The Duplicate [Kindle Edition]

Helen Fitzgerald (Author)

Book Description

Barbara isn't the most popular girl in school and she's hoping that the Ruth Warren self-help book can help her navigate through the questions in her life. How can she get Beth to be her friend? Why is Beth so popular? How can she get her true love, Tim, to notice her?

What is her mad scientist uncle working on in his basement laboratory? Why does he need an alcoholic homeless woman to live with them for nine months?

The terrible answers will affect Barbara's entire life and most of all, her own daughter.

PRAISE

"Helen Fitzgerald’s The Duplicate is a tense, speculative look at the power of dreams, the price paid to achieve them, and the pain of having them dashed. The story plays with the concepts of identity, nature, nurture, hope and desperation. With a deft touch, Fitzgerald has woven a feeling of dread into each scene as she explores the pain of broken dreams, and the eternal damage of the death of hope." - R. Thomas Brown, author of Hill Country

Product Details

• File Size: 279 KB
• Print Length: 125 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Snubnose Press (April 30, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007ZDDOWQ
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #758,436 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars More Strong Work From Helen Fitzgerald August 2, 2012

By nigel p bird

I'm pretty sure I'm not in the group of readers to which this book might mainly be targeted, but I picked it up as a fan of Helen Fitzgerald and of Snubnose Press and I'm glad I did.

In Part One of the book, Barbara tells her story. She's a misfit orphan who lives in a mansion with her crazy mad-scientist uncle. She delivers the most amazing (and shocking) of projects at the science project presentation day, inspired in part by her being an assistant back home to the cloning of animals; in the mansion, they're paving the way towards to cloning of a human.

Barbara is infatuated by a boy and she's prepared to do anything to get him. She has a lot to do, mind, being and unkempt crazy with hairy legs and a taste for the macabre.

For help, she turns to a self-help book, which might not seem like a bad idea. Taking it as gospel, however, isn't necessarily the way to go.

Barbara's obsessive nature is a wonder to behold. The sequence of events that follows the project presentation as seen from her perspective is emotionally charged and tinged with a disturbing trust in empiricism and a reader's knowledge that not everyone is as naive as she.

Barbara might be autistic. Definitely has serious attachment issues. She's emotionally scarred and is impulsive to boot. It's difficult not to warm to her and to want to turn the light on as she fumbles down passage of darkness to allow her to see the bigger picture. It's funny, hilarious at points and always edgy and original. Superb stuff.

In Part Two, I felt a little less connected with the book. This might be because I'm a middle-aged man and was in slightly unfamiliar reading territory (only at this point did I feel the strength of this as a Young Adult book).

We follow the story of Barbara's cloned daughter.

This allows us to consider how much Barbara's state of mind is nature and how much nurture - that's still got me thinking quite a while after reading.

Barbara knows that there is no chance for her to put the pieces of her shattered life back together after the experiences she's had in Part 1, but she's hoping that science might allow her the opportunity to witness the recreation of history to produce a new outcome. Better still, she's motivated by a need for revenge.

For me, this is a book of 2 halves. The first is wonderful and, if you're up for watching the unfolding of science-fiction nightmares and their likely impact on matters of the heart, you might feel the second part is too.

4.0 out of 5 stars A refreshingly original story June 15, 2012

By JudithAnn

The story starts with Barbara, who is bullied at school to some extend. She knows she's going to marry Tim but he seems more interested in Beth. So, Barbara uses Ruth Warren's self-help book to improve her looks and her behaviour. She's a rather weird person with very few people skills.

The second part is narrated by Barbara's daughter Rowena, and we get to see Barbara through the eyes of someone else. Still weird, but in a different, rather scarily, determined, way. The story becomes quite oppressive and it seems Rowena ends up in a situation with no way out. She's badly in need of a way to escape her mother.

It was fun to read how Barbara was trying to improve herself while at school. But when it seemed she was actually getting Tim's attention I started wondering if this was just wishful thinking or dreaming on Barbara's part.

This first part of the book felt like YA, but that wasn't quite so much the case for the other two parts of the book, although it's very readable for YA readers.

When Rowena finds out the truth about her mother and her own past, she begins to worry, for good reason! This second part of the book was the most scary and interesting.

The final (3rd) part of the book was in some way superfluous, but in another way, it fitted the story well. I liked it least, as the story with Rowena had been resolved (in a positive or negative way, I'm not saying!). For me, the book could have ended here, but on the other hand, the further story was a nice continuation of Barbara's storyline.

Overall, this was a refreshingly original story, with some mystery, thriller and a small dose of science fiction in it. (However, people that do not care for SF will still enjoy this story, I think - what happens is almost possible, just not quite).