Heredity

By Jenny Davidson

Book Overview

Elizabeth Mann, haunted by self-destructive habits, thinks that leaving New York will solve her problems. During a trip to London she comes face to face with the skeleton of the famous criminal Jonathan Wild. Her obsession with the thief is interrupted by an encounter with Gideon Streetcar, an infertility specialist and future lover.

At an auction a few weeks into their relationship, Gideon bids on a box of memoirs by Jonathan Wild's second wife, Mary. Her journals are doled out sparingly throughout the novel, leaving the reader and Elizabeth breathless for what happens next.

Influenced by conversations with Gideon about cloning possibilities, she enlists Gideon's help to allow her to give birth to the clone of Wild. Elizabeth is implanted with an egg with Wild's DNA and soon shows signs of pregnancy.

Both deadpan detective novel and twisted historical romance, Heredity shows how the past, present and future are linked. As the book ends, both heroines find themselves in similar situations: pregnant and damaged by the past but determined to survive.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1887128794
• ISBN13: 9781887128797
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Soft Skull
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

loved it

This is a readable book. It's sort-of science fictiony and makes fun of academics and doctors. The narrator is funny and intelligent and troubled. Plus the book is chock full of sex. What more could you want?

Buy this book!

Surprising and touching, this novel explores serious questions of families and morality with wicked, subtle humour. The first-person narrator of "Heredity" is a rare accomplishment: a smart, self-destructive young woman who rings absolutely true. Well worth a read!

great characters, great writing

I was stunned by this book, in the best sort of way. It's better written than just about anything out there and really romantic--not in the sense of easy happy endings, which it rejects, but in the sense of getting at the rawness of a young woman's emotional life. Two young women, actually, a few centuries apart: One of the author's gifts is making the sections of the book set in the past as immediate as those in the present; there's no false frumpery. Among its other charms, this is a great book if you've always been a little suspicious of doctors.

Fantastic.

A hilarious and touching book, with its tentacles in every imaginable field: genetics, Dickens, travel writing...an all-over attractive book with brilliant turns-of-phrase, a decadently ludicrous plotline, and a strong heroine. It reads quickly and is addictive from the start.