Nevermore: Red Clocks, Calypso, Love and Ruin, Lincoln in the Bardo, Evolution’s Captain

Reported by Jeanne

Red Clocks by Leni Zumas imagines a world in which the United States has banned both abortion and in-vitro fertilization, granting personhood to every embryo.  The book follows the lives of five women who must make choices based on this new reality. Our reader compared it to A Handmaid’s Tale, saying that fertility (or lack thereof) determined class, and that the book seeks to address the concepts of identity, motherhood, and freedom.  The characters are fully developed and the book is alternately compelling and chilling.

A new David Sedaris book is cause for rejoicing among some members of Nevermore, and Calypso met their expectations.   Sedaris is known for his storytelling and wit, spinning satiric gold out of his everyday interactions. While Calypso retells some of his adventures from earlier collections, our reader said that these are from a different perspective so the repetition didn’t bother her at all.

Paula McLain’s first novel, The Paris Wife, was a fictionalized version of Ernest Hemingway marriage to Hadley Richardson.  Her new book, Love and Ruin, explores the relationship between Hemingway and Martha Gelhorn, a young journalist who is trying to break through in what has been a man’s occupation.  Our Nevermore member described it as “fiction based on fact” and noting that Hemingway was not a sympathetic character.

The next reader had not finished Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders but he said that the first 60 pages “will grab you SO hard.”  He explained that a bardo is a Tibetan term for a place after death, and that Lincoln has just suffered the loss of his young son.  The book has had very good reviews, but is not to everyone’s taste.

Evolution’s Captain by Peter Nicolas reveals the man behind Charles Darwin’s expedition which resulted in his theory of evolution: Robert Fitzroy, the captain of The Beagle, who invited Darwin to accompany him on the voyage.  Five years later, the two find themselves with divergent views on the natural world. Our reviewer was particularly intrigued by the descriptions of early weather forecasting which played a vital role in sea travel.

Our last reader was intrigued by Joseph Wambaugh’s The Blooding, a non-fiction account of the first use of DNA to catch a criminal.  The English village of Narborough was the site of two brutal murders and rapes over a three year period.  The police questioned various suspects but were unable to conclude the identity of the murderer.  Then a researcher at the nearby Leicester University devised a way to identify a person from “genetic fingerprinting.” It was a riveting account, and our reviewer recommended it highly.