25 University Avenue ~ The Basement

Bonobos are the only other primates who do it face to face. Females dominate bonobo society and copulation is diplomacy in its ideal form. Promiscuity means peace.

But that's bonobos. Is it a mistake to invite a man to one's house on the first date?

"Oh, well," Lucy says aloud, smiling vaguely as she raises her wrist to her nose for another sniff of her new perfume. A DNA sequence, collected last summer from the wing of a Painted Lady, scrolls down her computer screen at a dizzying speed.

Too late now: the doorbell's ringing. She reaches for her inhaler, gives it a shake, and takes a puff on her way up the stairs, stashing it in the mail table drawer on her way to the door.

8:32 p.m.

The Front Walk

Long before his chance encounter with its owner in the 600 section of the university library, Gray knew the Queen Anne at 25 University Avenue as the house that changes colors. The siding is a peculiar shade of yellow that turns a dusty sap-green under the light of the streetlamp. The house is yellow in the morning on his way to campus and green on his walk home. The old carriage house, with its padlocked doors and grimy octagonal windows, gives him the willies no matter the hour.

As he comes up the front walk for the first time, he sees that the house is in a worse state of repair than he had discerned from the curb. Not shabby, exactly--not yet--but the front yard has the disconsolate air of a home that no longer merits a write-up in Better Homes and Gardens. There's a widow's walk along the western side he'd never noticed before, a curious feature considering the sea is a full hour's drive away.

The porch lamp is on, but there's no light coming through the fanlight above the door. Stained-glass panels flank the doorway, but he can barely make out their design: angels, he supposes. Three sets of wings apiece. Seraphim?

He rings the bell three times before she answers it, and in the meantime he can hear the chime echoing through the hall. "Sorry," she says, shivering at the gust of cold air that accompanies his entrance. "I was in the basement." He hands her the bottle of Cusumano and Lucy says, "How thoughtful--I love Sicilian wine--thanks ever so much."

Strung on a delicate silver chain, a diamond of fair size glitters in the hollow of her throat, and the candle on the hall table softens the sharp edges of her profile. She'd seemed somewhat plain under the harsh fluorescent lights at the library, but in her own home, slipped into something made of satin and three times as old as she is, Lucy is altogether lovely. He watches the gooseflesh fade from her arms as she hangs his coat in a closet to the right of the entryway. An ancient deerstalker cap hangs on the door hook.

The house appears cavernous on the inside, probably because most of the lights are turned off. A tableau of family portraits, most of them in black and white, eyes him from high on the foyer walls, and a genealogical tree in careful calligraphy hangs above the hall table. Through an open door to his left he hears Billie Holiday singing "There Is No Greater Love."

Every time she leaves a room she flicks a switch. "We're big on conservation in this house," she tells him.

Other photographs line an arched hallway into the kitchen: wedding parties and engagement portraits, mostly; a few family-reunion shots with three or four dozen people crowded into the frame; and a smattering of baby pictures, all of them too old to be hers.

She flips on the kitchen light and dons a quilted baking mitt. A ceramic salad bowl on the granite countertop brims with spinach and crumbled feta cheese....

 

 

"Swift, witty and endlessly amusing. . . . Partly because of the pacing, partly because of the story, but mostly because DeAngelis makes the reader care terribly about Mary, and what happens to her, the novel turns out to be difficult, if not impossible, to put down."

 

"If Mary Shelley were writing today she might have penned this darkly romantic monster story. . . . DeAngelis ultimately charms and moves us with this heartbreaking fairytale of a novel."

 

"What tugs a reader into this story is the time-travel setting . . . and the relationships are fascinating. . . . [An] intriguing, unusual novel."

 

"Author reminds me of: Alice Hoffman and Mary Shelley, as she pushes the envelope beyond the usual range of perceived reality. . . . This is a quirky novel, so well-crafted that the lighter moments easily balance the more serious issues raised."

 

"Entertaining and skillfully written. . . . This is a love story that raises some interesting questions about love's limits, and its possibilities."

 

"DeAngelis has penned a modern-day Frankenstein with some unforgettable characters. . . . Mary Modern will keep readers awake with wonder."

 

"DeAngelis is wonderfully inventive. She is thoughtful in her slant on Shelley and Frankenstein, as well as the dilemma of a capability in science that surpasses the ability to foresee ethical consequences. She is gifted in description and pleasingly unpredictable in her plot. Readers comfortable with a genre won't be able to pigeonhole Mary Modern as romance, sci fi, gothic or horror. While not a match to the classic, the novel (and its challenges and wrap-up surprises) will haunt just as thoroughly. It's delightfully strange."

 

"The novel adroitly straddles the line between science fiction, horror and romance."

 

"Compelling . . . Lucy's story of love and ambition will appeal not only to fans of gothic romance but also to book groups, whose discussions of bioethics, social responsibility, personal freedom, and the biological nature of memory will last into the wee hours."

 

"A literary mix of love story, sf, and thriller. . . This elegantly written work touches on issues that plague modern life, and though it gives you ample opportunity to suspend your disbelief, it ultimately provides an unexpected and satisfying payoff."

 

"Imaginative . . . DeAngelis combines a neogothic exploration of a moral-ethical morass with a quirky clone love story. . . . Titillating."

 

"Mary Modern has everything you look for in a book: smarts, style, and suspense. How often is it that you marvel at an author's literary skill while you feel that mad scramble to find out how it ends? It's a thrilling debut."

 

"A strange, strangely beautiful, and beautifully accomplished novel. Science, history, personal identity, and literature go into the blender, and what comes out is a nearly perfect mix."

 

"What an inventive and testing book: Mary Modern may be the strangest package of fictional illusions that I've encountered for a long time, but Camille DeAngelis has pulled off every trick with a confident extravagant flourish. She is a writer/magician whose debut novel is learned, engrossing, incessantly surprising, and extraordinarily touching."

 

Camille DeAngelis received an M.A. from the National University of Ireland, Galway. She lives in New Jersey.


From the Hardcover edition.

 

 

Mary Modern by Camille DeAngelis
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