Rating: 
Summary: Unusual but Interesting
Review: 4 stars because this is quite an unusual novel, what with the added footnotes on some of the genetic traits. Unique.Being a dwarf, Dr Lambert is practically a lonely person. A celebrated scientist, but beyond his profession, he retreats into his own cave. His thoughts are illustrated in such a frank manner they can be sarcastic, pitiful, yet bold. The writing teases our curiosity and plays with our own perceptions. We get to read deep into his feelings and empathize in the process, although Dr Lambert is proud enough not to keep feeling sorry for himself. Recommended for people who would like something different both in the style of the writing and in the perspectives offered by the storyline.
Rating:
Summary: Unusual but Interesting
Review: 4 stars because this is quite an unusual novel, what with the added footnotes on some of the genetic traits. Unique. Being a dwarf, Dr Lambert is practically a lonely person. A celebrated scientist, but beyond his profession, he retreats into his own cave. His thoughts are illustrated in such a frank manner they can be sarcastic, pitiful, yet bold. The writing teases our curiosity and plays with our own perceptions. We get to read deep into his feelings and empathize in the process, although Dr Lambert is proud enough not to keep feeling sorry for himself. Recommended for people who would like something different both in the style of the writing and in the perspectives offered by the storyline.
Rating: 
Summary: I cannot recommend this one
Review: Although I'm sure this book contains a lot of cogent scientific information, the story is much too brutal for my taste. I understand that the life of a handicapped person is not easy. My sister's confined to a wheelchair. However, I was put off by the cruelness and brutality that ran through the book. I cannot recommend this book to my fellow readers. It's just too bleak...especially the final scene. It haunted me for days.
Rating:
Summary: Intense, but I could not put it down.
Review: I bought this book based on the "professional" reviews at amazon.com. I read it in 2 sittings, but I cannot heartily recommend it unless you're looking for detailed scientific information about genetics, a boring history of Gregory Mendel, a disturbing and sometimes brutal plot line, or a very unsettling ending. I wish I had quit reading right after the baby was born. I could have lived with the ending as it stood at that point. However, the final scene was just too brutal for my taste and, although I've tried, I cannot get that last image out of my mind. I'll have to let the dust settle a bit before I can pass final judgment, but, at this point, I would not advise my friends to read this book. It's just a bit too intense for my liking.
Rating:
Summary: The main character explains what life is like for a dwarf.
Review: Although I do not usually enjoy science and genetics makes my head spin, this story of a sensitive man who is always looked down upon and suffers from being so intelligent but so unattractive to the world. While he shows us the pain felt by someone "ugly" to others, he helps us to see how much love is needed even by one who seems successful as a scientist. His love for Jean, the librarian, touches one's hope that he will be able to achieve human contact, and he does. However, all cannot end well as her jealous husband cannot handle knowing he is not the actual genetic donor to a wonderful baby. How this makes one realize how cruel we are to anyone who looks "different."
Rating: 
Summary: AN AUSPICIOUS, AFFECTING DEBUT
Review: Although the incongruity of the pairing startles, Mendel's Dwarf is an achingly beautiful love story.. It is also an account of scientific progress, of the strides made in the field of genetic research. And, it is poignant reminder of the paucity of our understanding regarding the human heart. Dr. Benedict Lambert, Ben, a distinguished geneticist, is the great-great-great-nephew of Gregor Mendel, the Augustinian friar whose research in the inheritance characters in plants and hybridization provided the platform for modern genetics. Ironically, Ben has achondroplasia - he is a dwarf, a mutant as he calls himself, who "possesses a massive forehead and blunt, puglike features. His nose is stove in at the bridge, his mouth and jaw protrude. His limbs are squat and bowed, his fingers are mere squabs. He is one meter, twenty-seven centimeters tall." Yet he is brilliant, so esteemed that he is called upon to address members of the Mendel Symposium some 100 years after his great-great-great uncle's death. Aware of the surprise, revulsion and pity in the eyes of his audience, he has steeled himself to ignore the "there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I sort of stare," yet he is cagey enough to use their sympathy, "the guilt of the survivor," to win over his listeners. Following his address Ben visits the monastery at Brno where Mendel worked. It is here that their life stories begin to interweave. Through Ben's voice we learn that they share a devotion to research, while each is hampered in his own way - the eccentric friar by his humble background and the parameters imposed by the Augustinian order he follows, while Ben is fettered by his physical deformity. As men they are both frustrated sexually. Mendel, bound by vows of celibacy, finds his muse in the safely wed Frau Rotwang, wife of a wealthy cotton mill owner, to whom the friar shyly presents a plant he has bred and named for her - the Adelaide fuchsia. His gift is received with "A small exhalation of breath. A shock. It is the first time that he has ever hinted at her Christian name, the first indication that he even knows it." Ben's desire for intimacy is hobbled by his physical appearance. He finds a modicum of comfort and dismissive acceptance with prostitutes: "It'll be extra for you. Sorry dear, but that's the way it is. Market forces....extra for gross deformities." The pain of that encounter is small compared with his unrequited love for Miss Jean Piercey, a librarian at London's Royal Institute for Genetics, where Ben is on staff, determinedly working to identify the gene for achondroplasia. Only a writer with the compassion and skill of Simon Mawer could elicit empathy rather than sideshow curiosity when describing their unlikely coupling. As the pair of biographies unfolds, the men's scientific discoveries are meticulously recounted. Although delivered clearly and succinctly, at times the complexities of such information as "You follow the riflips with radioactive DNA probes," may tend to intimidate. Yet, Mendel's Dwarf is an aurora borealis of ideas, a spectacular exploration of nature's cruelty, humankind's demand for conformity, the unremitting search for knowledge, and our unquenchable thirst for love. Despite the lucidity of his prose and the ingeniousness of his tale, Mr. Mawer's crowning achievement surely is Ben, who tries to hide his vulnerability behind an armor of paradox. Raised by a father who never looked straight at him, "Always his glance was aslant, tangential, as though that way he might not notice," Ben develops his own way of coping: "You guard against self-pity, build bastions of cynicism, dig ditches of irony and sarcasm; but sometimes, just sometimes, the barriers are breached." In the breaching of these barriers the story reaches its cosmically tragic finale. Winner of the United Kingdom's distinguished McKitterick Prize for fiction, Mr. Mawer is introduced to an American audience with Mendel's Dwarf. It is an auspicious, deeply affecting debut.
