Customer Reviews

Mendel's Dwarf

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Although the incongruity of the pairing startles, Mendel's Dwarf is an achingly beautiful love story.. It is also an account of scientific progress, of the strides made in the field of genetic research. And, it is poignant reminder of the paucity of our understanding regarding the human heart.

Dr. Benedict Lambert, Ben, a distinguished geneticist, is the great-great-great-nephew of Gregor Mendel, the Augustinian friar whose research in the inheritance characters in plants and hybridization provided the platform for modern genetics. Ironically, Ben has achondroplasia - he is a dwarf, a mutant as he calls himself, who "possesses a massive forehead and blunt, puglike features. His nose is stove in at the bridge, his mouth and jaw protrude. His limbs are squat and bowed, his fingers are mere squabs. He is one meter, twenty-seven centimeters tall."

Yet he is brilliant, so esteemed that he is called upon to address members of the Mendel Symposium some 100 years after his great-great-great uncle's death. Aware of the surprise, revulsion and pity in the eyes of his audience, he has steeled himself to ignore the "there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I sort of stare," yet he is cagey enough to use their sympathy, "the guilt of the survivor," to win over his listeners.

Following his address Ben visits the monastery at Brno where Mendel worked. It is here that their life stories begin to interweave. Through Ben's voice we learn that they share a devotion to research, while each is hampered in his own way - the eccentric friar by his humble background and the parameters imposed by the Augustinian order he follows, while Ben is fettered by his physical deformity.

As men they are both frustrated sexually. Mendel, bound by vows of celibacy, finds his muse in the safely wed Frau Rotwang, wife of a wealthy cotton mill owner, to whom the friar shyly presents a plant he has bred and named for her - the Adelaide fuchsia. His gift is received with "A small exhalation of breath. A shock. It is the first time that he has ever hinted at her Christian name, the first indication that he even knows it."

Ben's desire for intimacy is hobbled by his physical appearance. He finds a modicum of comfort and dismissive acceptance with prostitutes: "It'll be extra for you. Sorry dear, but that's the way it is. Market forces....extra for gross deformities." The pain of that encounter is small compared with his unrequited love for Miss Jean Piercey, a librarian at London's Royal Institute for Genetics, where Ben is on staff, determinedly working to identify the gene for achondroplasia. Only a writer with the compassion and skill of Simon Mawer could elicit empathy rather than sideshow curiosity when describing their unlikely coupling.

As the pair of biographies unfolds, the men's scientific discoveries are meticulously recounted. Although delivered clearly and succinctly, at times the complexities of such information as "You follow the riflips with radioactive DNA probes," may tend to intimidate. Yet, Mendel's Dwarf is an aurora borealis of ideas, a spectacular exploration of nature's cruelty, humankind's demand for conformity, the unremitting search for knowledge, and our unquenchable thirst for love.

Despite the lucidity of his prose and the ingeniousness of his tale, Mr. Mawer's crowning achievement surely is Ben, who tries to hide his vulnerability behind an armor of paradox. Raised by a father who never looked straight at him, "Always his glance was aslant, tangential, as though that way he might not notice," Ben develops his own way of coping: "You guard against self-pity, build bastions of cynicism, dig ditches of irony and sarcasm; but sometimes, just sometimes, the barriers are breached." In the breaching of these barriers the story reaches its cosmically tragic finale.

Winner of the United Kingdom's distinguished McKitterick Prize for fiction, Mr. Mawer is introduced to an American audience with Mendel's Dwarf. It is an auspicious, deeply affecting debut.

I found Simon Mawer's novel of a modern geneticist afflicted with achondroplasia -- dwarfism -- to be a well-written, compelling read. The book is filled with information on the theories of genetics that were pioneered by Georg Mendel 150 years ago -- a man whose genius was unrecognized in his own day. The scientific content is very relevant to the story told, and, to Mawer's credit, does not present an obstacle to the enjoyment of this novel -- on the contrary, it allows the reader a glimpse deep into the character of Ben Lambert, a man with an understandably intent mission: the isolation and identification of the gene responsible for his own mutation.

