The Curiosity

May 20, 2013
For his ambitious fiction debut, a contemporary reworking of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Kiernan (Authentic Patriotism) has crafted an emotionally satisfying and brisk narrative about Jeremiah Rice, a Harvard-educated judge who drowned on a scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1906. His frozen corpse is found, intact in a large iceberg, in the present day by molecular biologist Kate Philo. The evil genius Erastus Carthage, who funded the expedition, successfully reanimates Rice before a media horde. It’s a clever conceit, and Kiernan milks it for all it’s worth: religiously motivated protestors lambaste the feat as “blasphemy”; the media goes into a predictable frenzy; even the scientists (largely) behave horrifically in their quest for fame and fortune—except, of course, for the beautiful and kind-hearted Philo, and the even more perfect Rice, a symbol (and not much more) of a gentler, more innocent age, when people were less “vulgar.” There’s a sweet bit of romance between Philo and Rice, and Kiernan is good at making the science fiction sound like science fact. But the characters are never much more than mouthpieces for what appear to be the author’s pieties. Still, this is a gripping novel with a clever conceit. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.

June 1, 2013
Last seen in 1906, a frozen explorer, thawed by a scientist/entrepreneur, confounds present-day Boston. When a modern Arctic expedition, at the behest of megalomaniac Nobel-seeker Erastus Carthage, discovers a man encased in "hard-ice" (a supercold, cryogenically fortuitous iceberg), all hell breaks loose. The man, dubbed Subject One, is brought back to Boston, revived in Carthage's top-secret lab facility and gradually introduced to 21st-century America. The "specimen" is soon revealed as a native of nearby Lynn, Mass., Jeremiah Rice, a district court judge who had tagged along on a doomed Arctic expedition. The story relays from Rice to Carthage, a bloviating tyrant with a hand-sanitizer fetish. Narrators also include the smarmy second-tier journalist Daniel Dixon (a type recognizable from Tom Wolfe novels), who has somehow wangled an exclusive on the "re-awakening," and Kate Philo, Ph.D., a biologist who wants to remove Jeremiah from the prison of clinical observation to give him a chance at a normal life. The suspenseful plot hinges largely on three questions: How many colleagues can Carthage ruin without fouling his own nest; will the chaste courtship of Rice and his protectress, Philo, morph into actual carnal relations; and, most compelling, when does Rice's new lease expire? Working feverishly, some of the nerdier members of the revivification team have discovered that every life form similarly resuscitated has expired within days--after a brief honeymoon period, the organism goes on endocrine overdrive and self-destructs. Rice seems to have beaten these odds, and a methodical British staffer is closing in on a way to arrest this deadly metabolic frenzy--until Carthage fires him. As Rice issues his gentle jeremiads about the violence, profanity, licentiousness and overall insanity of our world as compared with that of the world at the turn of the 20th century, other, more intriguing lines of inquiry go unexplored, e.g. the impact on Rice's descendants, if any. The ending, if not exactly ingenious, is at least fitting and somewhat touching. A derivative but unmistakably engaging debut.

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February 1, 2013

Aside from a 75,000-copy first printing, the purchase of film rights by 20th Century Fox, and Kiernan's credentials as a multi-award-winning journalist, what does this book have going for it? A really intriguing premise. When a team of scientists uncover a man frozen deep in Arctic ice, team manager Dr. Kate Philo is ordered to try to revive him--after all, she's done it with plankton. Soon, a surprised Jeremiah Rice is recalling falling overboard sometime in 1906.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2013
In this smart, heady, and irresistible science thriller, award-winning journalist Kiernan's first novel, newly credentialed scientist Kate Philo, who has cast her lot with the shamelessly egotistical and ruthlessly ambitious Erastus Carthage, makes an astounding find in the Arctic. With an eye on the lucrative field of cryogenics, the crew, including a pot-smoking Deadhead genius, is searching for marine creatures embedded in icebergs that they can reanimate. Instead, they find a frozen man. Back in Boston, in a classic mad-scientist scene, they succeed in resurrecting Jeremiah Rice, a Massachusetts judge who was believed drowned in 1906. Soon religious extremists are protesting the blasphemous Lazarus Project, and the media, including a lecherous journalist who believes he has exclusive access, are in a feeding frenzy. Carthage's greed goes into overdrive, and defiant Kate insists that Jeremiah be treated as a human being, not a research subject. She and the judge grow close as they venture out into the world, and forthright, courtly, and deeply moral Jeremiah becomes the most curious of celebrities as he assesses the clamorous changes a century has brought. If only his life wasn't, once again, in danger. Kiernan gets every element right in this breakneck, entertaining, and thought-provoking tale about time, mortality, the ethics of science, and the meaning of life. The film rights were instantly sold.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2013

Dr. Kate Philo, searching the Arctic Ocean for "hard ice"--ice that has not melted during the short Arctic summer--hopes to recover flash-frozen mammals such as the mammoths occasionally found in Siberian permafrost. One night she and her scientific team strike unexpected gold: the body of a man frozen deep in the ice. They take the corpse to Boston, where Kate's boss, Erastus Carthage, will try to reanimate what he labels "Subject One" of his Lazarus Project. Amazingly, he succeeds and Judge Jeremiah Rice, whose last memory is of falling overboard into the ocean during a 1906 storm, is brought back to life. But news about the project and Jeremiah raises a tempest of ethical controversy and protests. Mixed with the cutting-edge science (with greed naturally raising its ugly head) is a love story that flowers between Kate and Jeremiah. Recognizing the judge's fragile humanity, Kate strives to introduce him to 21st-century Boston and New England. During their outings, their mutual attraction grows, set off against the imperfections of Jeremiah's reanimation. VERDICT This debut by an award-winning journalist (Last Rights; Authentic Patriotism) is a compelling, beautifully written, and thought-provoking literary thriller that will call to mind Daniel Keyes's classic Flowers for Algernon. [See Prepub Alert, 1/14/13.]--Vicki Gregory, Sch. of Information, Univ. of South Florida, Tampa

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.