- Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages
- Publisher: Eos; later printing edition (May 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0380791978
- ISBN-13: 978-0380791972
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 10.7 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 703,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
This technically polished novel ingeniously combines elements from traditional quests, fables and novels. A seemingly rhetorical question is posed in chapter 1: Why did sociable, smart Dora Henry marry cold, controlling Jared Gerber? But that question is the key to the book and to the parallel stories told by Sheri Tepper. The sets of characters unravel their separate puzzles until all become different aspects of the same web of events, shaking the reader's, and Dora's, perceptions to the core. Tepper's linguistic sleight of hand with metaphor and image is breathtaking, her storytelling deft and funny, and her characters memorable and sympathetic. Topical, mythical, archetypal and provocative, this is a book no fantasy or science fiction reader should miss.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
From reviews of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall:
‘The Women’s Room invaded by Big Brother. A provocative, devastating, enthralling consciousness raiser’
Kirkus Reviews
‘Visceral and arresting. Curl up with it’
FT
‘Opening as near-future realism, the novel metamorphoses into a mythical telling of the struggle between those who desire domination and the forces of balance and harmony.’
New Scientist
‘As always, Tepper creates excellent female characters transported by a swiftly flowing plot’
PW
‘Tepper never forgets to give the reader a gripping story on which to hang the serious concerns that lie at the root of her books… she shows how taking responsibility for one’s own life and actions can become a kind of butterfly effect’
Fantasy and Science Fiction
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Midmorning, a Tuesday in July, Dora Henry went out the front door of Jared's place to get the paper that the paperboy had, as usual, dropped just over the picket fence. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Midmorning, a Tuesday in July, Dora Henry went out the front door of Jared's place to get the paper that the paperboy had, as usual, dropped just over the picket fence. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Sherri Tepper writes wonderful science fiction and fantasy full of well-rounded characters and brilliant, fully realised worlds. At one time an ecological activist, her stories are often chilling tales of what might become of us all and the Earth if we continue to over-populate and pollute her, but she always allows for hope and the possibility that we might save ourselves.
This particular book is set at the turn of the millenium and was written in '98. It asks, "What happens if Nature decides to fight back?" We meet Dora Henry, a police-detective investigating the strange death of a geneticist with no enemies. At the same time we learn of Opalears, a slave in a harem in another place and time, setting out on an unlikely journey across several countries to St Weel, the location of a great and ancient library.
At Dora's home a single weed has become a forest almost over-night and she begins to suspect that the murder under investigation might somehow be linked to the burgeoning growth around her.
I loved this book, which definitely falls under my 'difficult to put down, even when you really, really need to sleep' category. Sherri Tepper has a great talent for contemporary social commentary wrapped in Sci-Fi that doesn't feel like preaching. She came to writing novels later in life and it's clear that her experiences and maturity lend her warmth and wisdom in her writing. I can hardly wait for her next book to be released. (There are many more and if you like this, search them all out)
This particular book is set at the turn of the millenium and was written in '98. It asks, "What happens if Nature decides to fight back?" We meet Dora Henry, a police-detective investigating the strange death of a geneticist with no enemies. At the same time we learn of Opalears, a slave in a harem in another place and time, setting out on an unlikely journey across several countries to St Weel, the location of a great and ancient library.
At Dora's home a single weed has become a forest almost over-night and she begins to suspect that the murder under investigation might somehow be linked to the burgeoning growth around her.
I loved this book, which definitely falls under my 'difficult to put down, even when you really, really need to sleep' category. Sherri Tepper has a great talent for contemporary social commentary wrapped in Sci-Fi that doesn't feel like preaching. She came to writing novels later in life and it's clear that her experiences and maturity lend her warmth and wisdom in her writing. I can hardly wait for her next book to be released. (There are many more and if you like this, search them all out)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I'm a big Tepper fan anyway, and I bought this in trade paperback when it came out. Sadly, that book has vanished through persistent lending - and everyone who's read it agrees with me - it's a wonderful book. The big plot revelation is a great thing to have, but it isn't required to make this such a wonderful book. Tepper hasn't fallen into the trap of coming up with one big idea and leaving it at that.
Other reviewers of this book have made a much better job of outlining the plot without giving too much away. I'll just say, if you don't read it, you'll regret it. I'm surprised that this book is becoming mildly difficult to get hold of - I just hope this means that it's about to be republished. Tepper is one of those quietly brilliant authors who deserves much more publicity than 90% of authors who get the hype. If you haven't read it yet, I really envy you, you lucky people....
Other reviewers of this book have made a much better job of outlining the plot without giving too much away. I'll just say, if you don't read it, you'll regret it. I'm surprised that this book is becoming mildly difficult to get hold of - I just hope this means that it's about to be republished. Tepper is one of those quietly brilliant authors who deserves much more publicity than 90% of authors who get the hype. If you haven't read it yet, I really envy you, you lucky people....
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
While I would not argue for "The Family Tree" being Tepper's most engrossing book, it must surely count as one of her most ambitious to date - if, that is, one measures such things in terms of complexity of plot, departure from comfortable suppositions and desire to undermine and overthrow most readers' pre-conceived ideas and assumptions! Sheri S. Tepper is, of course, a past master (I should perhaps rather say, mistress!) of such matters and she handles it here with consummate ease. I don't believe that anyone could make it to the end of this work without finding themselves both surprised and shocked at some stage of the journey. I also found that a deep personal re-evaluation was needed by the end too: something else that Tepper is always supreme at provoking. The book does perhaps require a little more effort than most of Tepper's other works (except, perhaps, "The Revenants"): mostly, I think, because of the greatly disparate nature of the two parallel story threads and lack of obvious connections between them. Also, I think that Tepper deliberately prevents the reader from acquiring too comfortable a toe-hold in either world, purposefully allowing one to assemble an entirely false set of assumptions about where, when and who... only to have her take great delight at demolishing those assumptions, time and time again.
Unfortunately, I think that the price that gets paid this time is that she also fails to make either world (or their coming together) entirely believable. If you're prepare to suspend disbelief, though...
My only complaint of this book is that there are some intriguing plot elements which felt never to come to anything - just why does she go to such lengths to ensure that Opalears is dressed as a boy, for example? But then, so much of this book comes to so much more than one is expecting that I'm perfectly happy to accept these as smoke screens! Or even to accept that I missed their resolution in the cataclysmic happens that occur around them.
Yes, Ms Tepper has done it again!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A book to enjoy again & again
Ms.Tepper uses one of her favourite devices here - a superhuman entity using subliminal means to steer people down the correct path to peace, propriety and mutual respect. Read more
Published on 2 Jan 2005 by A. J. Watson
Beautiful writing - love this book
This book is what I call my 'comfort' book. I have owned it for 5 years and can read it and re-read it without ever getting tired of the plot, the characters and the satisfying... Read more
Published on 4 Nov 2004
A truly magical book - with a wonderful twist
One of the most magical books I have read in a long time, I was truly bereft when I finished it. It is set both in the "present" and what I will describe (because I don't want to... Read more
Published on 16 Dec 2002 by J. L. Ashurst
A must for any fantasy fans
This book kept me hooked from the start. The cutting back and forward between the parallel stories kept me turning pages. Read more
Published on 29 April 2002
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