Title: The Other Einstein
Author: Marie Benedict
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: October 18, 2016
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 3/5
I find it kind of interesting that there's basically a genre of fiction books about women who were married to famous men in the early 1900s. I've read The Paris Wife, which is about Ernest Hemingway's first wife Hadley Richardson, and I have Z, which is about Zelda Fitzgerald, waiting on my TBR shelf. When I first started reading The Other Einstein, I didn't know that's what I was getting into.
The Other Einstein is a fictional account from the perspective of Mileva Maric, who was Albert Einstein's first wife. They met in the late 1890s in a physics class. Mileva was the only woman in the program, and that's where she caught Albert's eye. They formed an intellectual connection first, which eventually led to a romantic relationship. The book essentially starts right when they meet and goes through their relationship and marriage. It was really fascinating because Mileva was a female physicist at the turn of the century, when women still weren't accepted in those fields at all. There isn't a lot actually known about her influence on her husband's theories, but this author speculates that she had a large role in his most famous work. The story doesn't get very technical about it (which I appreciated ha) but it was still interesting. I didn't feel super connected to the story, and there were parts when I could tell that it was a debut novel, but I still thought it was an interesting account. I would recommend if you're a fan of this "genre" of historical fiction.
