nothing to do with eugenics, Jehovah's Witnesses)? Or was this what Fat Man needed to tell himself, what Americans need to tell themselves, about his existence? That the bombs are not the worst thing? It's not clear, nor does it need to be. It's enough to have these two holocausts in contact with one another on the page. (And note the hotel, built by an American, on the site of a concentration camp. Happy-face American Innocence again... as an aside, in The People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck discusses a family that does great evil to one of its children without any apparent awareness of what it's doing. I bring this up only because Peck's argument, which resonates with me, applies, I feel, to American Innocence in general: that evil done unconsciously may be the greatest of all.)
As the brothers move from Japan and through France, they infect everything they touch with mold and spores. Without touching women, they impregnate them... at first this seems odd. How can the agents of such destruction be so generative. But their creative energy is warped. They spew decay. The children, at first, are born disfigured, unfinished, tumor-laced. Finally, a Japanese mystic explains. The spores, the babies--all attempts by the souls lost in the explosion to reincarnate. They were ripped too suddenly from their lives and they're fighting for a way back in.
That would be karma for you.
And of course, as Fat Man and Little Boy (now called John and Matthew, both names that translate roughly as gift from God) settle into their lives in France, the nuclear arsenals are multiplying worldwide. Their family is growing. The corruption is spreading.
Meanwhile, the more human these bombs become, the more they are integrated into our lives, the more they are accepted. And the more the thousands of lost souls accept their fate. The more used to themselves the bombs become. People come from all over the world to conceive children at this hotel on the site of a concentration camp. But now they are born in a more natural way. The babies are healthy.
All along Fat Man and Little Boy have been trying very hard not to explode again. Then the brothers take a trip to America....
I had a couple of nits... didn't like how the author would sometimes refer to John and Matthew as "the brother bombs," instead of just sticking with the conceit of "brothers." Also, it took them entirely too long to figure out how to bathe. I couldn't believe that people--women, in France--would invite them into their homes in the described-at-length filth in which they first appeared. I suppose this might be a metaphor for how easily we DO accept what's filthy into our lives, but if so it needed something else to make me understand how easily they were accepted into society... invited into homes, hired at restaurants, with very little recoil from other people.
Nevertheless, a good part of the story is the journey from corruption and into mainstream, which of course is the story of the bombs. Something that was unmitigatedly bad became complex and sometimes useful, if not good. For that reason, the grotesquerie of the first half of the book is important, if challenging to some readers, and then the long period of well-being is all the more horrifying.
Which brings me to my only substantive criticism of the book. The long period in France did seem a to lag a bit. Almost as if the author, as well as his characters, were afraid to face the music. Or, in this case, the movie. Because to reckon with America, and to what it's made of the bombs, you have to reckon with Hollywood, no?
Which is what does happen in the book, eventually. There's nothing wrong with the basic arc, but I thought the time spent on the middle vs the ending sections was a possibly a little disproportionate. I also wasn't sure why France (vs, say Russia, or otherwise tracking the adoption of nuclear weapons technology around the world), except that perhaps France is the nation that's grown most comfortable with nukes. Or else it has something to do with existentialism, not sure. It does seem significant that the brothers fatten or at least grow comfortable in a Western country, far from the ruin they've wreaked. I thought there might be more tension in having these personified bombs encounter the paradoxes of post-bomb American culture earlier and at more length. This happens to some extent, but I thought there might have been more opportunities. I wondered if the author held back a bit so as not to become too heavy-handed with the allegory. Perhaps the strengths and limitations of allegory both served and disserved the story. I only know that I chafed a bit when we wandered more deeply into the brothers' lives, and perked up when there seemed to be more that was being said about history and culture and society.
But I was entranced by this book, chapter-by-chapter. It's a fresh look at ourselves. And the writing is gorgeous, too. I found myself, like many of the people in the book itself, wanting the best for these two lost souls.
Some samples. Keep in mind that we're talking about nuclear bombs. Read a few of these and you'll probably see why I gave this book 5 stars:
"He remembers the mother squatting on the toilet as her daughter squats now in what is like their living room. He remembers the frenzy of the pigs, their midnight meal, a feast of night soil. It all must be connected but the only connection he can find is that he saw all these things."
"The baby rolls like an empty jar. Little Boy knows what it's like to explode. It's like this."
"Fat Man knows that he is screaming, has known from the start. He means to continue."
