Egg Dancing - Hardcover

Liz Jensen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747519978 ISBN 13: 9780747519973

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1995

Synopsis

Moira Sugden and her daughters Hazel and Linda are disunited by the self-inflicted wounds of family, and cornered by sex, God and medication into varying states of delusion. But when Hazel makes frightening discoveries about the scientific research of her gynaecologist husband, they join shaky forces against the drug called Genetic Choice. Too late however, to stop the birth of the perfect baby and its imperfect counterpart 'EGG DANCING is a comic romp with a colourful cast a zany attack on attempts to control the human mind' TLS 'A heavily satirical look at television evangelism, genetic engineering and psychotherapy, which nonetheless manages to be funny, tightly plotted and contain moments of surreal magic' HARPERS AND QUEEN

About this title

About the Author

Liz Jensen is the author of Egg Dancing (longlisted for the Orange Prize), Ark Baby (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize), The Paper Eater, War Crimes for the Home (longlisted for the Orange Prize), The Ninth Life of Louis Drax and My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time. She divides her time between Copenhagen and London.

From Publishers Weekly

Fertility, televangelism and psychiatry froth in the test tube of this wacky comic debut by British novelist Jensen. English homemaker Hazel Stevenson is certain that her gynecologist husband, Gregory, is having an affair with Dr. Ruby Gonzalez, his lovely and possibly pregnant colleague at the Fertility Management Center, where Gregory is busy creating a drug that will "deselect" any but the most perfect fetus. The British tabloid press has dubbed it the "perfect baby drug"; the Reverend Vernon Carmichael of TV's Holy Hour thinks Gregory is a tool of the devil-an assessment Hazel is inclined to agree with when she discovers that their four-year-old son, Billy, is the result of an early experiment. Determined to expose Gregory, Hazel enlists the help of Dr. Ishmael Stern of the Manxheath Institute of Challenged Stability, where her paranoid schizophrenic mother, Moira Sugden, is a patient. But Dr. Stern's help includes a course of "enhanced vitamins" that results in Hazel being committed to Manxheath. That leaves her sister, Linda, Assistant Manager (Butter Sub-Unit) of the government's Edible Fats Policy, as the only member of the Sugden family free of psychiatric bondage. And it's she who comes up with the consummate plan to foil Gregory, Ruby and their newborn perfect baby. Yes, the story is often overwhelmed by delusions, hallucinations and trips through altered reality. But Jensen has a real gift for wickedly black humor-and enough stylistic panache to hold a reader's attention firmly through the thicket of her excesses.

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0747519978
• ISBN 13: 9780747519973
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256