Mawer, Simon

Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics

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Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics
Simon Mawer , and Field Museum of Chicago
Manufacturer: "Harry N. Abrams, Inc."
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0810957485

Book Description

Considered one of the greatest scientists in history, Gregor Mendel was the first person to map the characteristics of a living thing's successive generations, thus forming the foundation of modern genetic science. In Gregor Mendel, distinguished novelist and biologist Simon Mawer outlines Mendel's groundbreaking research and traces his intellectual legacy from his discoveries in the mid-19th century to the present. <BR><BR>In an engaging narrative enhanced by beautiful illustrations, Mawer details Mendel's life and work, from his experimentation with garden peas through his subsequent findings about heredity and genetic traits. Mawer also highlights the scientific work built on Mendel's breakthroughs, including the discovery of the DNA molecule by scientists Watson and Crick in the 1950s, the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, and the advances in genetics that continue today.

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How Passion Dwarfs Intelligence
Unusual but Interesting
You don't have to know genetics
DISTURBING AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING
AN AUSPICIOUS, AFFECTING DEBUT

Mendel's Dwarf
Simon Mawer
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 014028155X

Amazon.com

Dr. Benedict Lambert, the hero of Mendel's Dwarf, is very much a leg man, not that he has much choice in the matter. For the celebrated geneticist is a dwarf, a man resigned to being stared at for a little too long from some way up, and inured to bromides about inner beauty and outward bravery. As far as he's concerned, bravery requires choice--something he never had, since his father's sperm lacked "the command for height, for normality, for happiness and contentment." The beautiful swimmer did, however, pass on the genes for irony, sharp observation, and love, all of which Ben has in abundance in Simon Mawer's superb novel of academic twists and emotional turns.

A distant relative of the first geneticist, pea-pollinating Gregor Mendel, Ben has long used libraries as a refuge, and education as a way out (if not up). Still in his 20s, he's determined to identify the gene that made him "one of nature's practical jokes." Offered a post at the Royal Institute for Genetics, he immediately puts achondroplasia on the table. The director may well consider research into dwarfdom commercially unviable, but Ben knows better. His height will finally be of help: "There are lots of organizations interested," he insists. "The Little People of America, groups like that. When they see me coming they reach for their covenant forms."

Mawer interleaves Ben's research with the story of his affair (a "menage à une et demi") with the Institute's ill-fated assistant librarian, Jeane Piercey: "Mousy, of course. I feel that all librarians ought to be mousy. It should be a necessary (but not sufficient) qualification for the job. Mousy? Agouti? What, I wonder, is its genetic control? Perhaps it is tightly linked to the gene for tidiness." Mawer also juxtaposes Ben's passion with that of his legume-obsessed ancestor. Mendel, it turns out, pined for Frau Rotway, a married woman in the inevitable company of her own achondroplastic, a dachshund.

Mendel's Dwarf wears its considerable learning lightly--the author is a biologist--and readers will be alternately moved, charmed, and shocked by Ben's "astringent kiss of irony." Because the hero makes several difficult choices in the course of this fine novel, we admire his bravery, along with his resilience, at every turn. For Ben, the smallest gesture can become the largest (nods being "big absurd things, my head being about the same size as my body. You can't miss them. They are the gestural equivalent of screaming"). And alas, such acts are often poignantly beyond Ben's grasp: "I wanted to put my arm around her, of course, to bring her that fragile thing that we call comfort. But of course I couldn't reach."

Book Description

Hailed by the New Yorker as "furious, tender, and wittily erudite," Mendel's Dwarf is a novel that explores the brave new world of genetic science and the depths of the human heart.

Like his great, great uncle, the early geneticist Gregor Mendel, Dr. Benedict Lambert is struggling to unlock the secrets of heredity. But Benedict's mission is particularly urgent and particularly personal, for he is afflicted with achondroplasia--he's a dwarf. He's also a man desperate for love. And when he finds it in the form of Jean--simple and shy--he stumbles upon an opportunity to correct the injustice of his own capricious genes. As intelligent as it is entertaining, this witty and surprisingly erotic novel reveals the beauty and drama of scientific inquiry as it informs us of the simple passions against which even the most brilliant mind is rendered powerless.

