Singh’s initial response is, “Now there’s a chilling thought.” But a male colleague explains to her that it would eliminate the need for expensive fertility treatments, saying “Ovum in perpetuity, menstruation everlasting,” as though menstruation everlasting would be a great idea. Annick Swenson, who is working in the Amazon developing a drug from natural sources, a drug that would keep women fertile into their 60s or 70s.
Her colleague had been sent out to check on Dr. Singh, despite her name, was born and bred in Minnesota, and Minnesota is in her bones. Pharmacologist Marina Singh receives a curt, barely informative message that a colleague of hers has died in the Amazon jungle. In State of Wonder, she takes a literary point of departure, Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, recasts the lead characters as women, and creates a vivid, intriguing story that provokes thought about morality, sacrifice, bioethics and struggles of conscience. When Ann Patchett wrote her 2004 best seller Bel Canto, she took an historical incident as a point of departure and then created a story that was completely her own.
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