Currently reading
Alex
The Glass Room
Peter the Great: His Life and World
If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children
Skin Deep
The Good Daughter
A Boy in Winter
The Tie That Binds
The Idiot (Everyman's Library, #254)
The Velvet Hours
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
3.5 Stara The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster .On April 26 1986 the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occured in Chernobyl and contaminated as much as three quaters of Europe. Voices from Chernobyl Presents personal accounts of the tragedy.
I remember here in Ireland in 2002 Iodine tablets designed to counteract radioactive iodine were issued across Ireland amid fears of a terrorist attack on the Sellafield site, which is just 180 kilometres from the Irish coast. The 2002 batch – 14.2million tablets at a cost of €630,000 – expired in 2005 but I do remeber this was a direct fear for Irish people after what happened in Chernobyl.
The book is very interesting and an important account of real and ordinary people and their suffering. It will be thirty years since the accident and yet the suffering will continue for lifetimes to come.
I did however find about half way through the book that the voices tended to blend into one and I found myself a little distracted. We dont get to know any of the voices very well but I can understand the authors reasons for this as its and oral history which is more about expressing the anger fear and love of the time than makeing a connection with the owners of the voices.
There is an organisation here in Ireland which is doing amazing work by flying children from Belarus and placing them in Irish homes for a few weeks each summer. They attend summer camps and enjoy life as Irish children do and its a wondful way to give children from this area a break and to experience a different culture
An interesting and important book.