"Hypersmart and delectably stylish." -- Esquire

"Simon Mawer writes beautifully, and the pleasure of his novel comes from the chance to watch him consider the mystery of the world, to report on the clarity with which nature speaks to us." --The New York Times Book Review

"Call it a hybrid, call it a mutation, it's all grand scientific adventure and a tragic human love story combined, as idiosyncratic and mysterious in its own way as the first gene formed out of cosmic dust." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

Customer Reviews:

How Passion Dwarfs Intelligence.......2002-10-29

This novel tells the story of Benedict Lambert, a distant relative of Gregor Mendel, the founder of scientific genetics. Like Mendel, Lambert is a brilliant geneticist. Unlike Mendel, Lambert is a dwarf.

The story is a mix of humor and philosophy. Lambert's stature as a dwarf does not effect his high intelligence. Nor does it dwarf his sexual needs and sexual appetite. His stature does make it difficult for Lambert to form a lasting sexual attachment, (or any sexual attachment) to a woman. The frustration and loneliness that human beings are heir to are magnified. Lambert uses his short stature to stare up women's skirts (with many predictable gags in the book). He frequents prostitutes and his home is cluttered with the latest x-rated magazines as well as with erudite scientific journals.

The story tells of Lambert's efforts to form a relationship with a mousy but leggy librarian, Ms Janet Piercey. When they meet, Ms. Piercey is single but when the two become involved, she has married. The relationship is adulterous, and the attendant triangle has a complicated and violent denoument.

The characters of Lambert and Piercey are well-developed and interesting. In addition, the book draws parallels between Lambert's life and that of his distant cousin Mendel, whose personal life was little known to me. There are also interesting discussions in the book of the classical composer Janacek, who was acquainted with Mendel and whose music is not as well-known in the United States as it might be. There is a lot of philosophical discussion in the book which is provocative but rather of the off-the-cuff variety. I found some of it got in the way of the story and the characters. Still, the book will make the reader think.

The book discusses, of course, the nature of human "normality" (what is the consequence of being a dwarf?), and the power of human sexuality. For me, the most fascinating questions the book raises are religous in character. In the first half of the book, we seem to get a philosophy of naturalism which suggests that dwarfism, or the human condition, is not caused or fruitfully understood by the actions and will of a revealed God but is a function itself solely of the chance actions of genes with each other. In some sense this is a liberating philosophy because it frees Lambert from a sense of guilt and of anger with an allegedly all-powerful being at his condition.

As the book progresses, a shift takes place. There is a discussion of the ethical dilemmas posed by abortion and by eugenics (human genetic engineering) that advances in science have made possible. There is some suggestion that human beings do not know everything and are not the measure of everything and that scientific-technological advancement and hubris have outstripped wisdom. I think the tone of the book as a whole is conservative and may tend to qualify, if it doesn't undermine, the sense of secularism conveyed in the opening chapters.

This is a fascinating thoughtful book which reads well. It will make the reader both laugh and think.

Unusual but Interesting.......2002-08-18

4 stars because this is quite an unusual novel, what with the added footnotes on some of the genetic traits. Unique.

Being a dwarf, Dr Lambert is practically a lonely person. A celebrated scientist, but beyond his profession, he retreats into his own cave.

His thoughts are illustrated in such a frank manner they can be sarcastic, pitiful, yet bold. The writing teases our curiosity and plays with our own perceptions. We get to read deep into his feelings and empathize in the process, although Dr Lambert is proud enough not to keep feeling sorry for himself.

Recommended for people who would like something different both in the style of the writing and in the perspectives offered by the storyline.

You don't have to know genetics.......2002-03-25

You don't have to know genetics to understand Mendel's Dwarf, but it helps. The reader may think the title refers to Mendel's dwarf pea plants, but in fact the narrative is in the voice of Dr. Benedict Lambert, a genetics biochemist, an achondroplastic dwarf and great-grandnephew of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics.

