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| Graphic from http://www. goodreads.com/book/show/16248197- the-curiosity |
In 1991, two German tourists discovered the body of Otzi,
the now infamous Ice Man, believed to have died and been encased in ice near
5,000 years ago. Though well-preserved, Otzi's body more resembles traditional
mummies than living, breathing tissue. But what if it didn't. What if Otzi were
flash-frozen, so to speak, encased in ice in perfect preservation and
scientists had the reanimation technology? This is the question tackled by
Stephen P. Kiernan in The Curiosity.
After joining an Arctic expedition in 1906, Judge Jeremiah
Rice fell overboard into the Arctic Ocean and was perfectly preserved in ice.
Dr. Kate Philo is a member of a modern-day scientific team working on a process
to reanimate small ocean animals. Her team travels to the Arctic to harvest the
creatures from the ice when they find and recover Rice's body. They take him
back to the lab where they reanimate him. When he awakens, he is thrown into a
world completely different from the one he remembers. Kate takes it upon
herself to help acclimatize him, and finds herself falling in love with the
judge, who is so different than the men she is used to. It isn't long before
Kate realizes Rice is about to suffer the same fate as the reanimated shrimp
and krill--his metabolism is speeding, burning up his energy, and he will soon
die. At first, Erastus Carthage, the director of the project, attempts to
control media coverage of the event, but it soon snowballs out of control, and
Rice and Kate are on the run from both the media and the authorities.
The Curiosity is
written from the points of view of four characters: Kate Philo, Jeremiah Rice,
Erastus Carthage, and Daniel Dixon, the reporter Carthage initially hires as
exclusive teller of the expedition's tale.
While Kate, Rice and Dixon are written in first person point of view,
Carthage is written in second person, and I'm not sure why. I'm also not sure
why the two points of view I most dislike are third person omniscient and
second person, perhaps because so few modern stories are told well this way.
Kate is perhaps the most realistic character of the four. I found Carthage to
be the stereotypical megalomaniac, better than thou academic type, and in spite
of the point of using second person narrative--to put the reader into the role
of the character--I neither liked him, nor identified with him. Dixon is
portrayed as the hard-boiled, unimpressed, unfazed reporter who has seen it
all, objectifies women (particularly Kate), and winds up portraying the team as
a fraud. Somehow, it works. Dixon's parts were quite amusing to read. Though
Rice is interesting as a concept, I found his attraction to Kate a little two
convenient plot-wise. The last thing he remembers is leaving his wife and
daughter, and while they are long dead, they are not to him. Rice doesn't seem
to grieve much for them, making his attraction to Kate and his easy-going
adaptation to the present somewhat questionable.
Part Encino Man,
part Blast from the Past, and yes,
per other reviewers, part Michael Crichton and Time Traveler's Wife, The
Curiosity is well-written with interesting characters. I found myself drawn
into Kate's romance with Rice and amused at the way the media is portrayed with
the ability to spin information hundreds of ways. Kiernan juxtaposes the
nostalgia of an idyllic and integrity-rich lifestyle of only a century ago with
the fast-paced, technology and tabloid-integrity of the modern world. Though
the story is predictable at times (Who didn't see Kate's hook-up with Rice from
their first scene together? Or know that Rice would wake-up and surpass the
expectations for post-animation life span?), and sometimes weighed down with
scientific jargon, The Curiosity is an
entertaining and interesting story that documents our fascination with pushing
the boundaries of scientific knowledge, and then holding science's successes up
for vilification in the media.
About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn't until she was asked to teach Writer's Craft in 2001 that she began to seriously write. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN, was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception, Abram published her next novel, PHASE SHIFT, on her own.
About the Author
Elise Abram, English teacher and former archaeologist, has been writing for as long as she can remember, but it wasn't until she was asked to teach Writer's Craft in 2001 that she began to seriously write. Her first novel, THE GUARDIAN, was partially published as a Twitter novel a few summers back (and may be accessed at @RKLOGYprof). Nearly ten years after its inception, Abram published her next novel, PHASE SHIFT, on her own.
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