The Cloning of Joanna May

by Fay Weldon

Joanna May, sixty, learns that her estranged husband, Carl, has created four, thirty-year-old clones of her

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Literary Fiction, Feminism, British Literature, Novels, Book Club

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Fay Weldon CBE was an English author, essayist and playwright, whose work has been associated with feminism. In her fiction, Weldon typically portrayed contemporary women who find themselves trapped in oppressive situations caused by the patriarchal structure of British society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Weldon

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 3 out of 5]

This could be the next step on from Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives. The perfect woman. But this one has intelligence. Its a story of how she leaves her creator, her lover, and her adventures on her way to taking over the world. Its quite amusing to see the sex industry from the point of view of one who has no knowledge of morals. The end of the story is predictable, somewhat disappointing, but actually the only possible end.

[Frankie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating 3,5-ish?
~CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS~
Wow. This book was completely different from what I expected, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I was expecting the story to have a science fiction feel to it (knowing nothing about the book beforehand since I accidentally pressed "play book" in my Storytel app and then thought I might aswell go with it). Turns out it's actually a story about female empowerment (yay). It is about cruel and misogynistic men, what they do to stay in control of women's lives and how karma might just catch up to them in the end.

SUMMARY
Joanna May is married to a wealthy but narcissistic man who will do most anything to keep her by his side. He frightens her, as he does most people, but at least she is never bored. She'd hate to be bored. When Carl stumbles upon Joanna's extramarital affair, he has her lover killed. She knows what he did but wastes no energy trying to prove it. The couple separates and for a moment it seems like Joanna's life might become boring after all. She does not yet know about Carl's backup plan.
Thirty years ago, she visited the doctor's office to get an abortion. Little did she know that her persuasive husband had the doctor harvest one of her eggs. That this egg would later be tinkered with in a lab, split into four and implanted in four different women.Women that would eventually give birth to Jane, Julia, Gina and Alice. Carl May's backup plan; the four clones of Joanna May.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second 1989 novel in a row by a British writer who recently died (but Weldon was a generation older than Mantel). This is my third Weldon novel, and the best. The writing is so good it’s almost painful how easily it seems to have come. Ditto for Weldon’s observations about people and life.

The only negative for me was that too much seems to have been repeated and stretched out — there’s a looseness to the novel. Too little effort in the writing and in the editing, I suppose. A 4.5.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know nothing about this book, if it's an early one and she hadn't found her footing, or if it's a late one and she's coasting on fumes, or if someone bet her she couldn't write a novel in one weekend, nothing, all I know is that I read it and I didn't get it.

Which essentially translates to "sometimes I love her but this was boring." Nobody did anything, not of any significance. It's not entirely plotless, but it's far more inclined in that direction than I find enjoyable. Joanna May herself complained a lot. Carl May complained a lot. Bethany didn't really complain but didn't do anything else either. I couldn't tell the four clones apart, so that doesn't bode well for how interesting and riveting they were as characters. And then it was over.

And all I could think was "why would someone write this? What was the point?" Perhaps it's a clever allegory about the rise of sectarian violence, or a fresh rethinking of a classic Welsh legend, or some other something that would give rise to this book rather than another, but if so, I couldn't spot it.

I only finished it because it was on Audible and I didn't know how much longer I had, so I kept waiting for a plot to kick in, then it ended.

(Note: I'm a writer, so I suffer when I offer fewer than five stars. But these aren't ratings of quality, they're a subjective account of how much I liked the book: 5* = an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish, 4* = really enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)

[Dan Purdue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wrote a longer review, but got a message that Goodreads was over-capacity, and it vanished. Not a great start!

Essentially, I found this booked flawed. The characters were weak and annoying, particularly the female characters, the plot was slow, the science of cloning in the book was iffy. It didn't really convince me, but I read to the end to see how it would turn out. Not a book I'd recommend personally, but if you want a fairly light melodrama with a tiny bit of (dodgy) science thrown in, you might enjoy it.

[Elinore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joanna May is a beautiful, wealthy, 60-year-old divorcee. Her ex-husband Carl divorced her ten years ago following the discovery of her infidelity. Carl was a victim of child abuse and grew up chained in a dog kennel. He's now a wealthy and powerful man, but he's ruthless and controlling. Although he has seemingly moved on from Joanna’s infidelity, with the twenty-something Bethany, he is still obsessed with Joanna. Eventually Joanna confronts Carl and he retaliates by confessing that thirty years ago, when Joanna thought she was having an abortion, Carl told the doctor to secretly harvest her eggs to produce four clones.

This is a funny, satirical book with cynical and knowing characters. Carl is powerful but creepy as he wants to possess and control. He wants Joanna’s undivided love and attention and can’t understand why she needed anything but him during their marriage, and is still obsessed by her ten years after their divorce. The clones are his back up plan, his take two. I expected Carl to try to marry one of the thirty-year-old clones to recreate his earlier marriage. I was surprised he didn't bring up the clones himself in order to shape them into the "perfect" version of Joanna and wife. Joanna is restless and unfulfilled - is this because she doesn't work, is child-free and divorced? The clones, Alice, Gina, Jane, Julie, have grown up to be very different from Joanna showing the results of nature versus nurture. They are seem unsuccessful as a happy marriage and children is the pinnacle of achievement for women here. Joanna is suddenly driven to find and protect her clones - her children, sisters, self, but can she protect them from Carl? The clones give both Joanna and Carl purpose.

