All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, McKeon - B +

                                               This is a very good book about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It tells the story from the perspective of a boy from a local family; a surgeon assigned to work the debacle;  his ex-wife, a worker at a Moscow factory; and her nephew.  Artyom is a thirteen year old boy who lived 10 kilometers from the disaster. The  day after the meltdown he, his mother and sister are shipped off to the Minsk area and settled in a vast warehouse. Later on, they are assigned their own hut. They find his dad in a hospital. He and the other men had stayed behind to help clean up their village. His reward months later is a horrible, horrible death from radiation poisoning. Grigory, a Moscow doctor, is tasked to work at the site and is kept on overseeing the declining health of the evacuees. For months on end, he performs surgeries, previously unimagined, on those whose lives and bodies have been transformed. Within months, he succumbs. Maria survives in the slowly crumbling Soviet structure that is dying in the era of glasnost and perestroika.  She manages to assister nephew Yevgeni on a trajectory to worldwide success as a pianist.
                                                As always, the sheer stupidity and inane unfairness of the Soviet system screams out for mockery, derision and elimination. It's a solid reminder that almost all that the Bolshies wrought was a colossal mess.