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The Divinity Gene
A mob of teens descends upon Paris in the thrall of a self-help author; a grotesque yard-sale statuette frees a dying man from his silence; the hottest club in town is staffed by angels. This is the uncanny world of The Divinity Gene, Matthew J. Trafford's debut story collection, and it bristles with humour, pathos, and imaginative power. Skewering urban culture even as it conjures up the magic in the mundane, the stories of The Divinity Gene map the frailty of the human heart. Caught in the crosshairs of faith and science, its characters-bereaved, sidelined, cast adrift-journey forth to undiscovered places, in search of something to believe in, someone to love, always with disarming results. A passionately devout scientist clones Jesus Christ from the DNA contained in holy relics; a man makes a Faustian cyber deal with the devil for the sake of his family; bereaved parents sign on for an unorthodox government reparations project following a school tragedy. Masterfully original, deeply human, The Divinity Gene introduces a bold and evocative new writer.
200 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 12, 2011
3 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 21, 2025
a strange and off-putting collection of stories that all make you go “hmmmm” after you finish. love how scientific and queer they are too.
December 3, 2012
This is difficult to rate...The short stories in The Divinity Gene are quite effective, impactful, even, but I can't say I like the feeling they give me. So I went low, with 3 stars, even though these stories do what great short stories are supposed to do: they hit you in the gut, then leave something squirming inside there. I read short stories only rarely, and I always seem to compare them to that classic "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. I read that in eighth or ninth grade, and will never forget it. Likewise, I'll be thinking of "Gutted" and "Victim Services" and other passages against my will for years to come.
June 26, 2020
I heard of this book in university. My professor was friends with Matthew J. Trafford and taught one of his stories. He then brought Trafford in for a Q & A/lecture about the story we studied. I honestly forget which one we were taught, because most of the class read the entire book and asked him questions about all of the stories.
Trafford was a really cool guy with interesting things to say about short stories and his own writing process. I remember him saying that he will likely write a novel next, because, even though he likes short stories, he understands that his publisher wants a novel next. Apparently, novels out-sell short story collections.
Anyways, onto the actual stories themselves. They're funny and creative, borrowing tropes from sci-fi, horror and dystopia, but then flipping them on their heads! I think my favorite stories were Camping at Dead Man's Point, The Renegade Angels of Parkdale, iFaust and The Divinity Gene. I also liked Gutted, but not as much as those ones.
The Divinity Gene is the best story in the collection.
Trafford was a really cool guy with interesting things to say about short stories and his own writing process. I remember him saying that he will likely write a novel next, because, even though he likes short stories, he understands that his publisher wants a novel next. Apparently, novels out-sell short story collections.
Anyways, onto the actual stories themselves. They're funny and creative, borrowing tropes from sci-fi, horror and dystopia, but then flipping them on their heads! I think my favorite stories were Camping at Dead Man's Point, The Renegade Angels of Parkdale, iFaust and The Divinity Gene. I also liked Gutted, but not as much as those ones.
The Divinity Gene is the best story in the collection.
January 20, 2024
Fun concepts in many of these stories, and some experimentation that I admired but did not find totally successful. Hope Trafford publishes more work in the future, though—I like the imagination here.
October 22, 2011
October 16, 2011: Airport treat. Thanks D!
October 22, 2011: Honestly, I don't know what to say in reviewing these stories that wouldn't ruin the surprise for the next reader.
I am one of those readers who read not to be taken some place else. I like my world. I read to understand it and myself better. I like to see myself in the stories I read. Characters and their situations have to be real or at least plausible. I need to be able to relate, to empathize, to talk and listen to *people*. I consider myself to be a spiritual person, but decidedly not a religious or god-fearing one. Hence I would not expect to enjoy stories about angels or selling one's soul. Or mermaids. Or walking dead people!
But enjoy Trafford's stories I did. In fact, I was delighted with them. I giggled with such wicked glee at Jim Lundy's odoriferous feet that I was momentarily appalled at myself. Even Matthew was not so unkind as to be rude: "...I didn't want to be too much of a dick. I mean, the guy's feet were flaking off, after all, and he wasn't getting them back." *snerk*
That is not to say that these stories are all hoot and holler. They're not. Some I found disturbing and sad, at least their founding circumstances: having a garage sale of your dying husband's stuff to pay for his meds; deciding whether to, literally, sacrifice your own life and hereafter to save that of an ungrateful, self-absorbed grandchild; having the government offer you a clone of the kid you had lost to tragedy. And yet these stories all piqued my imagination, fascinated me. Jesus! No pun intended (okay it was intended), but a bajillion Jesuses?
