A Bend in the Stars
A Bend in the Stars by Rachel Barenbaum is about Vanya, a physicist on a quest to prove Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and Miri, Vanya’s sister and Kovno’s first female surgeon. The book begins in 1914, just before the start of WWI. Vanya is on the brink of fixing Einstein’s field equations for general relativity. (Einstein’s initial calculations were incorrect.) In order to test the theory, however, Vanya needs to measure “the bend in the stars” in photographs he hopes to obtain of an upcoming eclipse. But before the eclipse arrives, WWI breaks out. So, Vanya voluntarily joins the army so he can be near the port where a professor from America is supposed to arrive. The professor, Vanya hopes, will take pictures of the eclipse for Vanya to measure. Meanwhile, Miri and their grandmother, Baba, face increasing tensions at home in Kovno. After an incident involving a dead Russian, Miri sends Baba away while she sets out to retrieve her brother so they can all flee Russia together.
A Bend in the Stars is a good book. (More on that later.) My only quibble with A Bend in the Stars is that it doesn’t have an afterword in addition to Barenbaum’s Q &A explaining the science or history in the book in more detail, and I had a lot of questions by the time I finished reading. So, here are the answers to some of the biggest questions I had:
HISTORICAL REFERENCES IN A BEND IN THE STARS EXPLAINED
WHAT IS EINSTEIN’S THEORY OF GENERAL RELATIVITY?
This seems like a basic question, but it’s not. (Or maybe it is, and my high school science classes were woefully inadequate?) General relativity can’t be summed up in one pithy sentence like Newton’s first law of motion—an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion. Instead, it’s a concept that explains the geometric nature of gravity. “Whereas Newton thought that gravity was a force, Einstein showed that gravity arises from the shape of space-time,” explains Encyclopedia Britannica. Because I’m not a scientist and would make an absolute fool of myself if I attempted to explain general relativity in more detail, I suggest you visit Encyclopedia Brittanica’s page on the subject to learn more.
Instead, let’s talk about Einstein’s field equations as they relate to A Bend in the Stars. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “General relativity is expressed in a set of interlinked differential equations that define how the shape of space-time depends on the amount of matter (or, equivalently, energy) in the region. The solution of these so-called field equations can yield answers to different physical situations, including the behaviour of individual bodies and of the entire universe.” These differential equations are what Vanya is trying to come up with in the book.
WHAT EXACTLY WOULD THE ECLIPSE PROVE?
The eclipse is significant because it is a test of Einstein’s theory. “The basic idea is that you have to compare the positions of the stars before the sun arrives at its sky position at totality, and during the eclipse when the sun is present. The star images should appear to shift outwards from their normal sky position, but the amount is very slight and hard to measure,” explains NASA on its Total Eclipse 2017 page.
In 1919 Sir Arthur Eddington, an English physicist, astronomer, and mathematician did just that with an eclipse in Príncipe Island (West Africa). But this begs two more questions.
WAS THERE AN ECLIPSE IN RUSSIA IN 1914? AND WAS THERE ANY ATTEMPT TO USE PHOTOS OF IT TO PROVE RELATIVITY?
The answers are yes and yes. In Einstein’s Jury: The Race to Test Relativity, Jefferey Crelinsten explains that Erwin Finlay-Freundlich, a German astronomer, attempted to use old eclipse plates to see whether the stars shift outward. His attempt, however, was unsuccessful as the images weren’t sharp enough to measure how much the stars shift. Crelinsten writes, “After his failure to obtain any useful measurements from old eclipse plates, Freundlich turned his attention to the coming solar eclipse, which would be visible from nearby Russia on 21 August 1914. In an article describing his negative results, he announced his willingness to collaborate with anyone wishing to take photographs at the eclipse and detailed the requirements for taking adequate observations.” If you already read A Bend in the Stars, this will sound familiar.
