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Artifact
Artifact | Arlene Heyman
5 posts | 2 read | 4 to read
'Sensual and sometimes shocking ... Heyman writes with such intimacy and precision that she frequently makes you feel like a trespasser' Daily Mail Lottie Kristin is independent from the start. Born in the middle of the century to a middle-class family in the very middle of America, Lottie is set apart by her smarts and sensuality. A girl who'd rather carry out dissections on a snowy back porch than join her family for Christmas dinner is a strange and exotic artifact in the town of Sleeping Bay. But by her early twenties, Lottie finds herself trapped in a marriage gone stale, with a daughter she adores but whose existence jeopardizes her place in the lab and her dream of becoming a scientist. How can a young woman make her way in a world determined to contain her brilliance, her will, and her longing to live? Bravely and wisely written, Artifact is an intimate and propulsive portrait of a whole woman, a celebration of her refusal to be defined by others' imaginations, and a meditation on the glorious chaos of biological life.
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charl08
Artifact | Arlene Heyman

... name one female composer. It was harder than name one female scientist. It amazed Lottie how much it continued to amaze her that social strictures had crushed women throughout the centuries; some dark part of her assumed that women were inferior, that she was inferior, so her grandmother must have been inferior! And Evelyn! Evelyn inferior! Consciously Lottie never felt inferior, but now and again she wanted to punch the nearest man.

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quote
charl08
Artifact | Arlene Heyman

During Evelyn‘s naps Lottie took up the book Dr. Mihiner had given her about famous “microbe hunters.” It was written in a gushy style full of exclamation points but the work these men had done, much of which she knew about from college courses—grinding the first microscopes, uncov ering the mystery of fermentation, conquering syphilis— was thrilling.
There were no women in the book unless you counted the references to Madame Pasteur:

quote
charl08
Artifact | Arlene Heyman

Lottie dreamed of her grandmother at her old Singer spinning a pure gold receiving blanket for the baby. She woke happy to the hilt. And then she wept.

Suspect we've all had dreams like this one.

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charl08
Artifact | Arlene Heyman
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As an adult it had occurred to Lottie that her mother... might have felt like a boarder herself in their big house teeming with her father‘s vibrant kin, and perhaps she found solace and good company in her books. Or perhaps she felt protected by her books, barricaded in, numbed, Lottie didn‘t know. .... Her mother had never had a hard word with any of her husband‘s relatives; she let them do what they wanted and she read.

charl08 ARC copy - published in the UK this week. 4y
CaitlinR Looking forward to it being available. 4y
41 likes2 comments
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BookNAround
Artifact | Arlene Heyman
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Today‘s #JulyARC will be released 7/7.