The novel's theme shifts between the current love story of Benedict and a librarian, Jean (get it?), and Mendel's activities and researches with peas and corn. Interesting and difficult questions are raised by way of this story:

1) Why was Mendel's research largely ignored in its time although it was the obvious solution to questions raised by Darwin about evolution? (It had the scintillating title, "Research in Pea Plants," and the Darwin-Huxley-Fisher group were more interested in descriptive natural history and the British Empire than in Pascal's triangle and probability quotients.)
2) How was eugenics used as a rationale for the British Empire and by Hitler for the Holocaust, and are we still doing it?
3) Is it even possible to avoid unnatural selection in our time? (Isn't the practice of birth control a form of eugenics?)

There are footnotes and references throughout, but be careful. I checked a reference to a journal, Trends in Genetics, May 1995 via PubMed, but although I found the journal, could not locate the article he cites.

There is suspense throughout, even to Benedict's final dilemma. The book might have been called Benedict's Choice, but the author was too imaginative for that.

Aside from enjoyment, this book might be an excellent selection for a course called Science in Literature. Teenagers, especially, would identify with Benedict's loneliness and would be interested in the social and ethical dilemmas raised by our knowledge of modern genetics.

DISTURBING AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING.......2001-11-12

I found Simon Mawer's novel of a modern geneticist afflicted with achondroplasia -- dwarfism -- to be a well-written, compelling read. The book is filled with information on the theories of genetics that were pioneered by Georg Mendel 150 years ago -- a man whose genius was unrecognized in his own day. The scientific content is very relevant to the story told, and, to Mawer's credit, does not present an obstacle to the enjoyment of this novel -- on the contrary, it allows the reader a glimpse deep into the character of Ben Lambert, a man with an understandably intent mission: the isolation and identification of the gene responsible for his own mutation.

Lambert is an intelligent, acerbic, somewhat bitter character -- he has learned through his life to endure the polite and not-so-polite stares, the prejudices, the patronizing smiles of so-called 'normal' people. He has even learned to use his all-too-obvious condition in his studies and lectures -- making self-effacing jokes to lull his audience into a sense of relaxed cameraderie and submission, only to turn around and make a stabbing point with the determination and aim of Captain Ahab going after Moby Dick.

There is a love story here as well, in Lambert's relationship with Jean Piercey Miller. It is told very movingly -- it allows us to see fondness and emotion flourish in the heart of one who has been hardened by the treatment he has received at the hands of the world. There is also a purely erotic side, darker. It is tinged with a definite sadness, for we can see other, less healthy emotional undercurrents in both characters as well -- there is joy and sorrow in the cup from which they drink.

The book is written to include a series of flashnacks, allowing us a glimpse into the life of Georg Mendel, the Austrian friar who is also by chance (or by fate?) a distant relative of Dr. Lambert -- his great great great uncle. The difficulties encountered by Mendel in his day in gaining deserved attention for his pioneering work present an apt parallel to Lambert's modern-day struggles.

Near the book's climax, Lambert delivers a lecture on eugenics that is worth reading over several times -- given the current level of progress in the Human Genome Project, he presents some thoughts that we would do well to consider.

The novel presents an intelligently conceived, relevant story in an entertaining, engrossing way -- the book picks up its pace distinctly as it moves along, and the characters are well-drawn and compelling, making it difficult to put down.

AN AUSPICIOUS, AFFECTING DEBUT.......2000-10-26

Although the incongruity of the pairing startles, Mendel's Dwarf is an achingly beautiful love story.. It is also an account of scientific progress, of the strides made in the field of genetic research. And, it is poignant reminder of the paucity of our understanding regarding the human heart.

Dr. Benedict Lambert, Ben, a distinguished geneticist, is the great-great-great-nephew of Gregor Mendel, the Augustinian friar whose research in the inheritance characters in plants and hybridization provided the platform for modern genetics. Ironically, Ben has achondroplasia - he is a dwarf, a mutant as he calls himself, who "possesses a massive forehead and blunt, puglike features. His nose is stove in at the bridge, his mouth and jaw protrude. His limbs are squat and bowed, his fingers are mere squabs. He is one meter, twenty-seven centimeters tall."

