Brothers (Nova Audiobooks)

Rating:
Summary: 2 sibling rivals in search of a good story
Review: Ben Bova usually writes workmanlike science fiction novels that are stronger in the exploration of scientific ideas than in characterization. In Brothers, Bova tries to work on characterization and fails miserably.

The story is about two brothers, Arthur and Jesse Marshak, who are opposing each other in a science trial. Arthur has been developing the technology to re-grow organs, a technology that may have led to the death of one his employees. Against this backdrop, the sibling rivalry of the brothers is played out. The story of the problems with the technology isn't bad but the characters just are too unbelievable.

Arthur Marshak is the older brother and a good and decent man. His brother Jesse is portrayed as selfish and self-centred early on but becomes more likable as the story progresses. Jesse is either a jerk or he isn't and Bova doesn't give him enough complexity to balance it. Nor does he undergo a conversion of great significance during the story. Jesse's characterization is bad but his wife Julia's is abysmal. Julia is portrayed as the most sympathetic and compassionate individual in the story. Yet this woman quite literally goes from Arthur's bed to Jesse's. In real life actions like this break up families and are not done by caring, compassionate individuals. Subordinate characters fare no better. The key politician is stereotypically just out for votes. The fundamentalist Christian preacher is unprincipled and perhaps even a crook. It strikes me that writers can only get away with these types of attacks on Protestants and the stereotypes are highly discriminatory.

Will the science trial turn out favourably? Will the two brothers be reconciled? The conclusion doesn't make a lot of sense. Bova can do better.

Rating:
Summary: Easy to Read, Easy to Forget
Review: I was 2/3rd's of the way through this book and realized that nothing was going on. Two very self absorbed brothers make amends while each maintaining their own opposing views. I guess I was disappointed to say the least. The ending was very anticlimactic.

Rating:
Summary: Hey, it's not that bad!
Review: When I first examined "Brothers" I was a bit dismayed to find its construction utilizing the "different chapter, different viewpoint" technique, the very same style which had forced me to read Monsarrat's "Kapillan Of Malta", in two unsatisfying operations... all the odds, and then all the evens.
But Ben Bova has done a rather better job with what is, in fact, a very difficult technique. His chapters are short, so that the reader does not lose the thread of the narrative, and the register and voice of each viewpoint's dialogue is authentically maintained. Even the many flashback or flash-forward sequences are well signalled and slip seamlessly into the structure. Perhaps those of my reviewing colleagues at Amazon, who so panned this work, should try their hand at this genre....Folks, it is harder than it looks, and Bova has done it well!

Working in pharmacy, and also serving, from time to time, on a panel which examines potential names for newly patented prototype medications, I was naturally interested in the medical research background to this story...and could well imagine the authenticity of the underlying conflicts as the factions representing medical and social ethics, academic lobbying, political aspirations, avarice versus selflessness, and humanitarianism versus personal ambition fought it out against a University laboratory background ...test tubes at ten paces!

The theme of genetic modification , in this case the viability of empowering the human body to grow its own replacement parts,thus requiring no donor organs and no surgery, is probably even more keenly debated now than when this book was written five years ago...and the points this book makes, or leaves for us to ponder, are still the subject of much media exploration, and a lot of bandwagonning and bandstanding! .....

The brothers of the story, Arthur, the protective elder, and Jesse , the indulged younger, represent the conflict of research for financial gain versus research to aid the poor and needy...though, as in real life, the two philosophies waver, weaken at times, even change direction, the whole issue complicated by the fact that both men have been engaged to the same woman, but only one has married her!

Add to this a few potboiler subplots.......a mother dying of cancer, too late for the research to help her, a suicidal, cancer-prone genetic researcher in love with the lab's experimental , near-human chimp, an ultrasound that predicts a spina-bifida child (who COULD be helped), an evangelizing clergymen, ambitious politicians, patent-poaching foreign firms, agressive journalists, and the inevitable animal-rights liberationists , and you have something for everyone here!

And with the New York background so vividly described, and the details of each character's appearance, wardrobe and restaurant selections made so available to us, one need almost not wait for the movie to be made.... except that one has the sneaking suspicion that Bova intended this novel to be televised.......pity Sean Connery and Robert Redford are getting a bit long in the tooth.....suppose we'll just have to settle for John Travolta and Hugh Grant...and fake New York accents!

READ "BROTHERS" BY BEN BOVA...IT ISN'T AS BAD AS EVERYONE SAYS!
DARE I ADMIT I ENJOYED IT?