Written by Tom Carrao
“I have a surprise for you, mommy.”
Uttered with no malice or ill will (perhaps only carelessness), young Abby can’t even begin to fathom the frissons of alarm and panic this simple statement sets off in her parents—the sinister, ominous implications for a life carefully, methodically crafted. On a rare day out in public, an annual visit to the Natural History Museum to celebrate the birthday of a brother she never knew who died of a genetic condition, Abby has agreed to meet who she assumes is a family member, located on a genetic database as a match.
What began as an innocent school-based lesson has led Abby to a national website in curious pursuit of her history. The figure standing on the steps is a spectre from the past for Michael and Lisa Burke (aliases), humming with murderous vengeance and resentment. It’s clear that something is seriously amiss with this family: mom suffers severe nervous tension, never attends school functions, wears a hat pulled low when out, and constantly exercising a peculiar vigilance. Stricken, husband and wife hustle Abby from the scene, fleeing in dread and upset. In a further destabilisation, Lisa swears she sees what can only be an apparition of her dead son. This is the first hook of many in author Peikoff’s propulsive, page-turning thriller, and from here the pace hardly stops for a breath.
Claire Abrams mourns the loss of her son Colton who led a short, difficult life debilitated by a mitochondrial disease for which she nurses a deep well of responsibility as she passed on a defective gene. Now, she struggles with the idea of getting pregnant again, subjecting another child to such mighty suffering. Her husband Ethan, a professor of public health and bioethics at Columbia University, fifteen years her senior, encourages and supports her as best he can. His stringent views on the perceived moral lapses of biotechnology, especially in the field of conception, quickly drive a wedge between him and his wife. He seeks out a meeting with controversial, pioneering fertility doctor Robert Nash, who proposes, along with his ambitious, ruthless assistant Jillian Hendricks, a procedure by which, with genetic modification, a baby is produced with all genetic disposition for disease eliminated. If successful, the child is the result of a three-parent experiment.
Needless to say, things do not proceed well. Jillian’s consuming feelings for the doctor and her summation of Claire’s role as a mere pawn lead to troubling complications and merciless manipulations. Ethan considers such an undertaking as a basic affront to biology: “human life is sacred, not fodder for irresponsible experimentation with unknown consequences…to be human is to have two biological parents… anything else would be a repudiation of our collective heritage”.
Claire increasingly sees him as a coward, a prude: “Ethan sees the world as a bystander, ready to accept nature’s whims while I see the world as an editor, ready to correct nature’s mistakes…his attitude is an outrage, to risk burdening a child with a lifetime of suffering, only to blame it on a master plan we don’t yet understand is a sickening invasion of responsibility”. Motherhood, that profound need to protect, to keep safe, is not always rational or polite—it is a ferocious instinct.
Given Piekoff’s background in bioethics—she has a master’s in the subject from Columbia—the science in the book is impressively sober, cultivated, and credibly sound in medical detail, a rigour that lends the novel a base level of sophistication and resonance. The methods described may be (as of now) speculative, but so once was the concept of IVF considered science fiction, and just as controversial upon its initial use. The inquiry into emerging technological breakthroughs and their practical applications in the fields of science and medicine, the philosophical trepidation of tools quickly surpassing an ethical comprehension of their use, is continually and earnestly addressed.
The narrative unfolds in the alternating voices of the three lead female characters, from the time leading up to the medical procedure to the fugitive aftermath, which leads to radically altered arrangements. Quite unexpected, but welcome, is the equal weight given to 11-year-old Abby, who is granted just as much agency and autonomy as the two adult women (Claire and Jillian), a precociously resourceful and centered young lady about to collide with the knowledge of her most notorious of origins.
It is Jillian who is given perhaps the broadest character arc, at times sliding dangerously close to pantomime villain, although just enough detail is offered to rescue her from the precipice—the climactic entanglements. This brings together all the major players in a disharmonious convergence, is lunatic, over-the-top, but deliciously satisfying. One revelation follows upon the heels of another, the truth igniting like land mines, all secrets finally spilled in a lacerating purge of confession, none of which shall be revealed here. Suffice to say, the reader is carried along enjoyably in a steady, heady wave of disclosure.
Peikoff does well to keep her focus tight and trim throughout the novel. She builds the hysteria from a simmer to full combustion as past and present slowly but surely crash into each other. Pages aren’t wasted on needless subplots or supporting characters, anything that unnecessarily drains or detracts from the central rush. Instead, she masterfully sustains the tension and paranoia of the essential players as their situation wildly twists and turns, unencumbered by bloat.
Until the very last, the concept of family is redefined and restructured, in continual terminal flux, the possibilities endless. With perceptions shifted and boundaries expanded, the book concludes with a new world order and grants most of its main cast a moment of grace far beyond the denigrating rot of gossip and provocative talk of Frankenbabies into a celebration of the glorious ordinary, the balm of the everyday.
Mother Knows Best is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of September 10th 2019.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A mother’s worst nightmare, a chance at redemption, and a deadly secret that haunts a family across the generations.
There’s only room for one mother in this family.
Claire Abrams’s dreams became a nightmare when she passed on a genetic mutation that killed her little boy. Now she wants a second chance to be a mother, and finds it in Robert Nash, a maverick fertility doctor who works under the radar with Jillian Hendricks, a cunning young scientist bent on making her mark—and seducing her boss.
Claire, Robert, and Jillian work together to create the world’s first baby with three genetic parents—an unprecedented feat that could eliminate inherited disease. But when word of their illegal experiment leaks to the wrong person, Robert escapes into hiding with the now-pregnant Claire, leaving Jillian to serve out a prison sentence that destroys her future.
Ten years later, a spunky girl named Abigail begins to understand that all is not right with the reclusive man and woman she knows as her parents. But the family’s problems are only beginning. Jillian, hardened by a decade of jealousy and loss, has returned—and nothing will stop her from reuniting with the man and daughter who should have been hers. Past, present—and future converge in a mesmerizing psychological thriller from acclaimed bestselling author Kira Peikoff.
