Wonderful. Learn about genetics while getting to know a cranky, intelligent, funny little man - Dr. Benedict Lambert. Lambert is a dwarf. He is also a geneticist, and much of his drive in this field is to find out just what makes a dwarf. About 90% of "little people" are accidents. They come from normal parents with no history of dwarfism. It's a genetic goof, a mutation. The question is: where does this mutation occur on the incredibly long DNA chain? When offered a seat at a prestigious institution, Lambert says this will be his area of study. There is hardly an hour that goes by when Lambert is not reminded of the differences between him and "normal" humans. He is also sharply aware of the way many people overcompensate for their discomfort around him, clapping perhaps a little too loudly, smiling a little too broadly, only emphasizing more that they feel he is different from them.Lambert yearns to know what he might have looked like, if the traits of achondroplasty had not separated him from his mother and father and joined him with others around the world instead. He wonders what a child of his, a normal child, would look like. As he explains to us various wonders of genetics, complete with footnotes, always at the back of his mind is how it all ended up - in him. Curiously, he is related, by an odd great-uncle, to Gregor Mendel, the little priest who labored over his pea plants for years and years and wrote the definitive explanation of genetics, of dominance and submission and more. We are treated to many imaginary conversations in Mendel's life, filling out the bare bones of what is known of his existence. This is no dry science book, however. The personality of Ben is far larger than his overlooked body, and it is this character that makes the book so alive. Ben is no long-suffering saint. When told how brave he is, he counters that bravery only counts when you have a choice. His appetites are certainly up to par, and his thoughts might even be considered ...at times...perverted. And thus we come to his affair. He meets up with a woman who was a young librarian when he was but a callow youth seeking wisdom from the library shelves. He had always felt a little bit of lust about this quiet, retiring librarian with the quirky trait of having one blue eye and one green (a mutation as well!). The two become adult friends, and Ben can hardly keep from thinking about becoming more than friends. I will leave it to you to discover if this happens and what is the result. While this is a funny, witty, intelligent book, don't be fooled into thinking there is anything particularly lightweight about it, Easy to read, sure, but weighty in implications, and finally, not made for television.I should mention - the library from which I bought this book classified it as a "romance". tsk tsk. Somebody there should have read it or at least read the inside covers.
London geneticist Benedict Lambert is the great-great-great-nephew of Gregor Mendel, the priest who discovered the laws of heredity and whose work, lost from view until decades after his death, finally offered a mechanism for natural selection. But this isn't Ben's only distinction. He has the disadvantage of being an achondroplasic dwarf, which means he finds difficulty in being taken seriously in both his professional and his social life -- specifically, his sexual life.But then, at last, he finds love in the arms of a mousy colleague, Jean Miller, estranged from her dimwit husband Hugo. Even after she and Hugo are reconciled, the bond between her and Ben remains strong. And when, because of Hugo's sterility, she decides to opt for IVF, she asks Ben if the seed could be his and if he could use his skill as a geneticist to ensure, through selection, that the ensuing child be "normal" rather than achondroplasic . . .Ben narrates this love story often quite caustically, so that we can feel his bitterness even while we're laughing at his jokes. He also interweaves into the narrative quite a lot of fascinating biographical information about Mendel and a good deal of very clear explication of heredity. I found the result to be completely absorbing, even though I was sure the relationship/affair between Ben and Jean was headed for tragedy. The climax of the tale is, indeed, heartwrenching, both in the way I'd expected but also, more profoundly, in a way that I hadn't expected.This is a novel that I won't forget in a hurry. Thoroughly recommended.
What do You think about Mendel's Dwarf (1999)?
Mendel's Dwarf is provocative and raises issues like whether IVF is really a form of eugenics. Mawer skillfully blends his contemporary narrative with an invented history of Gregor Mendel. The reason I am rating it 3 stars ("liked it") rather than 4 stars ("really liked it") is because I think Mawer needs to work on his characterizations of his female figures. Jean Piercely is not a fully developed character--Mawer has her giggling a lot, and her repeated self-deprecatory statements of not understanding Dr. Lambert's work wear thin very quickly. Likewise is the blushing Frau Rotwang underdeveloped; and she, too, doesn't understand much of what Gregor Mendel is saying. Mawer had fun with character names and this adds some dimension to the story. Just why is Jean so mousy anyway? It is a pretty quick read and for the ideas it poses is well worth reading.
—Pesha
Here there are two parallel stories, that of Gregor Mendel and his ground breaking work on genetics in the mid 1800s, and the fictional story of Benedict Lambert, dwarf,current day Microbiologist.This is an incredibly clever book, but interested as I am in genetics, I found it so technical that it was too much like hard work to put in the effort to understand it fully. Being constantly pulled back to Benedict's story was not so much of a relief from the effort but more of a leap too long to make.
—Mary Lou
A good way to learn about Mendel and genetics, all in an easy-to-read novel.The main character is not very likeable, which may be problematic for some, but Mendel's bio is engagingly written. OK, so the poignant story of Mendel's pioneering paper found with uncut (i.e. unread) pages on Darwin's shelves may be an urban myth, but still, the point about Mendel being ahead of his time in conceiving of the "particles of inheritance" is nevertheless compelling. (Darwin was revolutionary, yes, but OF his time, which is why people got so hot and bothered. Mendel's ideas were rejected, or worse, ignored because nobody would be able to conceive of their significance, until more than half a century later when his work was rediscovered. Mendelian genetics explains everything we know about evolution and inheritance, and this book helps explain why he is such an amazing thinker/researcher).
—Liza
