Thank you to Mira books an imprint of Harlequin books for providing me an ARC of The Mirror Man and including me on the blog tour. The Mirror Man by Jane Gilmartin is out today, October 20th. Included in this post you will find the synopsis, purchase links, an excerpt, my honest review, and a Q&A with the author.
About the Book:
The Mirror Man
Jane Gilmartin
On Sale Date: October 20, 2020
9780778309642, 0778309649
Hardcover
$27.99 USD, $34.99 CAD
Fiction / Science Fiction / Suspense
352 pages The offer is too tempting: be part of a scientific breakthrough, step out of his life for a year, and be paid hugely for it. When ViGen Pharmaceuticals asks Jeremiah to be part of an illegal cloning experiment, he sees it as a break from an existence he feels disconnected from. No one will know he’s been replaced—not the son who ignores him, not his increasingly distant wife—since a revolutionary drug called Meld can transfer his consciousness and memories to his copy.
From a luxurious apartment, he watches the clone navigate his day-to-day life. But soon Jeremiah discovers that examining himself from an outsider’s perspective isn’t what he thought it would be, and he watches in horror as “his” life spirals out of control. ViGen needs the experiment to succeed—they won’t call it off, and are prepared to remove any obstacle. With his family in danger, Jeremiah needs to finally find the courage to face himself head-on.
Purchase Links:
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Mirror-Man-Jane-Gilmartin/dp/0778309649 Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-mirror-man-jane-gilmartin/1132648651?ean=9780778309642 Bookshop:
https://bookshop.org/books/the-mirror-man-9780778309642/9780778309642 IndieBound:
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780778309642 Books-A-Million:
https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Mirror-Man/Jane-Gilmartin/9780778309642?id=7603448579977 Kobo:
https://www.kobo.com/ie/en/audiobook/the-mirror-man-6 AppleBooks:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-mirror-man/id1474107554 Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Jane_Gilmartin_The_Mirror_Man?id=9nClDwAAQBAJExcerpt:
Charles Scott glared down at him with a glint in his green eyes
that felt like a warning, and Jeremiah replayed in his head the man’s ambiguous
threat during their first meeting several weeks before.
“You now know as much about
this project as anyone else involved,” he’d
said. “It wouldn’t do to have too many people walking around with this kind
of information. Our investors have a tendency to get nervous.”
Although Scott had quickly
followed that remark with the matter of Jeremiah’s substantial compensation,
there was no mistaking the implication: the moment he’d been told about the
cloning project Jeremiah was already in. That first meeting hadn’t been an
invitation so much as an orientation, and the contract he’d later signed had
been a formality, at best. And the entire thing had done nothing but gain
momentum from that moment on.
Dr.
Pike continued to affix the wires to Jeremiah’s head. Jeremiah focused on the
man’s gleaming black hair and the deep brown of his sure, professional hands,
and he struggled to remember the allure of the $10 million payout he’d get at the end
of the whole thing. That kind of money could fix a lot of problems. It would
change things. The prospect of that fortune had been enough to make him turn
away from principles he thought were unshakable. Every man has his price, he
supposed.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he also acknowledged the real
temptation of a twelve-month sabbatical from his own life. It had seduced him every
bit as much as the money had. Maybe more. Between a job that had already begun
to make him question his own morals, and a marriage that felt increasingly
more like a lie, stress was eating him alive. And into his lap fell a chance to
just walk away from all of it—without consequence and without blame. A free
pass. He could simply walk away without anyone even knowing he was gone. There
isn’t a man alive, he told himself, who would have refused. Despite the ethical
question, despite that human cloning was illegal the world over, it would have
tempted anyone.
Dr. Pike injected the clone with Meld and then turned wordlessly
to Jeremiah with the second syringe poised above his left shoulder.
Jeremiah closed his eyes and rolled up his sleeve.
After the initial stab of the needle, he felt nothing. Which is
not to say he didn’t feel anything; he literally felt nothing.
