Bookstrapping: Mr. Einstein's Secretary by Matthew Reilly

A life richly lived? Readers of fiction need no introduction to Matthew Reilly. He is the bestselling author of the’ Scarecrow’ series, the ‘Jack West’ series and numerous standalone novels. His latest book, 'Mr. Einstein’s Secretary' is ‘historical fiction’ set around the 1920s to 1940s. So a few fictional characters meet a set of real characters at an important period in history and a story plays out from there.

Our heroine is Hanna Fisher; a fictional character who escapes Berlin in 1919 after the death of her mother and the murder of her father! She also has a psychotic twin sister who lives at a mental institution. Orphaned, Hanna is left alone to struggle in America and takes up a job as a secretary, even though her childhood aspiration was to be a physicist. She eventually meets Einstein again, becomes his personal assistant!

1. Set in the period before, during, and after the Second World War, our leading lady Hanna Fischer harbours a dream to be a physicist like her next-door neighbour, Albert Einstein. The author paints Einstein to be a kind grandfather-figure to Hanna, rather than the 'smartest person’ who ever lived. Read Einstein's response ton Fraulein Schmidt's beliefs in part one of the book to understand this better.

2. Hanna Fischer lived all of 40 years and in this short span of time, found herself inserted by a string of coincidences into history’s most poignant moments. She had a most vile sister, ‘Ooma’, who took her love and her identity away among other things; and perhaps is the real villain of the story.

3. Some scenes in the book are absolutely appalling! There are two real villains in the book- one is Werner Heisenberg ( scientist in the Nazis’ atomic research project) and the other is Albert Speer (Minister of armaments ). At one time, as Albert Speer’s secretary, Hanna tours the construction site that would later become Auschwitz, only to hear conversations describing how efficient the ‘ovens’ there would be, when it came to cremating the remains of murdered human beings.

4. Another factual thread in the book is that the period before 1920 was one during which the European nations were fighting each other and America outgrew Europe. And Hanna saw this contrast in action, as everyone in America was getting ‘richer and richer.’

5. In the opening chapter, Einstein attends Hanna’s funeral. Here was a man whom Hanna got to know first as a child, when she thought that his moustache was ‘droopy to the point of being cartoonish, looking like a cute busy animal dozing on his upper lip.’ His speech at her funeral, is about how she saved civilian lives by disclosing the location of a German rocket site in northern France and again by deceiving senior Nazis and keeping Einstein’s work on building an atomic weapon away from their prying eyes.

The setting of the book itself and the fusion of the holocaust horrors with Einstein’s story seems rather unavoidable; he was born to a German Jewish family. He was openly critical of Nazi Germany and given the toxic environment, he exiled himself to England, taking refuge to avoid a rumoured attempt at assassination by agents acting for the Nazi regime in Germany. It is believable that his secretary would have a tumultuous life too!

Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta is a columnist and bestselling biographer. She is credited with the internationally acclaimed Red Dot Experiment, a decadal six-nation study on how ‘culture impacts communication.’ A reading coach, you can find her on Instagram @OfficialReetaGupta