Yet he is brilliant, so esteemed that he is called upon to address members of the Mendel Symposium some 100 years after his great-great-great uncle's death. Aware of the surprise, revulsion and pity in the eyes of his audience, he has steeled himself to ignore the "there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I sort of stare," yet he is cagey enough to use their sympathy, "the guilt of the survivor," to win over his listeners.

Following his address Ben visits the monastery at Brno where Mendel worked. It is here that their life stories begin to interweave. Through Ben's voice we learn that they share a devotion to research, while each is hampered in his own way - the eccentric friar by his humble background and the parameters imposed by the Augustinian order he follows, while Ben is fettered by his physical deformity.

As men they are both frustrated sexually. Mendel, bound by vows of celibacy, finds his muse in the safely wed Frau Rotwang, wife of a wealthy cotton mill owner, to whom the friar shyly presents a plant he has bred and named for her - the Adelaide fuchsia. His gift is received with "A small exhalation of breath. A shock. It is the first time that he has ever hinted at her Christian name, the first indication that he even knows it."

Ben's desire for intimacy is hobbled by his physical appearance. He finds a modicum of comfort and dismissive acceptance with prostitutes: "It'll be extra for you. Sorry dear, but that's the way it is. Market forces....extra for gross deformities." The pain of that encounter is small compared with his unrequited love for Miss Jean Piercey, a librarian at London's Royal Institute for Genetics, where Ben is on staff, determinedly working to identify the gene for achondroplasia. Only a writer with the compassion and skill of Simon Mawer could elicit empathy rather than sideshow curiosity when describing their unlikely coupling.

As the pair of biographies unfolds, the men's scientific discoveries are meticulously recounted. Although delivered clearly and succinctly, at times the complexities of such information as "You follow the riflips with radioactive DNA probes," may tend to intimidate. Yet, Mendel's Dwarf is an aurora borealis of ideas, a spectacular exploration of nature's cruelty, humankind's demand for conformity, the unremitting search for knowledge, and our unquenchable thirst for love.

Despite the lucidity of his prose and the ingeniousness of his tale, Mr. Mawer's crowning achievement surely is Ben, who tries to hide his vulnerability behind an armor of paradox. Raised by a father who never looked straight at him, "Always his glance was aslant, tangential, as though that way he might not notice," Ben develops his own way of coping: "You guard against self-pity, build bastions of cynicism, dig ditches of irony and sarcasm; but sometimes, just sometimes, the barriers are breached." In the breaching of these barriers the story reaches its cosmically tragic finale.

Amazon.com

In Simon Mawer's remarkably poised and poignant novel, the small moment is as significant as the large, and "the detail dictat[es] to the whole." Biblical scholar Father Leo Newman has spent a lifetime deciphering meaning from evanescent fragments of papyrus; he is much less accustomed to descrying the metamorphosis of a relationship writ large ("a mysterious thing, much too mysterious for a simple naming"). How unlikely, then, that he should fall in love with Madeleine Brewer, the vibrant but unbalanced wife of a bureaucrat. How unlikely, too, that he should be confronted with an ancient scroll whose details are radically incendiary rather than dustily abstruse: an apparent account of Jesus' life from Judas's point of view. But how marvelously likely that Mawer should take these elements and create a haunting narrative of doubt and faith, "the thin wash of immediacy" and memory, passion and the fragile remains of its absence. Madeleine and the Judas scroll thrust themselves, uninvited and unexpected, into Leo's quiet life in Rome, their very presence a counterpoint to his isolation and vulnerability. Asked by Madeleine to compromise a lifetime, asked by his colleagues to verify or deny the scroll's authenticity, Leo is a profoundly Prufrockian figure, "No Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be." Does he dare disturb the universe?

