Origin

by Diana Abu-Jaber

Book Overview

In this "mystery of cold beauty and dark isolation, written with crystalline precision" (Miami Herald), a series of crib deaths in Syracuse, New York, draws the attention of police and national media. Is a serial infant murderer at large? A "haunting story, icy cold in its upstate New York setting but glowing with the unusual brightness of its heroine" (Eugene Weekly), Origin stars a solitary fingerprint examiner who finds herself playing a critical...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393331555
• ISBN13: 9780393331554
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.7" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Syracuse, an excellent setting

A sense of place has always been important to me as a reader. Diana Abu-Jaber does an impressive job of it in THE ORIGIN. Her novel is set in Syracuse, New York. She uses weather to full effect as most of the story occurs during the winter time, and its main character, Lena Dawson, is susceptible to frost bite. Dawson also likes to walk and this gives us a panorama of what the city is like. Abu-Jaber also creates a sympathetic character in Lena Dawson, a fingerprint examiner at the Syracuse crime lab. She has some issues, mainly with her foster parent, Pia, who never adopted her. Abu-Jaber also does an excellent job with the minor characters who work in the forensics lab. Her immediate superior Alyce, Sylie in Trace Analysis, and Margot in DNA analysis will remind you of people in your own office. Then there's Charlie, Lena's ex-husband and sensitive detective Keller who supplants Charlie as a love interest. Put them all together and you have a believable world. Somebody in Syracuse is murdering babies and Lena is the only one, outside of one of the parents, who believes it's not Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. She has an incredible sense of smell and realizes almost immediately that there's something wrong with the baby blankets of the SIDS victims. One minor complaint I had was Lena's memory of being raised by an ape after a plane crash until at the age of three she was taken in by Pia. I felt that was just a bit over-the-top. But Abu-Jaber uses that motif as a plot thread, and it all comes clear in the end. Diana Abu-Jaber is an impressive young writer, and I'll be looking forward to her next novel.

Origin establishes Abu-Jaber as one of today's most intriguing authors

Diana Abu-Jaber's startling literary prowess is only the half of it. What truly sets this author apart is her unpredictability. She has now tackled an incredibly diverse array of genres, and with each book she one-ups the naysayers, delivering knock-out tales that resonate and educate. In Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience, she offers a tender, poignant, Willa Cather-style coming-of-age tale intertwined with disturbing undercurrents of racial and social alienation. In The Language of Baklava, food is the delectable conduit between family, tradition, and cultural legacy. Crescent, a quirky love story, introduces the reader to a marvelously sympathetic cast of characters. And now, in Origin, Abu-Jaber again walks in a new direction, finding steady footing from the very first page with a taut mystery/thriller. Origin kept me guessing--and it kept me reading well into the night. The deftness and humanity of her work, and her audacious transcendence of easy labels, surely earn Abu-Jaber a place in the pantheon of today's best and most intriguing authors.

Another superb Abu-Jaber novel

Diana Abu-Jaber never fails to amaze. Her characters are so perfectly developed that she could write 100 pages of dialogue between five characters, without ever telling us who's speaking, and we would know. Each voice is so unique, so identifiable...and so compelling. In ORIGIN, I thought I'd be annoyed by the neurotic viewpoint of Lena, but I began to understand her and she won me over. Her pain, her tenacity, everything about her...including her driven need to solve this case...kept me turning pages well into the night. This is not the first time Abu-Jaber's fiction has deprived me of sleep...and I hope it won't be the last.

"Lost childhood lingers like tribal scars."

This original author exhibits her versatility in a novel that pits the terrible reality of a baby killer at large with a young woman's haunted past. In Syracuse, New York, fingerprint expert Lena Dawson is happily ensconced in an intimate office setting, at home with the tools of her trade and diligent in her chosen career. Recently instrumental in the resolution of a very difficult child murder, Lena experiences unusual insights into crime scenes, an invaluable trait in detecting critical evidence in baffling cases. But Lena abhors media attention; her personal history is deeply shadowed by a mysterious past, her foster mother refusing to divulge the details of the transaction that delivered the little girl to the home of Pia and Henry McWilliams. With vague memories of a rain forest, Lena doesn't speak about her past, the unknown weighing on an already delicate psyche. Lena is that rarest of creatures, an unassuming, devoted employee who only desires to perform her duties in the Lab, following the intricate whorls of fingerprints as incontrovertible evidence. When a recent tragic crib death is challenged by a desperate mother who begs Lena to delve deeper than the obvious, the fingerprint expert is trapped by the tormented woman's pleas, sensing that indeed there may be another, more heinous explanation for the death. Recently, a number of other so-called crib deaths have occurred in the same county, in sufficient number to warrant further investigation. Thus begins Lena's troubled foray into the complex world of a baby killer, complicated by her own confusing history cobbled from fragments of memory. Eventually, Lena is forced to question her past with a growing suspicion that it is inextricably bound to the deaths of the babies. For Lena, all is smoke and mirrors, her memories intangible, foster mother resolute in her silence. Pursued by an almost-ex-husband who attempts to woo his wife back in spite of numerous infidelities and the quiet attentions of detective Keller Duseky, Lena finds it impossible to concentrate on relationship issues while immersed in this harrowing case, but is not insensitive to the patient and non-judgmental quality of Keller's support. A kind of psychic madness descends on Lena's investigation, a lurking menace that attends her every move. While political pressure builds, the press clamoring for information, Lena remains steadfast, ignoring the threats to her personal safety on a trail only she can follow. Lena Dawson is a multi-dimensional character whose murky past threatens the future, the inextricable threads of a secret history intimately woven through an increasingly dangerous case. From a schizophrenic but brilliant elderly neighbor to the grieving mothers of lost babies, from Lena's sparse, yet compelling memories to a foster mother's refusal to acknowledge the truth, Origin addresses the dark side of human experience. As Lena seeks the revelations of a disturbing history, falling deep into territory fra