Rachel Barenbaum is a graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program. In a former life she was a hedge fund manager and a spin instructor, before moving to the New Hampshire woods to write. She has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and an AB in Literature and Philosophy from Harvard College.Barenbaum's new book, A Bend in the Stars, is her first novel.
From the author's Q&A with NPR's Ari Shapiro:
SHAPIRO: That idea of gravity bending light gives your book its title, "A Bend In The Stars." Did you have it from the beginning?Visit Rachel Barenbaum's website.
BARENBAUM: No. Actually in the beginning, I called it "The Measure Of Time," which is the name also of an essay by Henri Poincare, because really at its heart, the problem of relativity or the notion of relativity is really based in this question of, what is time? So time is a construct. We've invented it. What is a second? What is a minute? What is an hour? This notion of time is really what I was focused on.
SHAPIRO: For a first novel, this is such an ambitious project to take on, like, Einstein's theory of relativity and a century ago history of Russia. I mean, like, that's a big bite to take.
BARENBAUM: (Laughter) I guess. You know, I think maybe this is why - one of the reasons why I dug into it so deep and so hard - was because I think people shy away from relativity, from science. I hear a lot of people saying, oh, I don't do numbers. And I always wonder, well...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: A Bend in the Stars.
The Page 69 Test: A Bend in the Stars.
--Marshal Zeringue