"What he means is that he only knows a little [Japanese]. What he means is that it was no use. What he means is he rejects the language. He rejects the country. He rejects the evidence case and everything within, not because it's wrong but because it's not enough."
The soon-to-be hotelier to the Japanese medium: "...is it your experience that the dead are, on the whole, more wise than the living?" "Not at all," says the medium.
The medium to her audience: "Women, guard your wombs. This man and this boy are haunted, haunted by tens of thousands. They killed them all, ladies... Now these people and children follow them wherever they go, jostling for a chance to be born again near them, whether as infants or livestock or rot. Do you want a ghost in your belly?"
"He fills his glass. The water smells a little strange out here, he's noticed. Water's different everywhere, and no one wants to talk about it."
"She's always been pretty, just as her mother was always pretty, and they discussed--in hushed, secret tones--the horror and the tragedy of life as an Ugly Person. 'Everyone is beautiful inside,' said her mother, 'but most people don't take the time or trouble to find out. I would hate to be the sort of person you had to know to love.'"
On the names they've acquired, John and Matthew: "Why oh why did I name myself John?" "What's wrong with John?" says Little Boy... "[John] means 'Yahweh is gracious,'" says Fat Man. "I don't see what's wrong with that. What does mine mean?" ... Fat Man flips to the M's. "It means 'Gift of Yahweh.' Ugh. Yours is even worse." "They're like the same thing." "Yours states specifically that you were given to the world by God, but does not specify a reason or an end. It's the worst thing you could be called."
"Fat Man cannot explain...why he didn't tell about the gun; there was guilt in being on the wrong end of a weapon."
"Widows ought to get more for what we give up," says Rosie. "If he'd have lived after he hung from his parachute in the that tree--if they'd shot him just enough times that he could still be saved--they would have had to spend probably thousands patching him up, keeping him in the hospital, attaching prosthesis. Then training him in the use of his new hands. They're lucky he died. They only have to pay me my allowance. They're better off if the wounded soldiers die. That's called a perverse incentive."
The medium (who is also a failed kamikaze pilot): "Firebombing held no mystery for him. It was a stupid way to kill another person. No risk, no romance, only a city become an oven."
"And the sun rises yellow, and the sky is clear. The grass tilts in the breeze, and people forget the war, or they remember everything else."
"He was my soul mate. It didn't make me happy. ... I've told you how I begged him not to go to war. I've told you how, when I heard that he was dead, I was as relieved as I was miserable. Sometimes the perfect thing is the wrong thing." "But do I make you happy?" "You don't make me happy," says Rosie. "Nobody makes anybody happy. That's not how it works." "What makes people happy then?" "Nothing does. They feel about the same from the beginning to the end, regardless of what happens to them and who they meet. We cause only little fluctuations in each other, I think. I have always been mostly unhappy and afraid. Sometimes you give me happy fluctuations. Sometimes sad ones. I'm grateful for both."
February 2, 2015
I struggled to assign meanings to characters and events in Fat Man and Little Boy, all the while aware that attempting to do so was wrong-headed and futile. Little Boy and Fat Man, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs, born as human brothers at the moment of their detonations, three days apart? Sure. Extinguished Japanese souls attempting to be reborn, literally under the brothers' feet? Okay. But what am I to make of the policemen, the short and the tall one? What do they represent? And for that matter ... why France, why Masumi, why Rosie and Magnolia and Able and Baker?
What if this were a straight novel about odd, parentless, horribly filthy brothers who move from wartime Japan to post-war France, find a family and gradually become functioning humans, then take a short vacation in Hollywood? It wouldn't pass muster. It wouldn't be interesting. It wouldn't justify its own existence. The conceit of atomic bombs exploding and being born as human brothers is what makes this novel worth reading. But where is Meginnis going with this conceit?
Questions upon questions! Fat Man lives with guilt, but why doesn't Little Boy? Or are Little Boy's physical failings the manifestation of guilt? The profuse life Fat Man and Little Boy spread about them is at first deformed and unviable, paralleling the longer-term effects of radiation in the survivors of the bombings and following generations. But why then, over time, do Fat Man and Little Boy's progeny become normal? Today, many consider the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities a criminal act, but it was hardly considered so in 1945 or for many years afterward; it ended a horrific war that would have gone on to kill even more people than if the bombs not been used. Is that the meaning of the healthy, well adjusted, celebrity actors Able and Baker? Are the former Vichy French Jewish internment camp and the frequent mentions of Marshal Pétain meant to force a comparison between the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities with the deliberate conduct of genocide by the Nazis and their puppet states?