Seconds after the injection, he became aware of a total emptiness, like a
towering black wave that threatened to sink him into an immeasurable void. The
experience was unlike anything he’d ever known. He imagined an astronaut
suddenly untethered from his ship, floating helplessly into unending darkness.
Without thinking, he immediately felt his body recoil. His mind screamed
against it.
I’m dying!
From
impossibly far away, he heard Dr. Pike say something about a heart rate and
felt the slight pressure of a hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t see
anything of the hospital room anymore. He was drowning in the blackness. His
chest felt suddenly constricted. He fought just to find his breath.
“This is all perfectly normal, Mr. Adams. You have nothing to
worry about. Concentrate on the sound of my voice. Nod if you can hear me.”
With considerable effort, Jeremiah managed what he hoped was a
nod of his head. He was suddenly gripped by the alarming certainty that if he
couldn’t communicate somehow, he’d be lost—swept away forever.
“Good. Good. Listen to my voice. It will keep you grounded.”
Pike still sounded far away, but Jeremiah nodded again and struggled to focus.
“What you are experiencing is to be expected. Do you remember when you took the
Meld with Dr. Young? Do you remember the way you could feel her thoughts for
the first few minutes?”
He nodded. It had been an unnerving thing to perceive her consciousness
mixing with his like that. Flashes from her mind—odd, alien things like the
feel of a blister on the back of her right heel, the familiar gleam in the eye
of an old man he’d never seen—had swirled into the very structure of his own
mind and fought for a place to settle. He had railed against that, too, and she
had grounded him by flashing a penlight in his face, making him focus on that
while the Meld took effect. Afterward, once he had sunk in, it had been easier.
“This is no different than what you experienced then,” Pike
said. “This time, though, you are connected to an empty mind. There’s nothing
there. But the more you resist, the longer this will take. You need to relax,
Mr. Adams. Give in to it.”
Jeremiah nodded again and then shook his head with as much grit
as he could muster. How does one give in to this? He didn’t think he could do
it.
“Once your thoughts begin
transferring into the mind of the clone it will be easier for you,” Pike urged.
“Focus on a memory, as I suggested. Something vivid. It will help to fill that
void you’re experiencing now. It will give you something to hang on to.”
Without the benefit of his full faculties, Jeremiah had little
choice but to grab the last thing he’d been thinking about—his initial
conversation with Charles Scott, the day all of this began.
He’d been surprised when he’d received an invitation to lunch
from ViMed’s head of Engineering. The man was an icon in the science world, and
although he’d quoted him a hundred times for the company, Jeremiah had never
actually met him. He’d been intrigued enough to accept the invitation,
especially when Scott had told him it involved a “proposition that could make
him a very wealthy man.”
Flashes of that encounter and snatches of conversation now
flitted through his mind like so many fireflies. He fought to catch them.
“We’ve been watching you, Mr.
Adams.”
“All we ask is one year of your
life. Isn’t that worth $10 million?”
“We can do this. The science
exists. And with Meld, the clone will even share your thought patterns… Your
own mother won’t know the difference.”
“This is sanctioned by powerful
people—we have millions in secret federal backing. There are billions more in
eventual funding… There’s no need to be so suspicious, Mr. Adams.”
From somewhere far away,
Jeremiah heard Dr. Pike repeating his name. He had been so engulfed in his
efforts to hold on to the memory that he’d almost forgotten where he was. As
soon as he realized it, the void loomed again in his mind.
“Mr.
Adams,” Pike said, “you’ve got to listen to me. The clone cannot pick up on any
memory of the experiment. What you’re thinking about is not going to help. You
need to think about something else, some memory that won’t be filtered. His
mind is still empty.”
Jeremiah panicked. He couldn’t think. And now that he wasn’t
focused on anything, the blackness began to take over again, creeping closer
and threatening to swallow him. He fought for breath.
“Relax, Mr. Adams,” Pike said. “Think about your job here at
ViMed. Remember something the clone can actually use. Something he’ll need to
know.”
