Mendel's Dwarf

by Simon Mawer
This is the second book I have read by this author.  The other was The Glass Room.

Both books were very interesting and very powerful but I found this book devastating.  It is one of those books that punches you in the gut, you don't really want to think about it after you have finished it because it is too upsetting.  I finished it a few days ago but couldn't face writing about it yet.  I would read, and in fact look forward to rereading The Glass Room sometime but I don' think I would ever read this again.

The story is about a dwarf, who happens to be a descendant of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics.
The dwarf, Dr. Benedict Lambert becomes a geneticist and is working on identifying the gene that causes dwarfism.  The book covers the two lives, Benedict's and Mendel's and the affection each man has for a particular woman.  Mendel's genius is not realized in his life time, Benedict's life is discounted because he is a dwarf.  Benedict befriends a women (a Librarian) he met as a young boy and then meets again at the university where he is teaching.  The woman is the victim of spousal abuse.  When she leaves her husband temporarily he invites her to stay with him.  At first she agrees because she thinks he is safe.  She does not realize he has designs on her sexually.  They end up having sex and she gets pregnant but she aborts the fetus because her husband is sterile and also because she fears having a dwarf child.

Later she returns to her husband (WHY????) After going to maritial counselling it is suggested that the marriage could be saved if she had a child as she seems to want one.  She proposes fertilization to her husband and asks Benedict if he will donate his sperm and select an egg that does not have the dwarf gene so that she will have a healthy baby.  Her husband is under the impression that the child is from his sperm.
When the child is born the mother has an aneurism and is in a coma.  The father realizes that the child has brown eyes and neither he nor his wife have brown eyes but Benedict has brown eyes.  He had thought Benedict was "safe"!  He is outraged and does the unthinkable.

It is amazing how the author sneaks up the "truth" on you throughout the book, people discount Benedict as a sexual being, as a potential partner and unwanted mutant; but for circus families, a "normal" child is undesirable.  Benedict feels so isolated, misunderstood and ignored, it is tragic.  And ironically, he thought he was so wise, knowing all about genetics and finding the answer to dwarfism; and he and his lover thoght they could trick the husband, not realizing that genetics would come to "bite him" again.