But I babble. I've finished a book with more questions than I had when I started it. I could say the central conceit of the book doesn't hold together, leaving readers frustrated and adrift. I could say the book is more poetry than novel, beautifully crafted despite its ambiguities, forcing readers to think and wonder. I choose the latter.
What if this were a straight novel about odd, parentless, horribly filthy brothers who move from wartime Japan to post-war France, find a family and gradually become functioning humans, then take a short vacation in Hollywood? It wouldn't pass muster. It wouldn't be interesting. It wouldn't justify its own existence. The conceit of atomic bombs exploding and being born as human brothers is what makes this novel worth reading. But where is Meginnis going with this conceit?
Questions upon questions! Fat Man lives with guilt, but why doesn't Little Boy? Or are Little Boy's physical failings the manifestation of guilt? The profuse life Fat Man and Little Boy spread about them is at first deformed and unviable, paralleling the longer-term effects of radiation in the survivors of the bombings and following generations. But why then, over time, do Fat Man and Little Boy's progeny become normal? Today, many consider the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities a criminal act, but it was hardly considered so in 1945 or for many years afterward; it ended a horrific war that would have gone on to kill even more people than if the bombs not been used. Is that the meaning of the healthy, well adjusted, celebrity actors Able and Baker? Are the former Vichy French Jewish internment camp and the frequent mentions of Marshal Pétain meant to force a comparison between the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities with the deliberate conduct of genocide by the Nazis and their puppet states?
But I babble. I've finished a book with more questions than I had when I started it. I could say the central conceit of the book doesn't hold together, leaving readers frustrated and adrift. I could say the book is more poetry than novel, beautifully crafted despite its ambiguities, forcing readers to think and wonder. I choose the latter.
July 3, 2015
I won this in a First Reads Giveaway. Thank You!
Oh yes, this was the novel that took me way too long to finish, longer than any book below 600 pages. I shouldn't be ashamed of it, but this is usually the type of book that I would devour in two weeks. Those who are college students, readers, and bloggers, you would probably know that those gaps of silence are usually because it's a rough semester. This was a rough novel, with tiny patches of softness, little dots of hope in the middle of something wide and hard, something dark and dreary. Now that metaphor crap is out of the way, lets put a synopsis. If I try to write it on my own, it would be a disaster.
Two bombs over Japan. Two shells. One called Little Boy, one called Fat Man. Three days apart. The one implicit in the other. Brothers.
As you can already tell, this is going to be one weird trip, it takes place in a world that seems to be so off kilter in its sanity. Nobody seems to know why these guys exist and why they have all these weird quirks, such as not having real names and just acting plain weird, somewhat socially awkward. Fat Man is morbidly obese, Little Boy is forever a little boy. When people question, they never push any further, quickly accepting these two odd balls for what they are.
Here's a funny story, during a break between classes, I was playing cards with some friends of my brother's and one of them found the book interesting. I told them the little summary that you see in italics above. The reaction was basically "Wow that's so cool and weird." One of them said something that was basically along the lines of something like, I don't remember to be honest, but the reaction was basically something like "So that's why they couldn't find the bomb," or "That's why nobody could see them." Yeah, this funny story was a sham, but I do remember saying in the back of my mind, "Dude, it exploded into flames and ashes and smoke. What are you going to find other than destruction?" Then I realized that most people seem to make a lot of fun about this tragedy in war. People say they deserved it while playing a Nintendo 3DS and flipping Yu-Gi Oh! cards around, and watching anime.
This wasn't an easy novel to read, I read a chapter a day, sometimes a bit more, but I had to push myself, despite that I was fond of the novel. There were times where it wore me out and began to feel too heavy of a book, despite that it is less than 400 pages. There are a variety of reasons, which are college stress due to my lack of coping with stress, my constant reading of e-books over the summer which has caused me to become so adapted to it that reading physical books has become a rather heavy thing for me, and I just took too long with it. I am an impatient reader, I like slow books that take in the details, let things unravel. Let the character walk down the road and find shards of itself, let the world unfold itself. But I read slow, which is my fault, not always the book's fault.
The whole design of this novel is freaking awesome. The red and blue explosion looking graphic, the Fat Man and Little Boy in this white impact lettering. Then in the inside flaps, there is the Japanese letter for "remains." The funny thing is, when I first discovered Black Balloon Publishing, Fat Man and Little Boy was actually the first novel that attracted my attention.
