Thank you to Macmillan-Tor/Forge for providing me with a free copy of Sarah Gailey’s novel, The Echo Wife, in exchange for an honest review.
Evelyn, a scientist who is a pioneer in the field of cloning, is married to her job. Her dedication and singular focus is so fierce, that she is blindsided when her husband, Nathan, asks for a divorce. Soon after they begin to live separate lives, Evelyn discovers that Nathan, a fellow, albeit somewhat lazy scientist, has been stealing Evelyn’s work for very personal reasons. Nathan has created, Martine, a clone of Evelyn.
Even more shocking, Martine is pregnant, giving Nathan the one thing that Evelyn denied him; a baby. Theoretically, Martine’s pregnancy should be impossible and morally, it is dubious, as Nathan programed Martine to both be compliant and to have strong desires for a baby. Should a clone have the same rights as humans, and if so, does this pregnancy violate Martine’s rights?
The existence of Martine threatens to damage Evelyn’s credibility and research funding. The threat level is dramatically increased when Martine calls Evelyn in desperation, asking for help that only Evelyn can provide. When Evelyn and Martine connect, they begin to unravel the depth of Nathan’s deceit and Evelyn begins to question what it means to be human.
I throughly enjoyed The Echo Wife. Admittedly, early on, I thought, “Oh, I know where this story is going,” but I couldn't have been more wrong. It’s surprising and fresh. Set in the near future, the plot has shades of West World, Black Mirror, The Stepford Wives, Frankenstein, and Ex Machina.
The story is sharp and fast-paced like a thriller, yet it is dotted with questions that make you consider what it means to be human or what is the morality of creating a life? Is a clone life the same as human life and do clones have agency? Should they have agency? When Evelyn is confronted with interacting with a clone in a real world setting, she has difficulty in seeing her life’s work as just science experiments. She is surprised by how Martine interacts with the world, sometimes against her programing.
Gailey’s characters are engaging, especially Evelyn, as The Echo Wife is told from her first-person perspective. Gailey does an excellent job at scene setting, in particular the laboratory scenes where she is describing the process of creating a clone. Several scenes in The Echo Wife are quite graphic and hard to stomach, but they are not gratuitous. They serve to build the greater story and play into the theme of humanity.
I was also surprised to discover that The Echo Wife is a kick-ass feminist story. Evelyn and Martine are strong women. Martine was created to be a sweet, “Stepford Wife” for Nathan, but that is certainly not where she views her destiny. Evelyn, as strong as she is in many ways, also admits a prior weakness for Nathan and a jealousy towards Martine. The arc of the story sees her handling these emotions and learning what it means to be both a better scientist and a better person.
I can’t praise The Echo Wife enough. Gailey is a “new to me” author and I look forward to reading her other books!