Rating:
Summary: AN AUSPICIOUS, AFFECTING DEBUT
Review: Although the incongruity of the pairing startles, Mendel's Dwarf is an achingly beautiful love story.. It is also an account of scientific progress, of the strides made in the field of genetic research. And, it is poignant reminder of the paucity of our understanding regarding the human heart. Dr. Benedict Lambert, Ben, a distinguished geneticist, is the great-great-great-nephew of Gregor Mendel, the Augustinian friar whose research in the inheritance characters in plants and hybridization provided the platform for modern genetics. Ironically, Ben has achondroplasia - he is a dwarf, a mutant as he calls himself, who "possesses a massive forehead and blunt, puglike features. His nose is stove in at the bridge, his mouth and jaw protrude. His limbs are squat and bowed, his fingers are mere squabs. He is one meter, twenty-seven centimeters tall." Yet he is brilliant, so esteemed that he is called upon to address members of the Mendel Symposium some 100 years after his great-great-great uncle's death. Aware of the surprise, revulsion and pity in the eyes of his audience, he has steeled himself to ignore the "there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I sort of stare," yet he is cagey enough to use their sympathy, "the guilt of the survivor," to win over his listeners. Following his address Ben visits the monastery at Brno where Mendel worked. It is here that their life stories begin to interweave. Through Ben's voice we learn that they share a devotion to research, while each is hampered in his own way - the eccentric friar by his humble background and the parameters imposed by the Augustinian order he follows, while Ben is fettered by his physical deformity. As men they are both frustrated sexually. Mendel, bound by vows of celibacy, finds his muse in the safely wed Frau Rotwang, wife of a wealthy cotton mill owner, to whom the friar shyly presents a plant he has bred and named for her - the Adelaide fuchsia. His gift is received with "A small exhalation of breath. A shock. It is the first time that he has ever hinted at her Christian name, the first indication that he even knows it." Ben's desire for intimacy is hobbled by his physical appearance. He finds a modicum of comfort and dismissive acceptance with prostitutes: "It'll be extra for you. Sorry dear, but that's the way it is. Market forces....extra for gross deformities." The pain of that encounter is small compared with his unrequited love for Miss Jean Piercey, a librarian at London's Royal Institute for Genetics, where Ben is on staff, determinedly working to identify the gene for achondroplasia. Only a writer with the compassion and skill of Simon Mawer could elicit empathy rather than sideshow curiosity when describing their unlikely coupling. As the pair of biographies unfolds, the men's scientific discoveries are meticulously recounted. Although delivered clearly and succinctly, at times the complexities of such information as "You follow the riflips with radioactive DNA probes," may tend to intimidate. Yet, Mendel's Dwarf is an aurora borealis of ideas, a spectacular exploration of nature's cruelty, humankind's demand for conformity, the unremitting search for knowledge, and our unquenchable thirst for love. Despite the lucidity of his prose and the ingeniousness of his tale, Mr. Mawer's crowning achievement surely is Ben, who tries to hide his vulnerability behind an armor of paradox. Raised by a father who never looked straight at him, "Always his glance was aslant, tangential, as though that way he might not notice," Ben develops his own way of coping: "You guard against self-pity, build bastions of cynicism, dig ditches of irony and sarcasm; but sometimes, just sometimes, the barriers are breached." In the breaching of these barriers the story reaches its cosmically tragic finale. Winner of the United Kingdom's distinguished McKitterick Prize for fiction, Mr. Mawer is introduced to an American audience with Mendel's Dwarf. It is an auspicious, deeply affecting debut.
Rating:
Summary: Simply extraordinary
Review: An author less gifted than Simon Mawer might have done the obvious - that is, show us a character with physical deformities who has, within, a great soul. Mawer has succeeded at much more complex task: he has created for us a flawed, driven, bitter, complicated, difficult dwarf. This extraordinary book is worth reading simply for the depth of this characterization - not to mention the book's other virtues. The book's only dramatic flaw may be the ending, which is not so much implausible or inconsistent as it is just a little too unexpected -- for the sake of the book's shape, one wishes we had been given more background on Hugh so that his final actions would fit better with the rest of the book. But that would have been difficult, given the position of the narrator. In any case, beware: the ending will break your heart.
Rating:
Summary: Dark and Beautiful
Review: Characters so fully and beautifully realized as Benedict Lambert are an increasing rarity, even in "quality literature." I was consumed.
Rating:
Summary: Put me to sleep
Review: For the first time in a couple years, I failed to finish a book. After about 140 pages of waiting for something to happen (or even an indication that something *might* happen later), I gave up. I tried to hang in there for the sake of the admittedly interesting science, but the story seemed to be going nowhere. I just couldn't stay awake for the last 2/3 of the book.
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