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In this "witty novel about family, friendship, and survival of the fittest,"* Cathleen Schine, one of our most astute social observers, examines the origin of species alongside the origins of who we come to be.
In some mysterious family feud or unintended slight, Jane Barlow Schwartz lost a friend, her cousin and soul mate Martha. But years later, surrounded by the exotic wildlife of the Galápagos, Jane and Martha meet again. There, amid the antics of blue-footed boobies and red-lipped batfish, Jane sets off on a quest through her family history to pinpoint the moment when Martha was no longer the Martha she knew. In the process, she ponders instinct, natural selection, and the oddities of evolution that transform us. As Barbara Kingsolver proclaimed in the New York Times Book Review, "We should rejoice in a rare novel like The Evolution of Jane . . . a rollicking family saga tinged with hints of sexual intrigue . . . Three cheers."
*Elle
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Augusto Garces
reviewed The Evolution of Jane on August 22, 2012
The Evolution of Jane
This book is a mess. The main character, Jane Barlow Schwartz, is meant to be eccentric and charming, but she comes off as an annoying whiner. The Galapagos Island setting and endless musing on Charles Darwin's revolutionary insights on species and evolution are meant to add depth to the characters and interest for the reader but are often irritating and sometimes tedious. I had decided to leave this novel unfinished after the first four chapters until I saw that the fifth chapter flashed back to the crux of the plot: the girlhood best-friendship of Jane and her distant cousin Martha, who in the first of several utterly unbelievable coincidences, turns out to be Jane's guide on her cruise through the Galapagos. Jane is on the cruise to take her mind off her recent divorce and the appearance of Martha as her guide sparks her interminable whine throughout the novel: Why did Martha stop being her friend? Turns out the question is a MacGuffin of the worst sort, one with an answer so simple and so obvious that the reader feels cheated and ill-used by the revelation. Q. Why did Martha stop being Jane's friend? A. Because her family moved away from the town where Jane continued to live. Now I know why people actually throw books across the room, which is where this one would have ended up had it not been a library borrow. I picked up this book because I thought Schine did a decent job in a contemporary retelling of Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" with her 2010 novel, "The Three Weissmanns of Westport," but I'll be giving the rest of her oeuvre a pass.
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Add The Evolution of Jane, In this witty novel about family, friendship, and survival of the fittest,* Cathleen Schine, one of our most astute social observers, examines the origin of species alongside the origins of who we come to be. In some mysterious family feud or uninten, The Evolution of Jane to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
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Add The Evolution of Jane, In this witty novel about family, friendship, and survival of the fittest,* Cathleen Schine, one of our most astute social observers, examines the origin of species alongside the origins of who we come to be. In some mysterious family feud or uninten, The Evolution of Jane to your collection on WonderClub |
