Highly Original and Brilliantly Imagined: Read our Review of Half Life by Jillian Cantor

Poland, 1891. Marie Curie (then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to a budding mathematician, Kazimierz Zorawski. But when his mother insisted Marya was not good enough, he broke off the engagement. A heartbroken Marya left Poland for Paris to study chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne. Marie would go on to change the course of science forever and become the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

But what if Marie had made a different choice?

What if she had stayed in Poland, married Kazimierz, and never attended the Sorbonne or discovered radium? What if Marie had chosen her first love and a life of domesticity, still ravenous for knowledge in Russian Poland where education for women was restricted, instead of studying science in Paris and meeting Pierre Curie?

Seamlessly entwining Marie Curie’s real life with Marya Sklodowska’s fictional one, Half Life is a powerful story of love and friendship, motherhood and sisterhood, fame and anonymity – and a woman destined to change the world.

Jillian Cantor is the internationally bestselling author of ten novels including In Another Time, The Hours Count, Margot and The Lost Letter. Now she returns with Half Life, a brilliant sliding-doors reimagining of the passionate life of the first woman to win a Nobel Prize – and the life Marie Curie might have led if she had chosen love over science.

I’ve always been intrigued by Marie Curie – not only was she the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, but the first and only woman to win it twice, and the only person to win it in two separate scientific fields. This was one seriously impressive lady! I’ve read and watched a couple of adaptations (mostly documentaries) about Curie’s life and career, but never before has her story been brought to life quite like this.

The novel follows its protagonist as both Marie and Marya, shifting back and forth between both perspectives to show her life as Marie in Paris, where she meets and marries Pierre Curie and goes on to discover radium, and her life as Marya who remains in Poland and marries her first love, Kazimierz. Both Marie and Marya are fully realised and beautifully portrayed, and in both lives, Cantor explores Curie’s ambition, thirst for knowledge, and the importance of women receiving a proper education.

Vividly imagined, fascinating and highly original, Half Life is the perfect book for readers of historical fiction, fans of the incredible Marie Curie, and any woman who’s ever had to choose between a man and her dreams. We highly recommend this.