But this novel sort of became my little friend for the first two months of Fall semester. With it's delicate prose, speaking of guilt and a sort of miserable existentialism created by war. These two walk around on the Earth, knowing that they had committed the ultimate atrocity, and apparently the souls of all who had died are haunting them everywhere they go. So it's sort of a metaphor of guilt, how your murders, your crimes will never leave, or history itself, since the bombs did change history, it forever haunts them. Then there's the people that fate somehow connects them together. From the widow to the medium, two police officers accusing Fat Man of murder; anybody who has somehow been affected by the war or the bomb have somehow ended being connected to them, haunting them in a sense.
Despite that this novel isn't that long, there is so much to think about, to write about in this post. But I feel like it will go on too long, It has been awhile since I read the book, maybe a week or two, and my thoughts of it are floating around and they are hard to snatch. It will become a mountain of rambles for Fat Man to eat if he wants. It will taste quite bland.
One thing I will say for sure, Fat Man and Little Boy is a human in paper form that has somehow figured out the world's pain and the inhabitants' eternal loneliness.
This novel is written in short chapters that feel like small little entries, little snippets of the duo's short life. I would read one or two each day and then set it aside for awhile, and come back. This novel is bleak, any war novel is bleak. Fat Man and Little Boy regret their ability to explode, suffering from watching them and absorbing the suffering from the suffering they committed.
Despite the darkness, these guys are quite loveable. Fat Man, at first, is childlike and innocent, he is overweight and food is always the top priority. Apparently he is the little brother, but due to his looks and strength, he takes the role of big brother. Little Boy is the older one, with a mature mind and personality, most of the time, but he is the smaller one, and he can get away with childlike behavior, due to his short stature and doe eyed look. They are odd looking and they know that they are odd and they do everything to blend into mankind. Because unlike most of mankind, they were born from disaster, not human nature. They grow, despite already being grown, and they develop into these beings that can sort of hide this eternal guilt behind somewhere in the back of their skulls and into their shadows maybe, that seems to apparently be followed by whoever haunts them.
Then there's the medium or Masumi. What I found that was so cool about this character is that he is a performer with two different identities, one who has a psychic ability that can see the dead and the other is just a drunk man. He's probably my favorite other than the main two. He is this flawed, self-destructive, tragic character, and for some odd reason I've always tended to like those type of characters. There' s just something that hits a chord with them. I am not a drunk man or a psychic,and I'm too young to drink, but this vengeful and beautiful character was just so bad ass and at the same time, you kind of want to join him and comfort him somehow, or just wallow in the misery with him.
Then there's a pair of twins that I can't remember the name of. Oh dear. I'm going to go look. The Hanway brothers. These two guys don't regret exploding at all. What sick dudes. They didn't hurt anybody, but still...
The characters in this book is what makes it alive. With its poetic and minamalistic prose, written in way that is like poetry, with short sentences forming a sort of pentameter? A rhythm? something like a quiet, ambient, minamalistic song. It's hard to describe actually, I usually describe prose like this as airy, simple, but it's simplicity brings out the beauty in it's characters and it's imagery of death and life's little gifts.
This book is probably one of the most self-loathing yet touching novels I have read so far this year. It's so cynical but yet, with its magical realism, it brings in a sort of hope that shines a bit of light, despite all of the dust of remains, of humans who once were, destroyed by humanity's animalistic actions. So I usually don't do this in my posts but here's my check list of things I liked about this novel:
1. Short chapters *check*
2. Nice prose that feels like poetry *check*
3. Wonderfully quirky characters that you love and feel connected to *check*
4. Beautiful fantasy magical realist stuff *check*
5. Historical fiction *check*
6. Emotionally engaging *check*
7. The book was left to cook a bit more in my brain.
Now that I thought about it while writing this, I ended liking the book even more. This happened to me when I read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro *check*
Rating: 4.5/5
Oh yes, this was the novel that took me way too long to finish, longer than any book below 600 pages. I shouldn't be ashamed of it, but this is usually the type of book that I would devour in two weeks. Those who are college students, readers, and bloggers, you would probably know that those gaps of silence are usually because it's a rough semester. This was a rough novel, with tiny patches of softness, little dots of hope in the middle of something wide and hard, something dark and dreary. Now that metaphor crap is out of the way, lets put a synopsis. If I try to write it on my own, it would be a disaster.
