As an enormous fan of Joe Dunthorne's stellar coming-of-age novel Submarine, I was delighted to find much of his characteristic humour and wisdom in Children of Radium, perfectly balanced with the gravity of the book's subject matter. This is a deeply personal exploration of familial guilt and trauma, both suspenseful and informative. An utterly fascinating account of a Jewish man's inadvertent contribution to the atrocities of the Holocaust, and a shocking, thoroughly-researched history of chemical warfare on a broader scale. Deftly written and so unique - it will linger in my memory for a long time.

I was really keen to read this book because I’ve read The Radium Girls by Kate Moore and learned how those women suffered from using radioactive paint on watch dials—and how the truth about the awful effects only came out in the 1930s. It's so shocking that radioactive elements were also used in toothpaste in Germany in the 1920s through to the 30s and 40s.

This book is well structured, and the author clearly lays out Siegfried’s life and the role his great-grandfather played in a chemical weapons factory. It’s thoroughly researched, with many field trips undertaken (sometimes with his mother) and interviews conducted with a variety of people. The author expands on family members snd their lives too.

I definitely learned a lot and appreciated the way the author didn’t shy away from the truth, but instead made us aware of the many difficulties Siegfried experienced as a result of his involvement.

The book really made me think, and I’m glad I selected it to read.

I received an advance review copy, and this is my honest opinion.

This engaging and deeply felt memoir relates the author's personal quest to explore the complex legacy of his great-grandfather Siegfried Merzbacher, a German-Jewish chemist working during the Nazi era. He created the (relatively) benign radioactive toothpaste Doramad, which, it was claimed, had considerable health benefits, but went on to become involved in developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis. When Dunthorne discovered Siegfried’s unpublished 2,000 page memoir in which he aired his moral dilemmas about the work he was doing, Dunthorne set off to piece together the whole complicated story and explore the implications of his great-grandfather's work. The author cleverly weaves together history, biography and personal reflections to make this an important addition to Holocaust and WWII literature in which he candidly examines important issues of personal responsibility, complicity, historical guilt and how we make ethical choices in extreme situations. Meticulously researched, balanced and nuanced, there is so much to think about and reflect on here, and I found it a gripping read.

Most people tend to think we roughly know our family history, & the author grew up considering his great-grandfather a fascinating figure. Siegfried Merzbacher was a German-Jewish chemist who invented radioactive toothpaste & took his family & fled Germany out of the reach of the Nazis in the late 1930s.

However, when Dunthorne read Merzbacher's autobiography (a hefty tome that no-one else in the family had tackled before then) a very different story emerged, one that would turn the author's world on its head. This discovery led to further investigation, retracing his great-grandfather's footsteps in Germany & later in Turkey.

This was a really good read. The author has a nice writing style which keeps the reader engaged &, in amongst the discussion of a serious subject, there are a few moments of dry humour which remind you that this is very much about real life. Very interesting & informative.

My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Penguin UK/Hamish Hamilton, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

This was an interesting book with a story that I'd never imagined could exist - you just don't imagine that a Jewish scientist would be one of the team to create the poisons used by the Nazis for the Final Solution and to even be testing them and the gas masks.
I did find the book to me a little frustrating to read as it jumped about between family history, war history, chemical warfare history, and the legacy of toxic sites in the 21st century but overall a fascinating read.

A wonderful journey through decades of family history, mystery and identity. I found the author’s writing style of weaving his own personal reflections of discovery alongside his grandfather’s memoir quite gripping. I also thought adding in the odd comments from conversations with his mother were a great addition and lightened the darker parts.

An astonishingly good book, which I can already see as one of my books of 2025. Dunthorne's grandmother was a German Jewish survivor of the war, and he starts this family memoir with the idea of writing about her experiences, even though she was always very much less than enthusiastic about the idea. Whilst looking through the archive of paperwork that's been stuffed in a drawer in her old bedroom, he comes across his great-grandfather's memoir, and realises that this might be the story to write...

There is tragedy in this book, but not the kind you might expect. Siegfried, the great-grandfather, was a chemist who was uncomfortably close to the production of poison gases both before the Nazis came to power and during their rise in the 1930s. His escape to Turkey wasn't the clearcut tale that Dunthorne had grown up assuming; the journeys that he makes to follow in the footsteps of a forebear who was conflicted in so many ways is fascinating.

This is a book which manages to balance the darkest happenings with a perfect and razor sharp humour. I kept reading bits aloud to anyone within earshot, and will be recommending it to everyone. There are some gaps: the story of the radium toothpaste doesn't really go anywhere, and I'm not convinced by the title. Also, the ending is somewhat abrupt, almost as if he didn't quite know how to end so just stopped writing. But these are minor quibbles. I really hope it gets into a lot of hands and wins prizes, because it fully deserves all the acclaim that will almost certainly come its way.

I absolutely loved this. Dunthorne tells the story of his great-grandfather, Siegfried, a Jewish chemist who fled the Nazis for Turkey in the Second World War and ended his days in America. Thinking this would be a fairly traditional holocaust memoir, he began to piece together the stories of Siegfried's life only to find something much darker and more complex. Dunthorne takes a tricky story and writes it with grace, humour and a sharp eye that makes this a fresh and fascinating tale. By making himself the butt of the joke with his preconceived ideas about his family, about memoir writing and about the holocaust he allows for a much more nuanced and subtle story that is by turns, shocking, sad, funny and riveting.

Children of Radium is a candid and thought-provoking family history set against the Nazi regime.

Although the book deals with a whole raft of serious themes - scientific ethics, chemical warfare and the Holocaust - and grapples with the central question of morality, Dunthorne unpicks the story of his great-grandfather's life with a wry sense of humour, rendering even the darkest subject matter into a personable and compelling read. This is a book about ambiguity, how one can be both victim and villain, and in many ways Dunthorne's tone underlines rather than undermines the complexity of this focus.

Dunthorne's research takes him on a journey which reveals how the past still bleeds into the present, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

Children of Radium by Joe Dunthorne is a thoroughly researched and interesting delve into a fascinating family history.