Although I had already known the gist of the story of the Radium Girls, particularly as I am quite personally enamored (or rather intrigued might be better wording) by the macabre, there is nothing that quite prepares you for the agony and anger of this particular novel. There are two types of horror that this book details. The first of which, and likely the most obvious of the two to someone who has not read the book, is the horror that the radium wreaked upon the bodies of the radium dial painters. The second horror, which quickly becomes obvious, is the horror of industrialization and a failed justice system. This is the strong, emotional argument that this book is making. However, it is also what hurts the novel. The second half of book is a series of events in which where you think that the case is being solved, but where you find one step forward, there is another step back. I know that it seems ridiculous to complain about this, as it happened in real life, but Moore nonetheless is responsible for the redundancy of the writing. The novel takes the reader through two separate legal cases following the radium dial painters, or rather, the victims of radium poisoning. I'm willing to read through the details of a court case, no matter how uninteresting to myself, but it is aggravating to get to the end of the case to find that my mental efforts for such a strain were unrewarded. Once again, as this isn't a fictitious tale, maybe it's in ill taste for me to complain (especially since the radium dial painters had to endure the true trial, knowing that they were living corpses at the same time). However, again, I feel as though Moore could have improved this section of the novel.

My complaints being said, I still believe that this was an incredibly important book. If this book were part of a school's curriculum, I would applaud them for their effort at educating not only the danger of unknown science, but also the evil of capitalistic corporations and industries whose concern is in how much money one can make rather than the safety and value of human life. Furthermore, once again despite my complaints, this was a fairly fast read. I definitely didn't fly through the pages, but they weren't a slog, either. I would suggest this book not only to those interested in the macabre like myself, but perhaps also to those interested in the fallacies of the justice system and industrialization.