A thoughtful, compelling rumination on the human cost of medical advancement.
In Brodsky’s debut SF novel, a medical researcher grapples with the implications of a miracle drug.
As Will Dalal worked his way through school, the world was rocked by radical developments in medical technology—specifically, the ability to clone entire organs from small tissue samples: “Immortality had never looked so achievable, so tangible, so close. But as always, there was a catch. Though almost all human organs could be replicated with enough precision to replace the God-given ones, the brain often turned out just slightly awry.” Now Will is a postdoctoral fellow in the Genner Lab, where he’s researching medication to help “victims of brain regeneration” whose new brains didn’t come out quite right. The work gives Will purpose in a life otherwise hampered by feelings of romantic frustration and loneliness. Can the medicine that Will is developing—the eponymous Brill pill—really make a positive difference in the lives of the “zombies,” as he likes to think of them? As figures from his past reappear, Will begins to suspect that his efforts could be making the crisis even worse. The author’s prose is cutting and psychological; she briskly captures the evolving relationship between Will and Margot, a librarian who volunteers with the zombies: “They spent a lot of time together without noticing it. That is, Will did not notice it. Margot did. Her life had changed significantly over the past three years, just a little bit at a time, but she was aware of it, and she had let it happen.” Though the book’s premise might suggest a thriller plot, the story unfolds slowly. Brodsky is most interested in the moral implications of Will’s work and its effects on him and those around him. It’s a deliberative exploration of the murky relationship between medical and technological ethics, one that feels especially timely.
A thoughtful, compelling rumination on the human cost of medical advancement.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 978-1647425234
Page Count: 384
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