Lambert is an intelligent, acerbic, somewhat bitter character -- he has learned through his life to endure the polite and not-so-polite stares, the prejudices, the patronizing smiles of so-called 'normal' people. He has even learned to use his all-too-obvious condition in his studies and lectures -- making self-effacing jokes to lull his audience into a sense of relaxed cameraderie and submission, only to turn around and make a stabbing point with the determination and aim of Captain Ahab going after Moby Dick.

There is a love story here as well, in Lambert's relationship with Jean Piercey Miller. It is told very movingly -- it allows us to see fondness and emotion flourish in the heart of one who has been hardened by the treatment he has received at the hands of the world. There is also a purely erotic side, darker. It is tinged with a definite sadness, for we can see other, less healthy emotional undercurrents in both characters as well -- there is joy and sorrow in the cup from which they drink.

The book is written to include a series of flashnacks, allowing us a glimpse into the life of Georg Mendel, the Austrian friar who is also by chance (or by fate?) a distant relative of Dr. Lambert -- his great great great uncle. The difficulties encountered by Mendel in his day in gaining deserved attention for his pioneering work present an apt parallel to Lambert's modern-day struggles.

Near the book's climax, Lambert delivers a lecture on eugenics that is worth reading over several times -- given the current level of progress in the Human Genome Project, he presents some thoughts that we would do well to consider.

The novel presents an intelligently conceived, relevant story in an entertaining, engrossing way -- the book picks up its pace distinctly as it moves along, and the characters are well-drawn and compelling, making it difficult to put down.

You don't have to know genetics to understand Mendel's Dwarf, but it helps. The reader may think the title refers to Mendel's dwarf pea plants, but in fact the narrative is in the voice of Dr. Benedict Lambert, a genetics biochemist, an achondroplastic dwarf and great-grandnephew of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics.

The novel's theme shifts between the current love story of Benedict and a librarian, Jean (get it?), and Mendel's activities and researches with peas and corn. Interesting and difficult questions are raised by way of this story:

1) Why was Mendel's research largely ignored in its time although it was the obvious solution to questions raised by Darwin about evolution? (It had the scintillating title, "Research in Pea Plants," and the Darwin-Huxley-Fisher group were more interested in descriptive natural history and the British Empire than in Pascal's triangle and probability quotients.)
2) How was eugenics used as a rationale for the British Empire and by Hitler for the Holocaust, and are we still doing it?
3) Is it even possible to avoid unnatural selection in our time? (Isn't the practice of birth control a form of eugenics?)

There are footnotes and references throughout, but be careful. I checked a reference to a journal, Trends in Genetics, May 1995 via PubMed, but although I found the journal, could not locate the article he cites.

There is suspense throughout, even to Benedict's final dilemma. The book might have been called Benedict's Choice, but the author was too imaginative for that.

Aside from enjoyment, this book might be an excellent selection for a course called Science in Literature. Teenagers, especially, would identify with Benedict's loneliness and would be interested in the social and ethical dilemmas raised by our knowledge of modern genetics.

I was drawn in by the idea of a narrative told by a dwarf, and found the storyline compelling and irresistable. The brutal honesty and self-disclosure of the protagonist kept me riveted, though that seems to have put some readers off. Since I admittedly have only the basic layman's knowledge of genetics, the ethical issues raised by the story seemed very thoughtful to me. But don't get me wrong: the story itself is what stays primary, sticking with you between readings and drawing you back in for what happens next. I suspect much of the story will stay with me for a long time.

This novel is well worth reading. Mawer combines science and history and fiction in a remarkable way. Benedict the dwarf is an "Everyman," and his experience in life is a thought provoking, sometimes heartbreaking account of how people who are different see the world through the eyes of the "normal" who look at them with pity or shock. Benedict is not a saint, and his actions are not saintly. However, the author weaves together a story of Benedict and his distant famous relative Gregor Mendel that is brilliant. The love story is tender, touching, believable. And the bioethical dilemmas raised in this book are very thought provoking. I find myself thinking about different parts of this book without the book in front of me. That is a sign of a great novel. If you are a thinker who likes to ponder long after the last word of the last page is read, read this novel.