Mawer skillfully interleaves three narratives: the story of Leo's German mother's life in Rome during World War II, a woman who was herself forced to choose between principle and passion; the unsettling story of Leo's relationship with Madeleine and the scroll; and a circumspect "present," in which Leo is still "a hermit in a cave, a hermit who was hoarding the few fragments of his faith lest they too be swept away by circumstance."

The novel represents a solemn quest, striving back toward half-forgotten origins in an attempt to bring order to a present and future spinning out of control. Its most poignant irony is that Leo is at once creator and destroyer--as he pieces together the story of the scroll, he is simultaneously unraveling his own faith, his own raison d'être: <blockquote>A dun-colored fibrous fragment hung there behind the glass, a fragment of papyrus the color of biscuit, inscribed with the most perfect letters ever man devised, words wrought in the lean and ragged language of the eastern Mediterranean, the workaday language of the streets, the meaning half apprehended, half grasped, half heard through the noise of all that lies between us and them, the shouting, roaring centuries of darkness and enlightenment. How was it possible to communicate to her the pure, organic thrill?</blockquote> The thrill, thanks to Mawer, is ours. --Kelly Flynn

Book Description

The Gospel of Judas is the story of an American priest brought to Rome to decipher an ancient scroll that appears to be a Gospel written by Judas - with a very different view of Christ's crucifixion from the ones handed down in the Bible. Already beset by a crisis of faith and on the brink of his first sexual affair, Father Leo Newman must tease out the meaning of this document even as he wrestles with its authenticity and what its revelations mean for him. This is a profound book about loss, faith, redemption, and the possibility of a complete re-interpretation of Christianity. It is also a love story and a literary suspense thriller that is impossible to put down.

Customer Reviews:

Get to the Point.......2005-12-20

I was looking for a meaningful last Christmas present for the Judas rAt in "The Family". Any suggestions where the rat learns his lesson then gets a blue moon in the eye?

Drags on waaaaay tooo long.......2005-04-21

What a great premise for a book--a secret or newly found gospel that may change Christianity forever! Unfort., the prose of this book is fine but the plot is....well, plodding. By Ch 5 we have yet to read @ what the new discovery contains! Poorly organized plot, I say avoid this one.

A Novel That Explores Themes of Faith and Betrayal........2004-12-28

This is a well-written, intelligent and sensitive work of the imagination in which issues of fidelity and faith are examined by a close analysis of several interlocking stories.

The overarching narrative of betrayal by Judas of Jesus, frames the story of betrayals by Gretchen of her husband; by Madeleine of hers; by Leo Newman of his vows as a priest. Francesco (Gretchen's Jewish lover), is tortured and probably killed -- pretty much as Jesus was in ancient Judea. The theme of Christian anti-semitism is delicately placed on the table and left for the reader to pick up.

Leo Newman is an aging priest and scholar, undergoing a crisis of faith, as he meets the middle-aged wife of Jack, an American diplomat, who is named Madeleine (the reference to "the beloved apostle," Mary Magdaleine, of the scriptures is obvious) -- who has a history of infidelity and suicide attempts. The results are predictably tragic. This occurs as a new discovery of a "Gospel by Judas," predating the synoptic gospels, is made in Israel.

The issues raised have to do with whether the "new man" who is Leo Newman, besotted and without faith, can cope with loss, the pains of love, suffering and come to terms with his own complicity in evil and mortality. The result is ambiguous.

The text suggests that a first century account claiming that Jesus did not rise physically from the grave would somehow defeat the Christian faith. I disagree. Although I am not a believer, many sophisticated Christians today read the resurrection story symbolically. Others might question the veracity of a witness who was hardly unbiased.

Christianity, or any of the great religions, cannot be undermined by such a text.

The novel is ambitious and brave, but fails to make the most of all of its materials, which would have required several books. Mr. Mawer was got himself a reader, anyway, for making the effort. I look forward to reading his other books, especially his novel about Mendel, since Mr. Mawer is both a geneticist and a writer, which alone may be a curious genetic mutation.

Spare yourself.......2004-10-26

The main character was interesting, but the author couldn't seem to begin to get around to the point of the book in the six chapters I read... very disappointing, as I was intriqued by the supposed premise.

