Gray Matter [Hardcover]

Gary Braver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 2002

Rachel Whitman has everything. She’s young, attractive, and affluent. Her husband is the brilliant CEO of his own company. They have a big new house in a flossy Boston suburb. They have all the brand-name “toys” that go along with wealth. And they have a gorgeous, sweet little six-year-old son named Dylan.

But Dylan has learning disabilities. Although intelligence isn’t everything, Rachel lives in a community where the rewards for brainpower are conspicuous. She fears her son will grow up never fully appreciating the wonders of life. Like so many middle-class parents who would do anything to improve life for their children—whether it means fixing hair, teeth, or nose—Rachel cannot accept that her child is less than perfect.

Tortured by the idea that something she did in the past caused Dylan’s problems, Rachel becomes obsessed with a secret and expensive medical procedure that claims to turn slow children into geniuses.

Should she and her husband sacrifice their new fortune on the risky, experimental procedure for the sake of their son’s happiness? Unaware of the real consequences of the brain enhancement procedure, Rachel can’t know that the costs of the operation go far beyond financial ones.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Visceral chills enliven the otherwise predictable path of Braver's second scientific thriller (after Elixir). Uber-yuppie Rachel Whitman worries about the teasing her slow-witted six-year-old son Dylan suffers at the hands of his brilliant playmate Lucinda at the fancy Massachusetts North Shore day care center he attends; worse, she fears that her college drug experimentation caused Dylan's deficiency. Seeing Rachel's distress, Lucinda's mother, Sheila, confides that Lucinda was much like Dylan until she was treated by Dr. Lucius Malenko at his exclusive Nova Children's Center to medically enhance her intelligence. Malenko's other patients include young Julian Watts, who works hours on end making exquisite pointillist paintings and has ground his teeth to nubs; Brendan LaMotte, who has a computer-like memory and deep emotional problems (he fantasizes about killing his grandfather); and Nicole DaFoe, who's sleeping with her history teacher and sabotages her academic rival to secure an important scholarship. Meanwhile, dogged police detective Greg Zakarian obsessively pores over the long-unsolved death of an unidentified little boy, even as another boy is abducted. This convoluted yarn works best when Braver keeps all his storylines in play, but as the plot unfolds, he focuses mostly on Rachel, whose worries about her son's failure to over-achieve make her the most conventional and perhaps least compelling of his characters. Still, he paints a rich tableau of creepy medical details and middle-class status anxiety and pulls off an explosive finale.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The title of Braver's second novel refers to the brain, to be sure, but also to the gray areas of human morality, surgical ethics, and human relationships. Neurologist Lucius Malenko got his start as a researcher in the Ukraine. When Soviet leaders learned of his experiments with mental enhancement in animals, they supported similar work on humans. After he came to the U.S., Malenko worked secretly for the National Security Agency, then set up a children's center in New England to capitalize on well-to-do, well-educated parents' desires to have their average children's IQs enhanced. The enterprise became a goldmine, and Malenko used the profits to set up his "Smart Money Portfolio." Quietly told, carefully censored success stories led more victims into Malenko's trap. Braver's intriguing tale never stumbles; everything in it, no matter how appalling, fits in believably as Malenko lies about personality changes in enhanced children, sets parent against parent, and has potential whistleblowers and kids who "fail" his operations destroyed. Don't be surprised if Gray Matter tops several (nonmedical) charts. William Beatty
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1st edition (September 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312876130
• ISBN-13: 978-0312876135
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (111 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,399,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gary Braver is the award-winning and bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed psychological thrillers. His novels have been celebrated for their high-concepts, careful craftsmanship, well-rounded characters, and page-turning momentum. Some of his titles have a medical slant including ELIXIR, GRAY MATTER, and FLASHBACK, which is the only thriller to have won a Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction (2006). His latest novel, SKIN DEEP, about cosmetic surgery, was published in July 2008 and was called "a gripping, twisty thriller that deserves a wide audience" by Booklist.

His next novel, TUNNEL VISION, which centers on near-death experiences, will be published on June 21, 2011. Of that book, legendary author Ray Bradbury has said, "I have long believed that science will move us more toward God and give us proofs of His creations. With TUNNEL VISION, Gary Braver provides a wonderfully frightening and insightful tale on this theme that shatters my bones and leaves me to piece myself back together."

Three of Gary Braver's novels have been optioned for movies, including ELIXIR by director Ridley Scott. He is the only thriller novelist to have three titles listed in the top-10 highest customer reviews on Amazon.com at the same time.

