It was one of the things that made my work legal and ethical: each duplicative clone was an island, incapable of reproduction, isolated and, ultimately, disposable. It was bedrock. Clones don't have families. [loc. 468]
Excellent, dark and thought-provoking novel from the author of River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow. The first-person narrator of The Echo Wife -- a scientific genius and a woman who has put her career before everything -- is a compelling creation, and the story unfolds as weightily as a Greek tragedy.
Evelyn Caldwell has devoted her life to perfecting the process of human cloning. She's happiest in the laboratory, though her dedication has cost her her marriage. Nathan, her former husband, was also involved in Evelyn's research, but his work was slapdash and he didn't seem to appreciate how much science meant to his wife. Now he's left her for another woman ... or, rather, for another version of Evelyn herself. Martine, the clone, has been created by Nathan in secret, using Evelyn's research: he's taken shortcuts, and he's made one major variation to the template.
The cloning technology developed by Evelyn, and especially the mechanisms by which a clone's personality is written into their neurological framework, is described in vague terms: 'how' is not the focus of the story. The description of conditioning, the process of inflicting wounds on a clone to mimic the original's scars and fractures, is more germane, because The Echo Wife is, in part, a novel about the nature/nurture debate. Are humans simply the sum of their genetics and physiology, or are they changed by their environment and their history? The whole cloning industry implies the former, but the clones Evelyn creates are never intended to last for long, or to procreate. They're certainly not supposed to change.
Evelyn herself is the product of her experiences: a cold, emotionally (and physically?) abusive father, a self-effacing mother, and the tension between them; her marriage to Nathan, and her decision to abort a pregnancy; the long-healed fracture in her wrist. None of those factors should be able to affect Martine -- who didn't get the 'conditioning' that a standard, body-double clone would get -- and Martine should not be able to deviate from the way she's been programmed. Evelyn notes, with distaste, that Nathan designed Martine to need him, and to give him what the original Evelyn couldn't. Does that make Martine a different person? Is she a person at all?
One of the most interesting aspects of this novel is that it's a first-person narrative told by a complex, and not necessarily sympathetic, character. Evelyn keeps telling us (or herself) that she's not a monster, that she is rational and justified and objective: but she is the sum of her experiences, and the child of her parents. She can't help comparing herself to Martine, but she doesn't want to accept their similarities -- or their differences, which should not exist.
The relationship between Evelyn and her clone is claustrophobic, mother/daughter, scientist/subject, abusive and loving. I'm not sure, even after rereading, which of them is the monster, which of them is human; which is the voice and which the echo; which of them has broken free of her conditioning. But I am certain that there are real monsters here.
Thanks to Netgalley for this advance review copy.
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