Two bombs over Japan. Two shells. One called Little Boy, one called Fat Man. Three days apart. The one implicit in the other. Brothers.
As you can already tell, this is going to be one weird trip, it takes place in a world that seems to be so off kilter in its sanity. Nobody seems to know why these guys exist and why they have all these weird quirks, such as not having real names and just acting plain weird, somewhat socially awkward. Fat Man is morbidly obese, Little Boy is forever a little boy. When people question, they never push any further, quickly accepting these two odd balls for what they are.
Here's a funny story, during a break between classes, I was playing cards with some friends of my brother's and one of them found the book interesting. I told them the little summary that you see in italics above. The reaction was basically "Wow that's so cool and weird." One of them said something that was basically along the lines of something like, I don't remember to be honest, but the reaction was basically something like "So that's why they couldn't find the bomb," or "That's why nobody could see them." Yeah, this funny story was a sham, but I do remember saying in the back of my mind, "Dude, it exploded into flames and ashes and smoke. What are you going to find other than destruction?" Then I realized that most people seem to make a lot of fun about this tragedy in war. People say they deserved it while playing a Nintendo 3DS and flipping Yu-Gi Oh! cards around, and watching anime.
This wasn't an easy novel to read, I read a chapter a day, sometimes a bit more, but I had to push myself, despite that I was fond of the novel. There were times where it wore me out and began to feel too heavy of a book, despite that it is less than 400 pages. There are a variety of reasons, which are college stress due to my lack of coping with stress, my constant reading of e-books over the summer which has caused me to become so adapted to it that reading physical books has become a rather heavy thing for me, and I just took too long with it. I am an impatient reader, I like slow books that take in the details, let things unravel. Let the character walk down the road and find shards of itself, let the world unfold itself. But I read slow, which is my fault, not always the book's fault.
The whole design of this novel is freaking awesome. The red and blue explosion looking graphic, the Fat Man and Little Boy in this white impact lettering. Then in the inside flaps, there is the Japanese letter for "remains." The funny thing is, when I first discovered Black Balloon Publishing, Fat Man and Little Boy was actually the first novel that attracted my attention.
But this novel sort of became my little friend for the first two months of Fall semester. With it's delicate prose, speaking of guilt and a sort of miserable existentialism created by war. These two walk around on the Earth, knowing that they had committed the ultimate atrocity, and apparently the souls of all who had died are haunting them everywhere they go. So it's sort of a metaphor of guilt, how your murders, your crimes will never leave, or history itself, since the bombs did change history, it forever haunts them. Then there's the people that fate somehow connects them together. From the widow to the medium, two police officers accusing Fat Man of murder; anybody who has somehow been affected by the war or the bomb have somehow ended being connected to them, haunting them in a sense.
Despite that this novel isn't that long, there is so much to think about, to write about in this post. But I feel like it will go on too long, It has been awhile since I read the book, maybe a week or two, and my thoughts of it are floating around and they are hard to snatch. It will become a mountain of rambles for Fat Man to eat if he wants. It will taste quite bland.
One thing I will say for sure, Fat Man and Little Boy is a human in paper form that has somehow figured out the world's pain and the inhabitants' eternal loneliness.
This novel is written in short chapters that feel like small little entries, little snippets of the duo's short life. I would read one or two each day and then set it aside for awhile, and come back. This novel is bleak, any war novel is bleak. Fat Man and Little Boy regret their ability to explode, suffering from watching them and absorbing the suffering from the suffering they committed.
Despite the darkness, these guys are quite loveable. Fat Man, at first, is childlike and innocent, he is overweight and food is always the top priority. Apparently he is the little brother, but due to his looks and strength, he takes the role of big brother. Little Boy is the older one, with a mature mind and personality, most of the time, but he is the smaller one, and he can get away with childlike behavior, due to his short stature and doe eyed look. They are odd looking and they know that they are odd and they do everything to blend into mankind. Because unlike most of mankind, they were born from disaster, not human nature. They grow, despite already being grown, and they develop into these beings that can sort of hide this eternal guilt behind somewhere in the back of their skulls and into their shadows maybe, that seems to apparently be followed by whoever haunts them.