He felt a dull jab at his shoulder.
“This should help. I’ve given you a mild sedative. Take a few
deep breaths. Concentrate on your breathing.”
With everything in him, Jeremiah tried to turn his mind away
from the void that seemed to be all around him. He inhaled deeply and tried to
focus on the rise of his own chest. Exhaled, and he felt his chest fall.
“Very good, Mr. Adams. Very good. Pulse is returning to normal.
Deep breaths. Now, think about a typical day at work. Something ordinary and
mundane.”
Inhale. Exhale. After a moment, Jeremiah began to relax and, as
the sedative took hold, he found he could let his mind wander without the
frantic thought that he’d never get it back. An oddly comforting fog seemed to
expand in front of him, pushing the blackness away slightly, and Jeremiah
retreated into it.
He began to think about the morning of the Meld fiasco—the day
the New Jersey housewife had killed herself. The press had been circling. He’d
arrived at his office with a terse mandate from his superiors to “get these
fuckers off our back” and no idea how to accomplish that. It hadn’t been lost
on him that not a single soul seemed bothered enough to stop and feel sorry
about it, and he’d taken a quick moment behind his office door to offer silent
condolences. It wasn’t thirty seconds before someone had come knocking,
pushing him to get something done.
Weeks before, he’d heard talk of Meld being used to detect brain
activity in a sixteen-year-old football player who had been comatose for nearly
six months. Time to cash in. He tracked down the doctor somewhere in Delaware
and the man started gushing about Meld, calling it “magical,” “a godsend” and
“the most important medical advance of a generation.”
“After so many weeks,” he said, “the parents were hopeless.”
Meld was a last resort before pulling the plug, and it gave them
the first clear signs of neural activity in the boy.
“Not only was he aware and awake in there, but he was cognizant
of everything that was going on around him—including the fact that his parents
were losing hope. He even heard them talking about funeral arrangements at one
point. The kid was scared, terrified. He was begging for his life in there.
That’s what I saw when I took the Meld with him. Meld absolutely saved his
life. There is no doubt in my mind.”
Jeremiah had almost smiled. It was pure gold. A few hours later,
the story was in the hands of every major news outlet, and that doctor was
spending his fifteen minutes of fame touting Meld as “a medical miracle.”
Jeremiah focused on that now. Maybe Meld did have some silver
lining, after all, he thought. Maybe it was
miraculous.
Review:
The Mirror Man: A Novel by
Jane Gilmartin My rating:
4 of 5 stars I was provided an ARC of this from the publisher via Netgalley book in exchange for an honest review. This book comes out today October 20, 2020.
I really enjoyed this sci-fi/medical thriller. I really enjoyed the creative use of science in a modern day setting paired with impacts on the human condition. This deals more with the ethics of science and the consequences of the experiment, so it doesn't have a ton of twists and turns from the thriller perspective. The pace was good considering it is not a super action packed book. It held my attention which is often hard to do in a more character focused story.
This doesn't have any romance or sexual content, so if you are looking for a good sci-fi or thriller that doesn't have a romantic subplot this is a good one. It also doesn't rely on gore or horror elements either. There is one scene towards the end that is a little bit gruesome, but this horror reader feels it is really tame compared to other thrillers out there. I feel that the author did a great job using the psychological and scientific aspects to really move the plot along nicely.
On to the plot, this follows Jeremiah Adams, marketing director for ViMed, who on the surface seems to have it all together. He and his wife have been married for quite some time and they have a teenage son. Jeremiah is successful at his job and they don't seem to want for anything. Underneath, things aren't perfect and when his company offers him and exuberant amount of money to participate in a year long experiment he accepts and sees it as a way to get away from the day to day stress he's been living. What he doesn't realize is the amount of stress being cloned and watching his clone live his life will have on him and his psyche. He also doesn't realize what lengths his company and their investors will go to to ensure the experiments success. The longer the experiment goes on and the more he learns about himself, he realizes that his decision to replace himself in his life may not have been the right one.
