"Terrific philosophical science fiction"
Elizabeth Surrey told her daughter Iris that she once was
a big shot Manhattan investment consultant, but burned out
over the lies required to climb the ladder and over a city
that was turning uglier by the nanosecond. Thus she quit
and fled to this small college town near Chicago looking
to start over. What she didn't tell Elizabeth was much
about her daddy and that the child is a clone of the
mother. The twosome are best buddies, but relationships change in
2017 when Steven enters their lives. Elizabeth and Steven
fall in love, but he cannot deal with what he feels is the
abnormal relationship between his beloved and her twelve
year old daughter. A confused Iris begins to learn more
about her birthing and decides to leave home to
investigate whether she has a soul of her own or just an
extension of Elizabeth as she now knows she is her
mother's clone. THE SECRET will not be kept a secret for long as readers
will receive a terrific philosophical science fiction tale
that keeps the audience pondering questions of ethics and
morality in modern science. The novel is no sound byte
pandering by the political leaders, but instead is a deep
first person account of a young individual wondering
whether she has a soul, did her mother steal her soul, or
did her mother give her part or all of her soul? Can she
go to heaven? Fans will debate these issues and more
while thinking of Phillip K. Dick (though Eva Hoffman's
book contains no violence) especially DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF
ELECTRIC SHEEP as one wonders whether Iris is Memorex or
real. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted April 4, 2004
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A haunting debut novel from the acclaimed author of
Shtetl,
Lost in Translation, and Exit into History.
Iris Surrey seems to have a perfectly normal childhood.
She
lives with her mother in a rambling wooden house, in a
small college town not far from Chicago. But something
isn't quite right in her perfect, bell-jar world. There
may
be something wrong with her mother. Or with her. Or with
her mother and her. Small disturbances lead Iris to
suspect
a deeper peculiarity in the very fabric of her life.
Something not quite...natural. Or authentic. But what does
that mean? You are what you think you are, aren't you? Who
is to judge the nature of your nature, your character,
your
reality, except you, the subject yourself? Unless you
aren't real enough to know in the first place. In this gripping debut novel, writer Eva Hoffman uses the
near future to reflect on the fast-moving present and to
explore various kinds of secrets: intimate secrets and
family secrets, the kinds of secrets that can be decoded
from clues, and the kind that only lead to more
tantalizing
questions about the nature of consciousness and self-
knowledge. This is a philosophical fable about an
uncannily
powerful mother-daughter bond and a young woman's quest
for
identity. The Secret explores ancient conundrums of
selfhood and the profound challenges posed by contemporary
science to our most cherished notions of individuality.
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