Artifact
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Scary Old Sex, the story of a gifted young biologist's fight for the life, and the love, that she wants--a novel of sex, drive, and motherhood that crackles with female reality and desire.
"An homage to the body's capacity to impart amazement." - Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"An artifact of so many women's lives." - Lynn Steger Strong, New York Times Book Review
From practicing psychiatrist and critically acclaimed author of Scary Old Sex ("the kind of bliss that lifts right off the page" -Dwight Garner, NYT), Artifact is the dazzling, half-century-spanning story of biologist Lottie Kristin. Born in Michigan in the early 1940s to a taciturn mother and embittered father, Lottie is independent from the start, fascinated with the mysteries of nature and the human body. By age sixteen, she and her sweetheart, cheerful high school sports hero Charlie Hart, have been through a devastatingly traumatic pregnancy. When an injury ends Charlie's football career four years later, the two move to Texas hoping for a fresh start.
There, torn between the vitality of the antiwar movement and her family's traditional values, Lottie discovers the joys of motherhood, and reconnects with her interest in biology and experimentation, taking a job as a lab technician. While Charlie's depression pervades their home, Lottie's instinct is toward life; though every step is a struggle, she opts for single motherhood, graduate school, a career, and eventually, a marriage that makes space for all that she is.
Bravely and wisely written, Artifact is an intimate and propulsive portrait of a whole woman, a celebration of her refusal to be defined by others' imaginations, and a meditation on the glorious chaos of biological life.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
When we first meet the fascinating Lottie Kristin, she’s busy dissecting a rat. It’s the perfect introduction to Arlene Heyman’s fascinating heroine, who’s equal parts intellectual and sensual. Lottie comes of age in the 1950s, in a conservative Michigan town, where her adventurous streak leads her into a disastrous pregnancy and a struggling marriage with a would-be football star. After a brief tenure as a college professor in the 1960s—a part of the story that brilliantly captures the anti-war youth movement’s wild, chaotic energy—Lottie eventually finds her footing as a pioneering biologist. Heyman’s protagonist is constantly propelled forward by her inquisitive nature…and held back by her all-too-relatable flaws. Heyman’s 2016 short-story collection, Scary Old Sex, made her a literary sensation in her mid-seventies, and her first novel proves that her eye is sharper than ever. Artifact is a true celebration of life in all its messy glory.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychiatrist Heyman's richly drawn debut novel (after the collection Scary Old Sex) delves into the life of Lottie Levinson, a 42-year-old college science professor. It's 1984, and Lottie, happily married to her second husband, Jake, balances an intricate research project with battles against misogyny in the lab and the demands of being a wife and mother. Times weren't much simpler in Lottie's Midwest childhood in the repressive 1950s, when Lottie's authoritarian father could not quash her excitement about science and sex, and she became pregnant at 16 with her high school boyfriend, Charlie. Lottie's miscarriage brought the couple closer, and they got married after Charlie's promising college and pro football career was crushed by a leg injury in his senior year at the University of Michigan. Lottie, against Charlie's objections, becomes a medical lab tech and gains the self-confidence she will need when her first marriage implodes. Every achievement Lottie makes in life is one she fights hard for, whether it's the professional recognition she deserves or finding a life partner in Jake, who adores her for who she is and fulfills her carnal needs as she matures into middle age. The explicit sex of Heyman's stories is on full display here, just as daring if occasionally gratuitous. This no-holds-barred account of a woman's quest to find satisfaction in her life is a showcase of Heyman's remarkable style.
