Lora Hates Spam

by Marie Benedict

This is Historical Fiction, but based on a real person who was the first wife of Albert Einstein and one of the few women of her time to have an education in Physics. Her name was Mileva Marić.

The story is told in first person and for me seemed very realistic, showing Mileva's background, interaction with parents and thoughts about achieving her educational ambitions, as well as her cultural influences in dealing with expectations for women, the interest of Albert Einstein, and her treatment at the Polytecnic in Switzerland where she studied as well as her belief that a foot deformity made her 'unmarriageable'.

I found the author's voice very engaging and soon got caught up in her tale, even looking up a few mentions of Mileva's life on Wikipedia. The story is mostly fiction based on bare bones scaffolding of known facts, yet it felt very plausible all the way through. Albert's personality came across as witty and charming in the beginning and I half fell in love with him myself, but later in the story he becomes an unsympathetic character which might be less than fair to him. Still, looking up what facts are known, why didn't he ever meet his daughter? Why did the relationship go awry in a time when divorce held almost as much stigma as unwed motherhood?

Anyone who has been in a relationship that went wrong will recognise the pattern of how these things often happen. Whether Albert used his wife's ideas and took full credit is something history and science will probably never be able to answer, but in the time and place where it is set, it is easy to imagine that any contribution from an intelligent female would likely be subsumed by a husband with the proper qualifications.

Mileva's life is not a happy one and history doesn't give us a happy ending for her, but I very much enjoyed reading this story. Factual or not, the writing was very engaging and 'm glad to know of the existence of this woman whom I had never heard of before. Whatever contributions she might or might not have contributed to Einstein's theories, she stands out as a strong woman in history who dared to step into the male preserve of higher education, helping to forge the way for many women in generations to come. I will definitely be interested in anything else this author writes.