Q&A with Jane Gilmartin:
1. What made you write this novel?
I love characters that are almost but not quite human. My favorite Star Trek characters are always ones like Spock, Data, and the Doctor from Voyager. Clones, to me, are about as almost human as you can get. Some of my favorite science fiction stories deal with clones. But there are so many good ones already out there I didn’t feel like I had anything to add, and I never really set out to try.
But I was reading something a few years ago that posed a straightforward and fascinating question: What would it be like to meet your own clone? The article I was reading left it at that, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I knew it might be interesting to write a clone story that focused not on the clone, but on the human, who had been cloned. I thought that presented a whole new set of ideas and issues within the topic. It sort of turns the whole thing around when you look at it from that human perspective. What would it feel like to see yourself replaced in your own life? There is something so creepy and sad about that idea. Also, though, I saw something hopeful. I think it brings up the possibility of making a change in your life or seeing the opportunity for a second chance, which is always a good thing to explore. Those are some ideas I tried to keep in mind as I was writing The Mirror Man.
2. Medical thrillers are all the rage. Why, do you think?
I think there is something intrinsically threatening about so-called Big Pharma – especially right now. In the midst of a global pandemic, the world is waiting for a viable vaccine to fix it, but there’s this nagging doubt that maybe it’s being rushed. We have government agencies relaxing rules on testing protocol, funding research with budgets the size of planetary systems, and all these drug companies racing to be the one that comes charging in on the white stallion to save the world. But poll after poll in the news says the public won’t feel safe getting vaccinated right off the bat, even if it means getting back to normal. And there are more people in the world today that don’t trust mandated vaccines to begin with – not even for the tried and tested ones for polio or mumps.
People don’t trust that these huge companies truly have the public’s best interest at heart. I think that really became more evident when pharmaceutical companies began advertising drugs on television and pushing people to “ask your doctor or pharmacist if (insert drug here) is right for you.” I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t want to suggest a drug to my doctor as though it were a brand of cookie that looked good on TV. I’d much rather my doctor had a more educated idea on what medicine I ought to be taking.
So, I think medical thrillers are big right now because people are pretty easily convinced that an industry that seems motivated more by profit and less by altruistic science just might have the capacity for evil. For a lot of people, that distrust is already there.
3. What are your thoughts about cloning?
I find the concept of cloning to be fascinating. The thought of having a clone – someone who could say, clean the bathrooms for me, make dinner, go to a meeting in my place – is sort of tempting. But there are all these sinister elements about cloning, and a whole lot of ethical questions, too, that are a lot more serious. What if we created clones for harvesting body parts in the event that we got sick or injured? What if we used them to fight our wars or for bomb disposal and other dangerous endeavors in our place? Would the auto industry begin using clones instead of test dummies for crash test data? Presumably, a clone would feel every bit as real and human as the host it sprang from, but would it be? Would clones have the same rights and privileges of personhood if they were mere copies? Would they be entitled to such rights and privileges? And if they didn’t get them – what then? Would they organize and rise up against us?
There is a lot to consider about human cloning and I only touched briefly on these questions in The Mirror Man, but I think we – as a society and as a species – ought to start thinking about it.
4. How did you research this novel?
Because the main focus of The Mirror Man is more the psychological changes of the protagonist as he watches his clone, it isn’t a book that’s especially science laden. That being said, the science (even though most is invented) had to be believable and plausible and so, is based on real science.
For the cloning aspect in the story I researched the way cloning is currently done in mammals – via cell transfer and embryotic implantation. But I also needed to identify ways in which scientists might grow a human clone quickly, so it would reach a full, adult maturation rate in about 48 hours. I read a lot about Human Growth Hormone (HGH) in the pituitary gland of our brains and its effect on how our bodies grow. The research was intriguing and sent me down so many rabbit holes dealing with the role this hormone plays in cell repair, muscle mass, weight gain, and even life expectancy. The articles I saved and the notes I took might well come in handy for a future novel.
