And Now for Something Completely Different

Two great books by Sarah Gailey—The Echo Wife and Magic for Liars.

In The Echo Wife, Doctor Evelyn Caldwell is a brilliant scientist researching human cloning. She’s discovered that her husband, Nathan, has used her work to create Martine, a clone of Evelyn herself. Unlike Evelyn, who is strong, independent, and very much focused on her career, her clone has been programmed to be meek and submissive—a trad wife type, a bang maid, a baby incubator.

Nathan was also a scientist but a sloppy one—not one for details. His slack attitude leads to Martine developing a mind of her own. Hilarity does not ensue.

The Echo Wife is a science fiction thriller in which none of the characters are two dimensional sketches. The depth of their personalities unfold slowly.

I was reminded a bit of the replicants in Blade Runner and Ripley in Alien Resurrection. Also, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

There were a lot of stop-reading-and-write-it down quotes—here are a few:

“Never apologize just because you think someone is mad at you," he said. "Never let anyone make you say that you're sorry just to appease them.  

 This is advice Evelyn’s father gave to her. It reminds me so much of the wisdom my father imparted to me.

Why would you ever cut the blooms off the rosebush?

It was one of the only truly useful things she ever taught me: Stress stimulates growth. Sometimes, in order to make something develop in the right direction, you have to hurt it.

I only mention it but, if stress really does stimulate growth, sane, smart Americans would all be 20 feet tall (and still growing) by now. By spring we'll all be the size of Godzilla and have no trouble rescuing the country from the abominable, greedheaded, fuckfaced, weasel shits. Right?!

No one would look at the seams that held me together and guess that they were scars.
     ~~~
The way I see it, you mostly stop loving a person the same way you stop respecting them. It can happen all at once if something enormous and terrible falls over the two of you. But for the most part, it happens in inches. In a thousand tiny moments of contempt that unravel the image you had of the person you thought you knew.
     ~~~
There’s no winning. Either I’m a bitch who needs to control everything, or I’m an easy mark.

This is what it’s like to be a woman in the US. We’re either harridans and dragon ladies or submissive doormats.

It was a place that could have been charming, if only it had been entirely different.

And this perfectly describes the last house and the last town where I lived with my parents and siblings.

Gailey’s book Magic for Liars is a murder mystery set in a prep school for kids who are magically gifted. It’s more than that though. This isn’t Hogwarts‚no one’s playing quidditch. Kirkus Reviews calls it a poignant and bittersweet family tragedy disguised as a mystery but with a magic all its own.    

Being brave means holding your fear in one hand and your responsibility in the other.
     ~~~
“It’s a lot like sticking your hand into a black box that may or may not have cobras in it.” I blinked. “That’s the most coherent explanation of magic I’ve ever heard.

It’s also the best simile I can imagine for life on this bleak, benighted planet.

One last quote (NOT from Sarah Gailey):

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.
~ Joe Biden