Then there's the medium or Masumi. What I found that was so cool about this character is that he is a performer with two different identities, one who has a psychic ability that can see the dead and the other is just a drunk man. He's probably my favorite other than the main two. He is this flawed, self-destructive, tragic character, and for some odd reason I've always tended to like those type of characters. There' s just something that hits a chord with them. I am not a drunk man or a psychic,and I'm too young to drink, but this vengeful and beautiful character was just so bad ass and at the same time, you kind of want to join him and comfort him somehow, or just wallow in the misery with him.
Then there's a pair of twins that I can't remember the name of. Oh dear. I'm going to go look. The Hanway brothers. These two guys don't regret exploding at all. What sick dudes. They didn't hurt anybody, but still...
The characters in this book is what makes it alive. With its poetic and minamalistic prose, written in way that is like poetry, with short sentences forming a sort of pentameter? A rhythm? something like a quiet, ambient, minamalistic song. It's hard to describe actually, I usually describe prose like this as airy, simple, but it's simplicity brings out the beauty in it's characters and it's imagery of death and life's little gifts.
This book is probably one of the most self-loathing yet touching novels I have read so far this year. It's so cynical but yet, with its magical realism, it brings in a sort of hope that shines a bit of light, despite all of the dust of remains, of humans who once were, destroyed by humanity's animalistic actions. So I usually don't do this in my posts but here's my check list of things I liked about this novel:
1. Short chapters *check*
2. Nice prose that feels like poetry *check*
3. Wonderfully quirky characters that you love and feel connected to *check*
4. Beautiful fantasy magical realist stuff *check*
5. Historical fiction *check*
6. Emotionally engaging *check*
7. The book was left to cook a bit more in my brain.
Now that I thought about it while writing this, I ended liking the book even more. This happened to me when I read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro *check*
Rating: 4.5/5
September 28, 2014
Fat Man and Little Boy is going on the shortlist of the best books that I have read in 2014. It is difficult to believe that the novel is Mike Meginnis' debut, for it is a rather stunning first in its language, story, and plot. I congratulated Mr. Meginnis at the publisher's table in the Brooklyn Book Festival just a few weeks ago for being the proud author of a published book, but more hearty congratulations are in order in view of the contents of his novel.
The plot of Fat Man and Little Boy is, among other things, surreal. Not that the events that take place are unbelievable, for except for the bombs being born onto Earth as human beings, most of what takes place is normal-life-like stuff that has been the subject of many works of fiction. But there is a pervasive feeling of disbelief that stems from the disbelief that such atrocities (as in so many indiscriminately obliterated into charred dust by two atom bombs) indeed took place, a feeling that thinly covers the prose as if to muffle it, as if to mute its impact, punctuated only by the uncommon moments of sharp acknowledgement of guilt and perversion and the passing of time... It is this disbelief that Meginnis weaves into every turn of event, that seeps out of every character one way or another, that in its persistence haunts the novel incessantly. The language of this disbelief is beautiful in its plainness, often striking images and invoking feelings that are in sharp contrast to the disbelief itself.
There are many stories in Fat Man and Little Boy, or many ways the story can be recounted. However they are told, they will have the words birth, death, and brother in them.
Recommended for those who like to think about existence, responsibility, childhood, belief and forgiveness.
The plot of Fat Man and Little Boy is, among other things, surreal. Not that the events that take place are unbelievable, for except for the bombs being born onto Earth as human beings, most of what takes place is normal-life-like stuff that has been the subject of many works of fiction. But there is a pervasive feeling of disbelief that stems from the disbelief that such atrocities (as in so many indiscriminately obliterated into charred dust by two atom bombs) indeed took place, a feeling that thinly covers the prose as if to muffle it, as if to mute its impact, punctuated only by the uncommon moments of sharp acknowledgement of guilt and perversion and the passing of time... It is this disbelief that Meginnis weaves into every turn of event, that seeps out of every character one way or another, that in its persistence haunts the novel incessantly. The language of this disbelief is beautiful in its plainness, often striking images and invoking feelings that are in sharp contrast to the disbelief itself.
There are many stories in Fat Man and Little Boy, or many ways the story can be recounted. However they are told, they will have the words birth, death, and brother in them.
Recommended for those who like to think about existence, responsibility, childhood, belief and forgiveness.
September 14, 2014
This was an incredibly imaginative novel. The two brother-bombs try to live in the world after their explosions. This alternate world - not so far from reality that we forget the sadness, anxiety, devastation of war - is intriguing. I was captivated throughout.
This was a Goodreads First Reads.
This was a Goodreads First Reads.
