There are certain aspects of genetics that have fascinated novelists, such as the subject of incest, the ability to foretell the future, the guilt incorrectly associated with genetic disease, or the recognition of non-paternity through simple tests. I have enjoyed the following rather different novels with their genetic ingredients; these books have the potential for educating the public, although such was not the aim of the authors.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Nobel prize-winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, was first published in Argentina in 1967. It describes 100 years in the history of a single family and relates the events in these years to the whole history of mankind. In order to do this the family suffers an extraordinary series of adventures. “Solitude” refers both to geographical isolation (for the family founded a new town, called Maconda, in South America), and to their spiritual isolation, for the members of the family (with the exception of the founding mother) have a very limited view of the world and its inhabitants, and very limited communication with them. One theme that is emphasised in this novel is incest. The founding couple are cousins and one reason for moving to the wilderness is so that any offspring born with a pig’s tail will be hidden from society. In fact their children are all normal but seven generations later their great-great-great-grandson has a child by his aunt and this child has a pig`s tail. This should not really matter, but it is accompanied by devastation. The child’s mother dies following child birth, the child dies a horrible non-genetic death, and the father becomes an eccentric recluse before being destroyed in the hurricane, which also, 100 years from its founding, destroys Maconda. This novel is a real extravaganza and one's usual perception of reality has to be abandoned.
My favourite book of the four is Graham Swift’s Waterland: a marvellously crafted novel concerning two brothers, Tom, who becomes a history teacher, and Dick, his older brother, who is potato-headed and simple minded. The brothers are brought up in a lock-keeper's cottage on the Fens. This flat, monotonous landscape provides the background for most of the story, with its “feature-less river banks, phlegm-lined river water, rows of beets and potatoes....files of spindly poplars”; a class-room in Greenwich provides the second backcloth. The story meanders like the fen-waters, and like them, changes course, and takes short-cuts. One part of the story is the explanation of Dick’s potato-head: he was the offspring of his mother and maternal grandfather: “.... when fathers love daughters and daughters love fathers it’s like tying up into a knot the thread that runs into the future, it’s like a stream wanting to flow backwards”
The continual analogies between attempts to control the rivers of the fens and the attempts to understand and control human destiny make this a compelling novel.
The House of Stairs by Barbara Vine is a psychological thriller in which the details of a murder are delayed until the last chapter although the fact of the murder and the name of the murderer (though not the victim) are known in the first. As the plot twists and turns a further strand is introduced, namely the narrator’s personal history, that her mother died of Huntington Disease. The uncertainty of Elizabeth’s situation influences the way in which she plans her life, and makes friends, and it provides an additional macabre thread to an already sinister story. By the end of the book Elizabeth has no signs of Huntington Disease, but she has made a foolish decision regarding her will, and we are left wondering what will become of her.
Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff is a tender and sensitive novel describing a man’s obsessional love for his parents, and how this distorts his view of reality, and his ability to maintain his marriage. A large part of the book presents a remarkably sympathetic account of his mother’s familial Alzheimer’s disease, her enchanting yet stubborn personality before the onset of disease, her very gradual slipping away from reality and her attempts to maintain a grasp of the world about her, and to resist the dissolution of her thoughts. Her son is obsessed by her illness, partly because of his great love for her, and partly because he fears that he may be following the same route. Indeed, as we watch him abandon his wife and children, we too wonder this. The novel is beautifully written and explores the philosophical realms of death and dementia, loss and reality.
Although to some extent all novelists who write family sagas describe the inheritance of familial and genetic characteristics, the above four books specifically portray certain aspects of genetics as part of their plots. Can readers of the Newsletter find more examples?
References:
Marquez G G (1967), One Hundred Years of Solitude, English Translation published by Picador (Pan Books), London 1978
Swift G (1983), Waterland, Paperback edition published by Picador (Pan Books), London in 1984
Vine B (1988), The House Of Stairs, Guild Publishing, London
Ignatieff M (1993), Scar Tissue, Chatto & Windus Ltd, London
Sarah Bundey FRCP
Reader in Clinical Genetics, Clinical Genetics Unit
Birmingham Maternity Hospital