In reviewing certain literary novels that have particularly enchanted me with their perfection, I have from time to time said it was like finding a perfect gemstone in the dirt. One that you want to cradle in your palm and watch softly glow. Trafford's stories are like some freakishly weird creature washed up on your beach of perfectly polished stones. You're not sure you want to pick it up in your own hands, but you're fascinated enough that you want to poke at it, tentatively, with a stick to see what it will do.
October 22, 2011: Honestly, I don't know what to say in reviewing these stories that wouldn't ruin the surprise for the next reader.
I am one of those readers who read not to be taken some place else. I like my world. I read to understand it and myself better. I like to see myself in the stories I read. Characters and their situations have to be real or at least plausible. I need to be able to relate, to empathize, to talk and listen to *people*. I consider myself to be a spiritual person, but decidedly not a religious or god-fearing one. Hence I would not expect to enjoy stories about angels or selling one's soul. Or mermaids. Or walking dead people!
But enjoy Trafford's stories I did. In fact, I was delighted with them. I giggled with such wicked glee at Jim Lundy's odoriferous feet that I was momentarily appalled at myself. Even Matthew was not so unkind as to be rude: "...I didn't want to be too much of a dick. I mean, the guy's feet were flaking off, after all, and he wasn't getting them back." *snerk*
That is not to say that these stories are all hoot and holler. They're not. Some I found disturbing and sad, at least their founding circumstances: having a garage sale of your dying husband's stuff to pay for his meds; deciding whether to, literally, sacrifice your own life and hereafter to save that of an ungrateful, self-absorbed grandchild; having the government offer you a clone of the kid you had lost to tragedy. And yet these stories all piqued my imagination, fascinated me. Jesus! No pun intended (okay it was intended), but a bajillion Jesuses?
In reviewing certain literary novels that have particularly enchanted me with their perfection, I have from time to time said it was like finding a perfect gemstone in the dirt. One that you want to cradle in your palm and watch softly glow. Trafford's stories are like some freakishly weird creature washed up on your beach of perfectly polished stones. You're not sure you want to pick it up in your own hands, but you're fascinated enough that you want to poke at it, tentatively, with a stick to see what it will do.
March 9, 2013
The Divinity Gene is a very interesting book of short stories that include both real world situations and supernatural phenomena. The stories encompass degrees of greed, judgement, and spirituality; they also deal with different kinds of people and how they react in certain situations and interact with others. Some of the stories, such as "Gutted" (a father and son find a mermaid, and despite his son's protests, the father dissects her and tries to gain publicity from the find), are gruesome, most likely on purpose to get a point across about human behavior. Other stories in the book, such as "Grimpils" (flocks of teenagers travel to Paris without warning in search of an author, and their parents frantically try to find them and find out their motivations), are rather confusing and terrifying because they have no surface meaning. I quickly understood or came up with a meaning for some of the stories, but others left me in a rut of trying to figure out what was going on. Overall, The Divinity Gene was extremely thought provoking. It was a refreshing and unique form of writing that I had not expected it to be when I picked it up in the store.
March 21, 2012
The Divinity Gene by Matthew J. Trafford is a book of short stories. The book was chosen the read for the Opinionless Virtual Bookclub and Matthew joined us for the discussion.
This was my first book of short stories and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the collection. The stories were not related but had a loose thread running through them - love and loss with a few angels or other divine beings (or not) running through them.
What really impressed me about this collection was Matthew's writing style. Many of the stories were written in a completely different point of view and style. He used a technique in a couple stories in which he listed several, well more than several, descriptive terms one right after the other. For example, in "Finding Helen" he listed probably all of the literary spiders ever written about. Interestingly, I knew most of the spiders, and the list fit well into the story.
See the rest of the review: http://readerandrider.blogspot.com/20...
This was my first book of short stories and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the collection. The stories were not related but had a loose thread running through them - love and loss with a few angels or other divine beings (or not) running through them.
What really impressed me about this collection was Matthew's writing style. Many of the stories were written in a completely different point of view and style. He used a technique in a couple stories in which he listed several, well more than several, descriptive terms one right after the other. For example, in "Finding Helen" he listed probably all of the literary spiders ever written about. Interestingly, I knew most of the spiders, and the list fit well into the story.