Under his own name, Gary Goshgarian, he is an award-winning professor of English at Northeastern University where he teaches courses in Modern Bestsellers, Science Fiction, Horror Fiction, and Fiction Writing. He has also taught fiction-writing workshops through out the United States and Europe for over twenty years. He is also the author of six popular college writing textbooks, now in 34 editions.
He lives with his family outside of Boston. His website: www.garybraver.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Very Own Super Tot, October 24, 2002

By 

sweetmolly (RICHMOND, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gray Matter (Hardcover)

"Gray Matter" is first and foremost a thriller with a capitol "T." It is 400 pages, so arrange your schedule accordingly. Allow yourself an hour or so to eat and sleep; nothing else will distract you from this biotech/medical thriller.

In this day and age of funneling affluent children from birth into the "right" preschool, prep school and college; is it unthinkable to want to "enhance" Johnny's all-to-average I.Q.? I find this most believable when we have platoons of small children robotically marching from ballet to play dates (a term I particularly despise) to tutorial groups to soccer practice. Many need an appointment secretary just to march in place.

The Whitmans are an upwardly mobile dream couple, wealthy, handsome and living in one of Boston's most desirable suburbs. The only cloud on their horizon is son Dylan's Learning Disability. Dylan is a happy six-year old with a wonderful ability to sing and memorize show tunes (with gestures). He is an outgoing, gentle, loving little boy, but let's face it, an I.Q. of 83. He is behind other children in his cognitive abilities and grasp of abstract concepts. His days of the week are Monday, Twosday, Threesday, etc.

The Whitmans are distressed and want the best for their son. By clandestine word of mouth, they hear of the possible "enhancement" of mental abilities, even doubling of I.Q.s from a friend who has an irritatingly bright daughter. Meanwhile in a parallel story an obsessed cop has been searching for three years for the identity of a dead child. All he has to go on is a skull with a series of small drilled holes in it. We meet a few of these "enhanced" children, and they are as advertised: brilliant. But all seem to suffer side effects of loss of affect or compulsive behavior. As the Whitmans get closer to accepting the expensive procedure, the more sinister the situation becomes. The parents become divided on what is best to do. Some of the other parents are in heartbreaking situations.

Mr. Braver is skillful in his plotting, notching up the tension incrementally. He has a graceful way of bringing his characters to life. Dylan is a truly fetching little boy and becomes compellingly important to the reader. This novel delivers and will make you think. Be prepared to count off at least a few people you know right in your own backyard that might see "enhancement" as a very good thing indeed.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Profound Journey, October 14, 2002

By 

J. Freeman "lover of music you don't hear on... (Hingham, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gray Matter (Hardcover)

Gray Matter takes you on a profound journey with Braver's sympathetic characters. There's universal appeal here. Every parent has moments when they wonder if their children could be "enhanced," whether or not they're learning disabled - whether through the use of tutors or in the extreme situation in Gray Matter, through brain surgery.

I'm not a horror fan, but I love the way Braver draws you in and horrifies you. At several junctures, I found myself saying "Oh, no!" out loud (this was true with Elixir, Braver's earlier book, also excellent). While most of the brain altered kids are pretty scary to comtemplate, Brendan, a brain-altered teenager, is the exception and my favorite character. He's a fascinating young man whose mind doesn't function normally, and Braver does a superb job of letting you share his world.

Gray Matter is an easy read and totally accessible even though it's 400 pages of thought-provoking intelligent material. That's Braver's great strength and what makes his books stay with you after you finish them. The writing and characterization is great and the plots are totally unique and close enough to reality to have profound implications.

My last thought: He has some powerful descriptive passages,and I love the way he brings the Massachusetts setting to life, from the fictional wealthy suburb of Hawthorne to his description of Cambridge's Mass Ave: "With Harvard at one end and MIT at the other end, Mass Ave was like a giant filament blazing with the greatest concentration of mind power in the world." His use of language, for example, the way he uses the word "Incandescent", will draw you in and stay with you.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gray Matter is great reading matter., January 1, 2003

By 

Daniel Fleishman (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gray Matter (Hardcover)

Like Braver's excellent previous novel, "Elixer," "Gray Matter" represents the bio-medical thriller at its best. While on one hand a true page turner -- fast-paced and suspenseful -- it also raises a number of controversial issues related to such subjects as the nature of human intelligence, experimental medical practices, and parental pressures to do what's best for their children (or perhaps more accurately, for themselves?) The story considers how far parents should -- and will -- go to ensure that their children grow up with all the advantages superior brain power offers. Moreover, what is the cost of enlisting extraordinary medical procedures to enhance thinking capabilities, especially in terms of the ultimate effects on the personalities of the young subjects? Gray Matter makes both your brain and heart race, its subject matter made even more compelling with the current discussions surrounding the recent announcements of human cloning efforts. I highly recommend this book.