Simon Mawer interweaves the seperate stories of the lives of Gregor Mendel, 19th Century Monk and the unrecognized (during his lifetime, anyway) discoverer of the basic properties of genetics and Dr. Ben Lambert, Mendel's great-great-great nephew, world recognized leading-edge geneticist who's the victim of a genetic mistake--he's an achondroplastic dwarf. In juxtaposing the stories of the "normal" monk unrecognized as the genius he was and the highly recognized dwarf who yearns to be normal Simon Mawer has created a fertile groud for examining a broad rage of questions: What is "Normal"?, courage?, accomplishment? What results from genetics as opposed to environment? The two men sahre many real life situations (the sex starved monk, a not very religious or pious fellow who makes chioces based upon expedience rather than faith, who is involuntarily cleibate by virtue of his outward vocation, and Dr. Lambert, the largely sex starved dwarf who is involuntarily celibate due to his outward deformity) but by virtue of their circumstances are alloted very different ranges of choices by fate dealing with their situations. A novel full of irony, philosophical questions and a trememdous trove of information about genetics as practiced in this modern age, Mendel's Dwarf is a fascinating book that will lead the reader to question his own definitions of "normal", to see the effects of abnormality, both upon it's victims as well as upon society and the "normal" population in general. A unique, entertaing, troubling and educational read.

This novel tells the story of Benedict Lambert, a distant relative of Gregor Mendel, the founder of scientific genetics. Like Mendel, Lambert is a brilliant geneticist. Unlike Mendel, Lambert is a dwarf.

The story is a mix of humor and philosophy. Lambert's stature as a dwarf does not effect his high intelligence. Nor does it dwarf his sexual needs and sexual appetite. His stature does make it difficult for Lambert to form a lasting sexual attachment, (or any sexual attachment) to a woman. The frustration and loneliness that human beings are heir to are magnified. Lambert uses his short stature to stare up women's skirts (with many predictable gags in the book). He frequents prostitutes and his home is cluttered with the latest x-rated magazines as well as with erudite scientific journals.

The story tells of Lambert's efforts to form a relationship with a mousy but leggy librarian, Ms Janet Piercey. When they meet, Ms. Piercey is single but when the two become involved, she has married. The relationship is adulterous, and the attendant triangle has a complicated and violent denoument.

The characters of Lambert and Piercey are well-developed and interesting. In addition, the book draws parallels between Lambert's life and that of his distant cousin Mendel, whose personal life was little known to me. There are also interesting discussions in the book of the classical composer Janacek, who was acquainted with Mendel and whose music is not as well-known in the United States as it might be. There is a lot of philosophical discussion in the book which is provocative but rather of the off-the-cuff variety. I found some of it got in the way of the story and the characters. Still, the book will make the reader think.

The book discusses, of course, the nature of human "normality" (what is the consequence of being a dwarf?), and the power of human sexuality. For me, the most fascinating questions the book raises are religous in character. In the first half of the book, we seem to get a philosophy of naturalism which suggests that dwarfism, or the human condition, is not caused or fruitfully understood by the actions and will of a revealed God but is a function itself solely of the chance actions of genes with each other. In some sense this is a liberating philosophy because it frees Lambert from a sense of guilt and of anger with an allegedly all-powerful being at his condition.

As the book progresses, a shift takes place. There is a discussion of the ethical dilemmas posed by abortion and by eugenics (human genetic engineering) that advances in science have made possible. There is some suggestion that human beings do not know everything and are not the measure of everything and that scientific-technological advancement and hubris have outstripped wisdom. I think the tone of the book as a whole is conservative and may tend to qualify, if it doesn't undermine, the sense of secularism conveyed in the opening chapters.

This is a fascinating thoughtful book which reads well. It will make the reader both laugh and think.