Crelinsten explains that Freundlich partnered up with William Wallace Campbell, and they traveled to Russia, each with a team of colleagues and Campbell with his family. Unfortunately, war broke out before the eclipse, and Freundlich and his colleagues were arrested. Russia deported his older colleagues but held Freundlich and his younger colleagues as prisoners of war until Russia could exchange them for Russians held in Germany. Crelisten goes on to say that because Campbell was an American, Russia allowed him to stay, as the United States had yet to enter the war. After all that, Campbell was still unable to take photos of the eclipse because of the dense cloud cover.
WHAT IS THE PALE?
Toward the beginning of the book, Vanya explains to Miri that his best chance to get photos of the eclipse is in Riga. “‘That’s absurd,’ Miri said. She threw the destroyed diagrams into the hearth and turned to face him. ‘Riga’s outside the Pale.’ Surely Vanya knew. Even useful Jews needed papers to travel outside the Pale, and those took time to obtain.”
The Pale, I wondered, what’s that? Turns out that Russia didn’t allow Jews in the interior of Russia before WWI. The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe explains, “The principles underpinning the Pale emerged in 1790 when members of the merchant class in Moscow protested to the municipal government against an influx of Jewish merchants from the provinces of Belorussia, which had been annexed from Poland in 1772. The Jews’ ‘well-known fraud and lies’ made competition with them impossible, the Moscow merchants complained. More concerned with protecting vested interests than with accepting charges of Jewish dishonesty, the government of Empress Catherine II (r. 1762–1796) banished the Jewish merchants, at the same time reiterating the legal principle that Jews in the empire enjoyed only those rights specifically allotted to them. These did not include residence in the interior.”
A Bend in the Stars begins in 1914. You can see that the Pale of Settlement existed for a long time.
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ODESSA?
In A Bend in the Stars, Barenbaum explains that Baba, had escaped from Odessa as a young woman. She trained in self-defense and taught her grandchildren how to fight too. This was all very interesting, but what did she escape? What happened in Odessa? Later in the book, Barenbaum mentions that Baba had survived the pogroms in Odessa, which raised even more questions for me.
Let’s start with the question, what is a pogrom? The YIVO Encyclopedia explains, “In general usage, a pogrom is an outbreak of mass violence directed against a minority religious, ethnic, or social group; it usually implies central instigation and control, or at minimum the passivity of local authorities.” The YIVO Encyclopedia goes on to explain that in the Russian Empire, the first pogroms against Jews happened in Odessa. They were a result of tensions between rival ethnic groups: Greeks and Jews. The Odessa pogrom referenced in A Bend in the Stars is probably the 1871 pogrom, which The YIVO Encyclopedia explains was the first pogrom to attract national attention. The YIVO Encyclopedia also has a page on Zhytomyr, another city mentioned in the book. In Zhytomyr, Jewish self-defense units defended the community during a pogrom in 1905. This pogrom is also mentioned in the book.
There are many more historical references tucked into A Bend in the Stars. If you already read the book, what questions did you come up with while reading?
A BEND IN THE STARS BOOK REVIEW
Time to wrap things up! In her praise, Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers, compares A Bend in the Stars to All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr. Though I can see the similarities, I like A Bend in the Stars more. The pacing is better, there’s more action, and it’s dripping with historical events. Don’t get me wrong, All the Light We Cannot See is a beautifully written book. Doerr’s writing is so visceral, you feel as though you can reach out and touch the world he describes, which is particularly ingenious when you have a blind protagonist. Doerr’s artistic prowess aside, I did find A Bend in the Stars to be a more riveting read.
Overall, A Bend in the Stars is a satisfying war novel. There’s bravery, love, and death. And, for most of the book, there is an endearing, admirable, and, ultimately, blind optimism present in Vanya that I fear few of us enjoy today. Vanya was the only man Dima (Vanya’s guide) ever met “who wanted to change the world with an idea—not a fight,” Barenbaum writes. Makkai makes a good point in saying that A Bend in the Stars leaves us “understanding that there’s more than one way for the universe to bend.” How many disasters have occurred in human history due to an inability or unwillingness to imagine a different path forward, one paved with ideas instead of knee-jerk reactions and violence?
A Bend in the Stars
by Rachel Barenbaum
