The Secret
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
"Of course, I've always had a secret. Have I always known it? I suppose I did, in a way - in the way that children know such things. That is, I knew and didn't know." In this novel Eva Hoffman explores various kinds and strata of secrets: intimate secrets, and secrets of family past; the kinds of secrets that can be decoded from clues, and the kind that themselves seem to offer tantalizing clues to the fundamental mysteries of the human selfhood. This is a story about a peculiarly powerful mother-daughter bond and about a haunting, about a young woman's quest for individuation and the challenges posed by contemporary science to our deepest notions of individuality. Using the near future to reflect on the conditions of the present, Hoffman has written a tale that grapples with the oldest riddles of identity, consciousness and self-knowledge - a novel of ideas for our time, and an imaginative fable whose resonances are timeless.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Can a clone contain a new human soul or just a photocopy? Hoffman brilliantly meditates on this mystery in her auspicious fiction debut as she examines the bond between Iris and Elizabeth Surrey, which gives new meaning to the well-worn term "my mother myself." Iris's search for identity begins when the teen discovers her birth in 2005 was achieved via cloning. Iris's single mom, Elizabeth, fled Manhattan to the Midwest to rear Iris after becoming estranged from her parents and sister. They live a quiet, symbiotic life until Iris turns 12 and her mother falls in love with Steven, a professor, who becomes disturbed by the unnatural closeness of the two and leaves. It's not long before Iris, in a tailspin of heart-wrenching confusion, flees home to see if she is more than just an extension of someone who is "not quite a mother and more than one: home, sibling, the larger part of myself, as much me as my limbs or bloodstream." Unraveling the secret of self takes her on a quest not easily ended. The relentless first-person viewpoint showcases the emotional and spiritual ramifications of being a cloned child: "I was her, I was her, I was her... Then who was I, who was she, what had she done? Did she steal my soul, my very self, or did she give me her own, by an unspeakable act of black magic?" Some SF readers may find the philosophical musings old hat, but wiser ones won't.