Achondroplasia. I would have had to look the word up had I not read this fascinating novel. It refers to the genetic condition of dwarfism, turning otherwise able men and women into "little people" who have traditionally found employment in circuses. Dr. Benedict Lambert, the protagonist of Simon Mawer's relatively early novel, is no side-show freak, but one of the world's leading researchers in genetics, searching among other things for the gene that caused his own condition. A successful man, but also a lonely one, used to evoking embarrassment in others, admiration perhaps, but seldom love. Mawer's greatest achievement is to make us see the world through his eyes and feel with him, so that his discovery of love is like the exploration of an unknown land, even though we suspect he is there merely as a visitor.

Mawer gets us past Dr. Lambert's body by taking us into his mind. This is one of those novels that tell you a great deal about a particular subject as background to the story. What Melville had done for whaling, Mawer does for genetics -- in particular the life and work of Gregor Mendel, whose patient work breeding peas in the Friary garden in Brno (then called Brünn) in Czechoslovakia would lay the foundations for modern genetics. Mawer is a biologist himself, and he makes a good case for his contention that Mendel's original paper of 1865 stands with Darwin on natural selection (1858) and Crick and Watson on DNA (1953) as the three most significant publications in the history of biology. But he presents the human picture as well; Mendel, whom family history places as Benedict's great-great-great-uncle, is brought to gentle life in these pages as the book's second protagonist. The novel thus has the curious two-pronged fascination of Julian Barnes' FLAUBERT'S PARROT, only with a stronger modern story.

Twelve years later, Mawer would publish THE GLASS ROOM, also set in Brno, tracing the thinly-disguised history of Mies van der Rohe's iconic Tugendhat House in the hills above the city. It too would span several generations, including the successive takeovers by the Germans and the Soviets in the Second World War and after. In MENDEL'S DWARF, however, the historical perspective is more successful because there is a gap of over a century between Mendel's time and Benedict Lambert's, so each can be fully situated in his own time and (other than that rumored relationship) Mawer does not have to make up a story to connect the two. He does manage to touch on both the Fascist and the Soviet eras, however, by giving an overview of the various perversions of the new science of genetics. No sooner had Mendel's work come to belated public attention, for example, than certain groups were using his principles under the banner of "eugenics" to support the propagation of racially superior stock at the expense of those judged to be inferior.

In the later part of the book, Benedict himself encounters an ethical dilemma that brings him very close to the kind of eugenic manipulation that he condemns in history. This makes the book strikingly modern, addressing ethical issues of genetic manipulation that have arisen with advances in molecular technology. If there is a flaw in the book (other than an occasional tendency to be too didactic), it is that motives and events become a little blurred at this point, and what might have been a clear moral crux merely gets finessed. But all the same, it gives extra bite to an absorbing story, and makes the reader think as well as feel. [4.5 stars]

I discovered this book at an art exhibit entitled "Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics" (See: Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics, also by Simon Mawer) held at Chicago's Field Museum in 2006. The exhibit itself was a wonderful experience, providing many details of Mendel's life as a friar and his work with the genetics of the sweet pea. Although a novel, the book provides further insights into Mendel's genius, as seen through the eyes of Dr. Benedict Lambert, successful geneticist, distant relative of Mendel himself, and a dwarf (created by a single mutation of a single protein pair on a single gene which reads AGG rather than GGG; the mutation causes a lack of cartilage cells which in turn causes bones not to grow). So here we have the perfect irony, which is not wasted on Benedict Lambert or the author and hopefully not on the reader: the book's protagonist is a geneticist who is also a classic example genetic theory at its most ruthless.

It's only Benedict's body that is deformed, not his mind or his heart. He is as capable of love and lust as any phenotypically normal man and therein lies the dynamic tension that drives the book. Can a normal height woman ever find such a man as Benedict attractive? Will he ever have children? Should he ever have children, knowing there is a 50% probability that his child will suffer achondroplasia as he does? This beautifully written book will leave you much chastened if you are phenotypically normal. It will give you deep insight into what it means to be a physical genetic oddity in a world of `normal' people and it will make you think twice about the grand march of scientific progress as it applies to genetics.

I appreciated the style of this text. It flowed well and really maintained my interest. The juxtaposition between the scientists past and present was accomplished with great mastery. The love story component of the text was at times heart-wrenching and yet embarrassingly honest. It had been so long since I have read a good novel, I was elated to read such a well-written and well-concieved novel.