A timely thriller buoyed by accessible science.
A fertility doctor invents a gene-editing technique that draws the attention of wealthy people and protesters alike in this medical thriller.
Over the course of this story, debut author Rochelle unusually alters the narrative voice of his omniscient narrator to reflect the personalities of his shifting characters. He opens with literary prose when describing the funeral of Tripp Galloway’s deceased younger brother, Henry, a victim of cystic fibrosis who “always dreamt of becoming a pilot in between hospital visits and trying to breathe.” He switches to a sarcastic tone to portray Tripp, now an OB/GYN specialist who gains Food and Drug Administration approval for a new gene-editing procedure to “wipe that shit stain of a disease”—sickle cell—“off the face of the planet.” Word of Tripp’s success reaches Slavomir Krukov, a wealthy, violent Russian whose wife, Anna, carries the gene for hemophilia; it also reaches Jodi-Ann Kapp, a Mississippi homemaker who believes that a vaccine caused her son’s autism. The pacing falters then, because Krukov and Kapp—who provide the novel’s major conflict, as both are after Tripp for different reasons—disappear for a while in favor of company meetings and a minor plot regarding a couple who both carry the cystic fibrosis gene but want to have a child. However, the pace picks up again, with some memorable scenes, as when Kapp accosts a couple exiting Tripp’s clinic, “a fake baby, covered in fake blood, was lobbed from the middle of the protesters and hit the man square in the face,” making him look like “a modern day warrior, now decorated for battle,” and when Krukov murders Dennis, an FDA employee on a crusade to shut down Tripp’s company, Krukov calls cleaning his weapon on Dennis’ shirt a “cliché.” These scenes add off-color levity to a novel that tackles gene editing, and its science, in an offbeat way.
A timely thriller buoyed by accessible science.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-09-838334-3
Page Count: 244
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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