The Colony

By Jillian Weise

Book Overview

Publishers Weekly praises this debut novel by Texan poet Jillian Weise as "ambitious, provocative, and wildly inventive." It's 2015, and Anne Hatley is leaving her North Carolina home for a Long Island research lab called the Colony. Anne, who was born with a genetic mutation that left her only one leg, will be donating stem cells for gene research in exchange for a new leg. But after meeting others with deficiencies, including carriers of the "suicide gene" and "obesity gene," Anne questions how much genetics really determine a person's life.

• Format: Audio CD
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1664507825
• ISBN13: 9781664507821
• Release Date: November 2010
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Rich and Dark beauty

I found "The Colony" an amazing, gorgeous book. It is a brilliant clash of when the bright tomorrow's promise of science meets real, complex people with real, complex problems. Annie Hatley is a great creation of Jillian Weise's imagination. Annie's exchanges with Charles Darwin in an Applebee's restaurant were delicious. The science presented in the book provoked deep questions about the future of genetic research and what we humans will do with this power.

Miranda July meets Margaret Atwood

This book combines the stylizations of Miranda July with the science themes from Atwood's ORYX AND CRAKE, and is well worth the read. Small vignettes carry the story along and add depth to the overarching issues - what makes someone human, how we relate to the body/our sexuality, and how science is creating new morals and ethics in how we deal with the margins of society. One section in particular starts with a quote from Watson that I think sums up the underlying issue of the book: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great." There is a poignancy in many of these sections and the language is lyrical and perfect at points. A terrific read.