January 26, 2016
Definitely one of the more interesting and unique books I've ever read. It's hard for me to describe how I feel about this book.......just read it. If you like magical/paranormal(Maybe this fits) mixed with realism, read it.
May 7, 2017
Take a step into history and never forget, lest we do something like ths again. extraordinary journey to the past and how our world changed,
October 22, 2019
I'm giving this a four because it's really a strange story that I STILL think about years later. Other star for such a novel concept. The other two stars are for the story telling, which meandered. I have only read a few books which rocked my world. And this one did that for sure.
February 1, 2023
Meginnis somehow makes you care about a pair of anthropomorphized atom bombs. There are threads that I still haven't resolved but the story will stay with me as I keep turning it over.
August 30, 2025
basically poetry in novel form. everything is a metaphor for something else? not my cup of tea DNF
December 17, 2016
interesting premise but didn't do enough with it. I gave up after 100 pages
November 18, 2014
Imagine that each of the two atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan during World War II begat a human being (or a being near human) upon impact. That’s the premise behind Mike Meginnis’s Fat Man and Little Boy. Yes, Fat Man (he changes his name to John) is fat; and, yes, Little Boy (later Matthew) is little. In an ironic touch, however, Little Boy is the “big” brother, born three days before Fat Man.
Fat Man and Little Boy travel, first across Japan, later about the world, trying to figure out who they are. Each remembers coming into being during an explosion, but has very little sense of self beyond that. Strange things happen where they travel: women and animals conceive and give birth in a matter of weeks, sometimes to healthy offspring, sometimes to deformed or incomplete creatures; strange molds grow at an unnatural rate wherever they are.
This concept is brilliant, but I enjoyed the book less than I thought I would. The prose is crisp, but I found I couldn’t stay engaged enough with these two central characters for the full 400+ pages.
I’ll acknowledge that I’ve never been much for science fiction (which is more or less that category Fat Man and Little Boy falls under), so that may explain my lukewarm response. The book has gotten excellent reviews on GoodReads, so clearly there is a readership out there who can appreciate it. If you like science fiction or if you enjoy reading extended parables of a sort, you may want to check this book out for yourself.
Fat Man and Little Boy travel, first across Japan, later about the world, trying to figure out who they are. Each remembers coming into being during an explosion, but has very little sense of self beyond that. Strange things happen where they travel: women and animals conceive and give birth in a matter of weeks, sometimes to healthy offspring, sometimes to deformed or incomplete creatures; strange molds grow at an unnatural rate wherever they are.
This concept is brilliant, but I enjoyed the book less than I thought I would. The prose is crisp, but I found I couldn’t stay engaged enough with these two central characters for the full 400+ pages.
I’ll acknowledge that I’ve never been much for science fiction (which is more or less that category Fat Man and Little Boy falls under), so that may explain my lukewarm response. The book has gotten excellent reviews on GoodReads, so clearly there is a readership out there who can appreciate it. If you like science fiction or if you enjoy reading extended parables of a sort, you may want to check this book out for yourself.
April 6, 2015
Book Riot #ReadHarder Challenge #4: Book published by an Indie Press - Fat Man and Little Boy by Mike Meginnis
This premise of this book is that the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 - Fat Man and Little Boy - became human after they exploded. Fat Man became a seemingly middle-aged fat man and Little Boy became a never aging boy. The story follows them through various escapades and relationships in post-war Japan, France, and America.
Even a week after reading this, I hesitatingly recommend this book. The language is beautifully crafted, though I wouldn't say that the prose itself is beautiful. In fact, it's quite disturbing through the first two sections though that's to be expected from a post-war novel. The book requires you to suspend your disbelief the entire time. I didn't really like any of the characters outside of the androgynous Japanese spirit medium; his/her back story, when it finally came around, was the most fascinating to me. I liked the twist at the end, though the ending chapter itself was so bizarre and an unsatisfying ending for me. Not sure what to make of the recurring trope of the tall and short policemen.
If you are the type that can easily suspend your disbelief, I'd recommend this to you. It was a challenging read, and I would love to discuss it with someone else who has read it. And I'm glad for this reading challenge because I don't think I would have ever discovered this book otherwise.
This premise of this book is that the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 - Fat Man and Little Boy - became human after they exploded. Fat Man became a seemingly middle-aged fat man and Little Boy became a never aging boy. The story follows them through various escapades and relationships in post-war Japan, France, and America.