"Life is too short to read a badly-written book." ~ T.M.

interesting.......2004-09-29

I picked this up out of the bargain section because ever since Harvey Keitel played Judas I have found him fascinating. This wasn't as revolutionary as that, but I still found it worth reading. There was something compelling about this story, so much so that I didn't want to finish it because I was afraid the ending would disappoint (it did a little). I don't think it was terribly realistic, either in terms of biblical history or the secret lives of priests, but there was some elegant writing and interesting character points.

Average customer rating:

another excellent book
Excellent
"The Fall" Explores The Gamut Of Human Emotions - Superb!!
A Page Turner of the First Order
A Wonderful Book About Love, Deception & Choices

The Fall
Simon Mawer
Manufacturer: Abacus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0349116520

Book Description

Against a shifting backdrop of spiky Alpine peaks and the bombed-out London of World War II, a tangled web of relationships and secrets unfolds as a man and two women play out a drama that will cast a shadow across the lives of a future generation. Years later, two young men who have been friends since childhood are snared in a similarly complex, ever-shifting series of love triangles. Simon Mawer's dazzling new tale of passion, fate, and betrayal is written with a narrative power and freshness that propel readers to the novel's startling and wholly satisfying conclusion.

Customer Reviews:

another excellent book.......2004-06-04

I read "The Gospel of Judas" last year. So I chose this book for our book club's reading selection. I can't say everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. Most people were distracted by the mountain climbing scenes. Everyone though it was a great story but I am not sure they got as much out of it as I did. As an english major I am a little more tuned in to seeing under the imagery and the words that Mawer chooses. I loved the play with light and dark. And the thought provoking situations. It made for great conversation in the group. And I got to read an author who isn't crusty all over with boring language. Mawer doesn't beat you over the head with the metaphors, he simply puts them out there and you either enjoy them or you don't. It is a great read for readers of all levels. Something for everyone!

Excellent.......2003-10-27

Simon Mawer's The Fall is an excellent work of fiction, one of the most enjoyable novels I have read in a long time. The story concerns several intertwining relationships that span the late 1930s through present day England. The novel opens as Jamie Matthewson, world-renowned climber falls to his death in a climb he was sure to fail at. His old, somewhat estranged friend Rob Dewar hears of the accident over the radio in his car, and immediately heads to attend the funeral and Jamie's wife and mother, to the displeasure of his wife. Rob's return to the climbing world he left behind years ago forces him to recall, for our benefit, his relationship with Jamie and the reasons for its disintegration. Rob's story involves not only Jamie and Rob, but the relationship of all of their parents many years ago. The narrative shifts between Rob's first-person explanation of the Jamie-Rob years and a third-person narrative of their mothers' friendship and various loves during World War II England. The Fall is a fascinating look at many "falls"--falling to one's death, falling in and out of love, falling into sin, the fall of one's life. It's a compelling, well-written read. Enjoy.

"The Fall" Explores The Gamut Of Human Emotions - Superb!!.......2003-09-28

This is a powerhouse of a novel that will have you reading compulsively until you've turned the last page, and will leave you deep in thought long after that. "The Fall" has achieved a place on my Top 10 list of favorite works of fiction.

Rob Dewer hears on the car radio that his old friend and mountain climbing partner, Jamie Matthewson, has fallen to his death while making an almost suicidal solo climb. Although the two men have not been in touch for years, the news hits Dewer hard, stirring up a series of memories and strong, unresolved feelings from long ago. He immediately turns his car towards Wales and begins a journey, not only to bring comfort to Matthewson's widow, his old friend and former lover, Ruth, but into the past where decades old secrets and betrayals are disclosed.