I also did some research for Meld, the invented drug in the story. I wanted to create a drug that – if two people took it together – could offer a literal glimpse into someone else’s mind but one that could also be used to transfer brain patterns and consciousness from the main character into the clone. In the novel, the drug is used in a myriad of ways – not only to copy a mind, but also as a promising medical tool and as an illegal recreational drug with dire consequences. For Meld I researched the areas of the human brain such a drug might act upon – especially our aptly titled mirror neurons which are responsible for making us yawn when we see someone else yawn. (If yours are especially active, you might have yawned at the very thought of that. If so – sorry!)
5. Do you believe human cloning is possible?
As the lead scientist in The Mirror Man likes to point out, “the science exists.”
Human cloning is absolutely possible. We are already so adept at cloning animals that there are actual companies out there whose entire business model is built on cloning our dogs and cats. And people do that more often than you’d imagine. Did you know Barbara Streisand has had something like five clones of her favorite dog? It’s true. And we all know the story of Dolly, the sheep with the dubious distinction of being the very first mammal to be successfully cloned in 1996. From dogs and cats and sheep it isn’t a giant leap to cloning humans. Essentially, the science is the same. What’s stopping us (thankfully) isn’t the feasibility, but the ethical and moral dilemmas associated with human cloning.
While many countries have passed laws that prohibit human cloning, the US currently has no such legislation (although some states do). Congress has proposed many bills to that effect, but none have been enacted into actual law. The reason for that is partly because things like medical stem cell research overlap the science of cloning. But there are reams of material written on the ethical implications of human cloning from agencies including the World Health Organization, and there are ongoing congressional discussions to agree at least on some level of regulation. But at the moment, in the US, human cloning is both scientifically possible and essentially legal. That’s just a tiny bit terrifying.
6. Talk about the meaning of identity in your book
It didn’t take me long to understand that what I was really doing with The Mirror Man was writing a story about self-identity. It’s a topic that finds its way into a lot of what I write and is strangely compelling to me. My favorite line from David Bowie’s song “Changes” is this:
I turn myself to face me, but I never caught a glimpse of how the others must see the faker
I find that idea fascinating. We all have this idea of who we are, and how we come across to other people, but it’s probably not the truth. The way we see ourselves is muddled with all these filters and little lies. We are all, in a sense, just fakers. I wanted to explore that concept, so I came up with a way to put a character in a situation where he literally had to turn and face himself – to see himself exactly as everyone else sees him -- from the outside. Cloning seemed an obvious choice for a science fiction writer.
In the novel, my character, Jeremiah is largely locked in this laboratory/apartment and made to watch his clone on a TV monitor for four hours a day. Even though he’s typically seeing mundane things – the clone interacting with his family and co-workers – the experience is difficult and eye-opening for him. While he has to admit that his double is every bit identical to him, he begins to despise who he’s watching. It makes him question fundamental things about his own identity.
Meanwhile, we have this illegal street use of a drug called Meld that allows people to see themselves through someone else’s eyes and it leads to a rash of suicides. It’s another way of looking at what the main character is going through, but the result is basically the same: It isn’t easy to face the truth of who you are.
There are a lot of figurative and literal mirrors in my novel. Jeremiah is often looking at his own reflection as he grapples with questions about his life. He spends quite a bit of time creating an avatar of himself for a video game. And, obviously, his clone is sort of the ultimate reflection. But he never fully understands what he’s seeing until he’s forced to face himself. And I had to bring him to that point in a very literal way. Hopefully, the novel will leave readers asking some interesting questions about their own identity.
Jane Gilmartin has been a news reporter and editor for several small-town weekly papers and enjoyed a brief but exciting stint as a rock music journalist. A bucket list review just before she turned 50 set her on the path to fiction writing. Also checked off that list: an accidental singing career, attending a Star Trek convention, and getting a hug from David Bowie. She lives in her hometown of Hingham, Massachusetts.
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