Even a week after reading this, I hesitatingly recommend this book. The language is beautifully crafted, though I wouldn't say that the prose itself is beautiful. In fact, it's quite disturbing through the first two sections though that's to be expected from a post-war novel. The book requires you to suspend your disbelief the entire time. I didn't really like any of the characters outside of the androgynous Japanese spirit medium; his/her back story, when it finally came around, was the most fascinating to me. I liked the twist at the end, though the ending chapter itself was so bizarre and an unsatisfying ending for me. Not sure what to make of the recurring trope of the tall and short policemen.
If you are the type that can easily suspend your disbelief, I'd recommend this to you. It was a challenging read, and I would love to discuss it with someone else who has read it. And I'm glad for this reading challenge because I don't think I would have ever discovered this book otherwise.
February 24, 2016
I was intrigued by the premise of this book and quite attracted by the artwork so it is with regret that I have to say I found it very disappointing indeed.
Of course magical realism takes us to all sorts of weird and wonderful places but after the audacious leap of imagination to have the only two atomic bombs ever dropped somehow take human form, the novel deteriorated into rather a pedantic tale of the travails of these two human bombs. Frankly, there was little magical in it after that.
It is a shame because at times the writing took flight in a soaring, poetic manner which promised much. But it was shackled by the uninteresting "lives" these bombs lead, their Laurel-and-Hardy existence, their pettifogging, mean little existences. Nothing became these characters like their entering into life - all downhill from there. Perhaps a short story would have been a better option.
Of course magical realism takes us to all sorts of weird and wonderful places but after the audacious leap of imagination to have the only two atomic bombs ever dropped somehow take human form, the novel deteriorated into rather a pedantic tale of the travails of these two human bombs. Frankly, there was little magical in it after that.
It is a shame because at times the writing took flight in a soaring, poetic manner which promised much. But it was shackled by the uninteresting "lives" these bombs lead, their Laurel-and-Hardy existence, their pettifogging, mean little existences. Nothing became these characters like their entering into life - all downhill from there. Perhaps a short story would have been a better option.
March 21, 2015
In the solitude of his captivity, the newborn Fat Man “remembers. Dreams and memory devour the night, mingled beyond recognition. Half-faces and crumpled hands, footprints, coral reef.”
The arrival of his brother--the smaller bomb, but first born, and thus for a while the elder, come in search of him--sets Fat Man free...
It is Meginnis’s great gift in these opening scenes and throughout the novel to invoke the brothers in all their fantastical and elusive humanity with engaging simplicity and humor, as with its clarity of language the narrative involves us in their most fundamental desires and needs.
See my review at Necessary Fiction -- http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/F...
The arrival of his brother--the smaller bomb, but first born, and thus for a while the elder, come in search of him--sets Fat Man free...
It is Meginnis’s great gift in these opening scenes and throughout the novel to invoke the brothers in all their fantastical and elusive humanity with engaging simplicity and humor, as with its clarity of language the narrative involves us in their most fundamental desires and needs.
See my review at Necessary Fiction -- http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/F...
October 1, 2014
Gave this a rare 5 star because it's so unique. It's the story of the atomic bombs fat man and little boy becoming personified and dealing with the aftermath of their explosion. It's a memorable book and one that I likely will give a second read or continue to be thinking about its sub-text and what different parts of it meant. It was super poetic and at times reminded me of how the pink Floyd the wall movie captured the ugliness and disillusionment of war in a beautiful way.
August 1, 2015
Darkly beautiful; an unusual premise (the twin atomic bombs dropped on Japan in the waning days of WWII become human brothers), but with skilled, poetic prose, Meginnis weaves a masterful tale of magical realism that, strangely, reveals itself to be the perfect vehicle for exploring the human impact of this destructive act of war, both on the victims of the blast and on the "bombs" responsible for the destruction. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
November 23, 2014
This is quite a bombshell of a novel. The bombs become people amidst the aftermath of WWII. It's both strange and delicately lovely. It humanizes us at the same time that it humanizes the bombs. Very nice.
September 26, 2015
It reminds me a lot of The Orphan Master's Son for some reason.
January 19, 2015
I enjoyed this, though not quite as much as Meginnis' short fiction.
September 16, 2015
This book sucked.
Read
September 20, 2015Plenty of people liked this book. Might be good for book clubs -- discussion topics could be: Peace, War, Brutality, Complicity...
October 31, 2015
I'm too literal for this book. I read the first 100 pages and decided to move on.
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