Author Simon Mawer writes, "At some time or other you must confront your past. We are our past...There is nothing else, and none of it can be undone." Mawer visits the past of a group of people who are intimately connected through friendship, love, lust, jealousy, competition, hatred and blood ties. The enormous power of some of Mawer's characters is almost overwhelming at times, as is their extreme fragility and vulnerability. His prose is masterful and poignant. The plot is riveting, compelling, almost brutal, in its honesty. I have never been very interested in the sport of climbing, but Mawer's narrative transported me, time and time again, on exhilarating treks up mountainsides; the action so vividly described that I felt that I was one of the climbers. His descriptions of landscapes, both fierce and bucolic, are as visual as paintings. Mawer is indeed a master craftsman.

This is a novel of love, of moral choices and decisions that life forces us to make. Sometimes the repercussions of these decisions echo into the future, for generations to come. This is truly one of the most amazingly original novels I have read in years and it has effected me deeply. I cannot praise "The Fall" highly enough!
JANA

A Page Turner of the First Order.......2003-05-21

I spent a day and a half gobbling this imaginative, enveloping novel down. I don't think I need to say much more than the fans here have said already, except perhaps to add that at year's end, THE FALL is going to stand among the year's best for me, perhaps even at the number one spot. For me, everything in this tale of passion and friendship, love and betrayal, worked. Don't let the thought of the moutaineering scenes scare you off, they're superbly done, and metaphorically valid. The scenes of London during the Blitz are among the most vivid descriptions if that time I've ever read.

I look forward now to going back and reading earlier Mawber. This is definitely an incredibly versatile author with an important future.

A Wonderful Book About Love, Deception & Choices.......2003-03-05

Robert Dewar suffered a broken leg and the loss of three toes after nearly freezing to death on a mountain climbing expedition. It was enough to move him away from climbing to a more grounded career in art procurement.

Years later, his comfort zone is shaken when he learns that his oldest friend and former partner, Jamie Matthewson, has fallen to his death after a dangerous solo climb. Robert veers back toward his past despite his wife's objections and heads to Wales to comfort Jamie's attractive grieving widow, Ruth. Eve Dewar awaits her husband's return and wonders how delving into the past might change him.

This detour places Robert in the company of Caroline, Jamie's eccentric mother, a woman for whom Robert's mother once harbored an unexplained level of disdain. Time has softened Caroline's rough edges, yet her mind is sharp.

Conversely, Robert's mother, Diana, sits in a retirement home with her mind slowly fading. Guy Matthewson, once married to Caroline and a pivotal part of the story, remains frozen on a mountainside so high up that he will probably never be recovered.

All events collide.

Despite the unnecessary use of the same four-letter word in varying forms by different characters, Simon Mawer has written a lovely book. The characters magically spring forth from the page and dance before the reader. His natural narrative style and use of tension blend together wonderfully to create a powerful story of love and deception.

The Gospel of Judas: A Novel
Average customer rating:
The Gospel of Judas: A Novel
Simon Mawer
Manufacturer: Amazon Remainders Account
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: B000FILME0

The Gospel of Judas
Average customer rating:

Not the novel the title leads one to expect.

Just skip this one

Of love, faith, and betrayal--heaven and hell on earth.

The Gospel of Judas
Simon Mawer
Manufacturer: Abacus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Gospel of Judas

ASIN: 0349113580

Customer Reviews:

Not the novel the title leads one to expect........2006-01-29

It would be an interesting to read a novel in which Judas tells the Gospel story from his side; but don't be taken in by the title of this book, since most of it is not about that. The first mention of Judas is 140 pages into a 345 page book, then nothing substantial about him for the next 120 pages while Mawer returns to more novelettish if intricately plotted and sometimes quite powerfully dramatic material before picking up the Judas Scroll again. I must not give away the ingeniously constructed theory of who, according to this fictitious papyrus, Jesus actually was and of what happened to his crucified body, but the 30 pages, few as they are, in which the text is deciphered and commented on, are to my mind the most interesting in the book.