See the rest of the review: http://readerandrider.blogspot.com/20...
January 24, 2012
Many writers spend their entire careers honing and refining their craft so they can effortlessly draw from the mundane occurrences that appear as part of our everyday lives in the hope of twisting and turning them into something more magical. Not so much in the case of Matthew J. Trafford. Instead he chooses to go about things the opposite way, infusing his short stories with flourishes of the supernatural and then having the characters he’s created accept these circumstances as being so overly normal that they border on the banal.
Crack open a copy of The Divinity Gene and you’ll come face to face with a mermaid with extremely bad luck, an undead fellow who likes to go camping, angels who descend from Heaven to open up night clubs all over the world, and dozens of clones of Jesus Christ that are all strangely un-preacher like.
READ MORE:
http://www.opinionless.com/book-revie...
Crack open a copy of The Divinity Gene and you’ll come face to face with a mermaid with extremely bad luck, an undead fellow who likes to go camping, angels who descend from Heaven to open up night clubs all over the world, and dozens of clones of Jesus Christ that are all strangely un-preacher like.
READ MORE:
http://www.opinionless.com/book-revie...
October 13, 2012
There was so much terrain covered in this book. Mermaids. Jesus clones. Dead people who aren't dead. Trafford covers a broad spectrum of voices and subjects, ranging from spiritual to scientific to the everyday moments that make up the bulk of our lives. And that's where short story collections can shine more than novels - in the breadth of their creative scope. I enjoyed The Divinity Gene and I'm looking forward to what Trafford comes out with next.
August 31, 2014
I don't remember any more where the recommendation for this collection came from. It might actually have been goodreads; it might have been through the short story course I took last year, (a writing course, but one which had a lot of fabulous recommended reading lists for all styles). Anyway, wherever it came from, I am very happy to have discovered it. I really liked this collection. Quite a lot. Adding it to my growing list of "read these to see how it can be done".
January 16, 2015
This astonishing collection of short stories by Matthew Trafford was wildly imaginative, entirely unexpected, and had me engaged the whole time. There was great interplay between the lighter and darker sides of humanity. Having met Matthew at The Banff Centre, I was expecting to be impressed. His writing did not disappoint. You should read this book. It was so unique, it rather defies categorization.
January 16, 2015
This astonishing collection of short stories by Matthew Trafford was wildly imaginative, entirely unexpected, and had me engaged the whole time. There was great interplay between the lighter and darker sides of humanity. Having met Matthew at The Banff Centre, I was expecting to be impressed. His writing did not disappoint. You should read this book. It was so unique, it rather defies categorization.
March 5, 2016
4.5 stars. You know when you're reading a short fiction collection and get to the middle and there are a couple of duds that are stuck in there, and you end up kind making a low growl and skipping over them? Not in "Divinity Gene". Every story was a solid one, there was variety in the genres across the collection showing Trafford's range, and prose that was eloquent --and even poetic-- without being ostentatious. Excellent collection. Read it.
February 26, 2012
3.5 actually. Trouble with short stories for me tho is I get too hooked! There were some GREAT characters in here that I would have liked to get to know better and i am aching to find out what happened next! Full review here:
http://literaryhoarders.wordpress.com...
http://literaryhoarders.wordpress.com...
March 10, 2013
A short-fiction lover's wet dream. I recommend "Thoracic Exam" for the reader who believes themselves to be normal; "Forgetting Helen" will dash all those dreams you had of living in a library; "The Divinity Gene" is a work of art written with skill equal to the likes of Yann Martel and A.S. Byatt.
March 13, 2011
I loved this book of short stories! The ten stories that Matthew J. Trafford has written in this volume as diverse in style and voice. They are brilliant, moving and impressive.
I can't wait for his novel to be released.
I can't wait for his novel to be released.
February 5, 2013
This was a whacky and fun read through a crazily varied selection of short stories. From cloned Jesus and undead campers, to mermaids, and a story about young men flocking to Europe to seek out a mysterious author -- Trafford will keep you on your toes!
Want to read
January 24, 2012The review in Rain Taxi made this short story collection sound excellent.
February 17, 2012
Review coming...
November 16, 2012
loved it, will reread.
May 23, 2014
his is one of my favourite collections. Thoroughly imaginative, profound and touching. Funny too!
June 11, 2015
This book is rich and deep. Hilarious and horrifying. Brilliantly structured and beautifully written. I highly recommend this collection.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews