Ghost Species
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3.8 • 13 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
When scientist Kate Larkin joins a secretive project to re-engineer the climate by resurrecting extinct species, she becomes enmeshed in another, even more clandestine program to recreate our long-lost relatives, the Neanderthals. But when the first of the children, a girl called Eve, is born, Kate finds herself torn between her duties as a scientist and her urge to protect their time-lost creation.
Set against the backdrop of hastening climate catastrophe, Ghost Species is an exquisitely beautiful and deeply affecting exploration of connection and loss in an age of planetary trauma. For as Eve grows to adulthood she and Kate must face the question of who and what she is. Is she natural or artificial? Human or non-human? And perhaps most importantly, as civilisation unravels around them, is Eve the ghost species, or are we?
Thrillingly original, Ghost Species is embedded with a deep love and understanding of the natural world.
Customer Reviews
Ghost in the machine
3.5 stars
Author
Australian. Writes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Multiple awards including critic of the year in 2012. Non-fiction published in a number of newspapers locally and internationally. Passionate advocate for action on climate change. This is his fourth novel.
Plot
In the slightly dystopian near future, Kate, a mid-thirties childless Aussie female scientist long estranged from her alcoholic mother is recruited to a swish research facility run by the personal foundation of Daniel, an idiosyncratic tech billionaire (a mashup of Zuck and Elon) in the wilds of Tasmania. The aim: to reverse engineer extinct species, as you would. When she arrives, they've already picked the low hanging fruit - the thylacine - and Zuck-Elon has moved on to saving the permafrost in Siberia and Canada by resurrecting aurochs, musk oxen (Elon's favourite I imagine), and woolly rhinos and mammoths in other labs in the deep north. Meanwhile, Tassie has been chosen to recreate a Neanderthal. An infant is duly born to a Stepford style surrogate mother, but our gal soon bonds with young Eve and absconds with her, as Zuck-Musk anticipated she would because of her own psychological frailties. (Tech billionaires know all about abnormal psychology). After a couple of years on the lam, Kate rejoins, or rather is compelled to rejoin, the fold so they can study Eve, the Neander-programme having been suspended in favour of woolly mammoths. Evie's a funny looking kid, as you'd expect, short and on the beefy side but with a wonderful sense of smell. This throws up obstacles to socialisation. Kate has a few of those herself as well.
Writing
Limpid prose as usual from Mr Bradley, who seems keen to push his story, and his themes, along as expeditiously as possible. This hamstrings character development somewhat IMHO. Whether that matter is moot. The dystopia he imagines is close enough to the recognisable present to make it credible while giving him plenty of scope to go all Greta Thurnberg about how we're f***ing up the planet.
Bottom line
I'm not a fan of dystopian fiction generally, and much prefer Margaret Atwood's historical fiction to her speculative efforts. I don't feel the same way about Mr Bradley. Clade (2015), also cli-fi, was considerably better than his first effort The Resurrectionist (2006), a historical novel about underground anatomists in Victorian England. This is a more accomplished effort than Clade, although I suspect the current stratospheric rating on Goodreads (4.5 star average but just 19 ratings) might fall when returns from the outlying booths come in.