Mawer is very knowledgeable about the New Testament, about inter-testamentary history, about the Dead Sea Scrolls, about deciphering papyrus fragments, about the Roman Catholic Church and about the history of Imperial and Christian monuments in and around Rome. The "scholarly" parts are fine; unfortunately they are deeply embedded in a novel which is full of clich?s with which we are familiar in other and better novels about the Catholic Church: the Catholic priest, initially hovering between faith and scepticism, who falls for a seductive married woman (and later, defrocked, has another woman, too); several obligatory passages of erotic writing; nuns "pouring out their confession of peccadillo and scruples"; and, for good measure, a stock Nazi character doing stock Nazi things during the German occupation of Italy after the fall of Mussolini. The language, too, which a blurb on the back finds "poetic", actually varies from the tired clich ("red lipstick made a scar of her mouth") to the irritatingly voulu: "Leo smelt the sour and flinty stench of mendacity". (Mawer has a thing about smells). Every foreign phrase is carefully translated; and sometimes he lectures us on the etymology of words he uses (English, Italian, Greek), irrespective of whether or not that enriches the use of the word in that particular context. Occasional similes are fine (and some in this book are not at all bad), but here we sometimes have several to a page or even a single paragraph, and that device, too, quickly becomes tiresome. There is plenty of symbolism, some again not at all bad, but much of it clunkily obvious. A wilfully and initially confusing mixed up chronology, and an initially confusing alternation between the principal character writing or being written about in a first person and a third person narrative, for which I cannot see any real purpose, added to my annoyance with the mannered way in which this book is written.

If such things do not bother you, you may well be "mesmerized" and "gripped" by the book's "complex plot", as that very distinguished scholar Lisa Jardine, in one of the blurbs on the back, says she was; and you will then feel that I have harped too much on the negatives which so spoilt my enjoyment.

Just skip this one.......2005-10-21

This was a truly boring novel, the author skips between three time periods with no seeming reason (the story of his mother gave no added value to the main story plot.) Most of the characters are one sided and I was able to guess what would happen about a quarter of the way through. I only finished the book because I kept hoping it would get better, it never did though.

Of love, faith, and betrayal--heaven and hell on earth........2005-10-17

This haunting and ironic novel takes us into the heart, mind, and family history of a dedicated priest living in Rome, giving the reader a rare look at his insecurities, the internal battles he faces, and the constant choices he must make. Father Leo Newman is an expert in ancient scrolls from the Dead Sea. Called to investigate a new, intact scroll in Jerusalem, he makes the startling discovery that this scroll is a record of what happened immediately after the crucifixion, as witnessed by Judas and Paul. Its transcription and publication will call into question the accuracy of the more familiar gospels, all of which were written later than this scroll, and which have, until now, been the underpinnings of Christianity and its traditions.

Mawer takes us into the mind of Father Leo as he battles the demons of doubt unleashed by his discovery, and other, entirely mundane demons represented by his love for Madeleine Brewer, the wife of a diplomat. As the novel spirals from the present to the very near past and into the more distant past of Father Leo's childhood during World War II and back again, we see fascinating parallels between the betrayals Father Leo commits, and those of his mother, and of Judas. The roles of Mary Magdalen, Madeleine, and Magda, all of whom even share a name, continue these intriguing parallels and expand the novel's themes.

As Mawer investigates the many kinds of love--love of mankind, love of God, and romantic love--he also shows us the multiplicity of threats to these kinds of love, and the difficulty of facing personal challenges armed only with black and white arguments. Father Leo, an honest man doing the best he can to be true to his church, is, strictly speaking, guilty of betraying both individuals and the church, while Judas, usually thought of as the most villainous of betrayers, possesses a core of honesty here which calls into question the traditional view of him in later gospels. This tour de force of a novel is a stimulating and thought-provoking study of love and truth, connecting a modern man with a much vilified disciple and raising the big question of whether a long-range good can come from a short-term betrayal and whether the price is worth it.

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Mendel's Dwarf.
SIMON. MAWER
Manufacturer: Transworld Publishers Ltd
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0385408978

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The Bitter Cross
Simon Mawer
Manufacturer: Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd
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ASIN: 1856191176

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A Jealous God
Simon Mawer
Manufacturer: Andre Deutsch Ltd
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ASIN: 0233989641

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Place in Italy
Simon Mawer
Manufacturer: Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd
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