[Lucynell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book 3

The Cloning of Joanna May
Fay Weldon
1989

4/5

I read more women than men. I don't mean to, it's just, generally speaking, women tend to negotiate the why rather than the how, so to speak, the emotional world rather than the mechanics of the novel, and that's what I enjoy the most. Generally speaking women go deeper, show more and from my reading-for-the-pleasure-of-it experience those who have mastered their craft have created books or a whole body of work that resembles very little else. Virginia Woolf, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Bernice Rubens, and this one, this anti-feminist feminist, one of literature's wickedest witches, Fay Weldon. Venom-spitting, toxic-dripping, yet always light-hearted, always up for a laugh at the absurdity of our situation, the false expectations, our vanity, our inability to accept our fundamental inadequacies and flaws. Only someone who really cares would negotiate the things that hurt the most, take themselves to the darker places of our condition and show us through fiction, through comedy even, our complex humanity.
This is not her best work. 350 pages are just not enough for what should be six main characters, in this plot, but it's still plenty, quite bonkers, inventive fun.

[Elaine Maul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointed by this.
I acquired this a long time ago as a freebie from The Sunday Times and hung onto it because I enjoyed Fay Weldon's 'Life and Loves of a She Devil' and thought I'd enjoy more of her work.
However, I happened to notice it on my shelves and thought I'd read it. I stuck with it; rarely give up on a book! But I can only say it was 'OK'.
The characters weren't really all that interesting. I thought there would be more of a scientific leaning in the book about the actually cloning techniques but these weren't detailed at all. The four clones of Joanna May weren't really described in sufficient detail that you could make your mind up about how similar they really were to Joanna and whether any differences were because of their upbringing. Then the book suddenly rushes to its conclusion, which was predictable, and then it was finished!

[Laura Tenfingers · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF@20%

Couldn't get into it, didn't care. The main male character is horrible in a very non-believable way, somehow a too feminist-manifesto kind of evil. Didn't get enough of the female characters to care enough to go on. Admittedly, real life was stressful so maybe my heart wasn't in it.

[Mary Greiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can you imagine yourself cloned? Who would result? Are you sibling or parent?
Fay Weldon bravely takes the challenge of sorting the results, together with a plethora of personalities to brighten the journey. I often feel a bit wacky after reading one of her novels, but never bored.

[Gro E. L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not like it

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven't read any books by Fay Weldon for years. Really good.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't decide if it was brilliant or crap. So round about and supposedly clever. I am happy to be finished with it.

[Michael Pilgaard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sikken en gang jammerlig bæ! Mænd er nogle svin og kun grimme kvinder kan være lykkelige. Seriøst? Historen havde hverken charme, dybde eller læseværdighed.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

*shrug*. Neither here nor there.

[Laura]

No more to say that hasn't been said. Except: Fay Weldon at her perceptive best. Carl May and his sidekick Dr Holly play God, but the women have the last word. Brilliant.

[Lee Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had forgotten how much I love Fay Weldon

[Tolkien InMySleep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feels like a very 80's novel, with themes of nuclear power danger, genetic research and gender identity. An enjoyable, fantastical romp!

[sally davidson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, a bit repetitive (though that was, I think, intentional).

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joanna Parsons, upper middle class w/o a care in the world, married Carl May, who started his life in a kennel. Based on his tragic childhood, Carl didn't want children. Joanna was okay with this until she wasn't; she had a hysterical pregnancy when she was 30. Carl found this to be the ultimate betrayal - her unconscious had rejected him. He therefore played a trick on time and on hysterical pregnancies - he and Dr. Holly practiced parthenogenesis - asexual reproduction. They took one of Joanna's eggs and split it four times and implanted these eggs in the wombs of four women, effectively cloning his beautiful, perfect, but aging wife.

*spoiler alert*
I don't put spoiler alert at the top of the above paragraph b/c you the reader learn most of this from the back cover; all these details are covered in the first 33 pages of my copy. The stage has been set. At the time of the novel, Joanna is 60 and Carl is 63; Joanna knows nothing of her 30-year-old clones. She and Carl have divorced because Joanna was caught cheating on Carl w/ someone much younger; Carl then has this young guy killed (like he did their pet dogs - he was jealous of how much Joanna loved them). Carl is powerful; he runs a nuclear power plant. It is the 80s, and the Chernobyl disaster has just occurred, so Carl is at the forefront of the news. He has a new girlfriend who is "less than him in every way except age."

This book is chock-full of cleverness and begs for literary analysis. There is the clear reference to technology and genetics and the risk to human life. We are mere babes in the laboratory - humans can be cloned in this world, a world in which energy from nuclear power is only barely controlled, the implication being that cloning (stem cell research) is our next major disaster. In one interview, Weldon postulates that maybe old age isn't all it's cracked up to be - why do we strive to live longer when in fact those last 5-10 years are often riddled w/ pain and loneliness? Is all this stem cell business indeed only a search for the holy grail or never ending life? Why are we so afraid of death? (This conversation all happened using smoking as an example - she implies or questions whether those extra 5 years we get added on to the tail end of our life from not smoking are worth all the trouble?)

Fay Weldon is called a feminist; she talks around the designation in interviews (go read some of her interviews - she is totally fascinating and outrageous and amazing). However, note that parthenogensis involves an unfertilized egg and can notably be found in nature when males are in short supply. All of Joanna's clones are female; in asexual reproduction or apomictic parthenogenesis a successful genotype can regenerate quickly without wasting resources on male offspring who won't give birth - all offspring are better off female b/c females can have babies and continue the species. The above causes the science fiction imagination to kick - a world w/o men when sperm is no longer needed, or a way to reproduce when (good) men are hard to find. However, as we all know, clones are less fit b/c they are missing new, potentially beneficial genes from a second party, and Weldon gets into this a little as well - Carl wanted to make beautiful replicas of his wife, but once completed he cannot believe they won't also practice infidelity. This leads to discussions of the soul, of the concept of "I" (is the soul split in five parts or are there now five souls - is the soul tied to the DNA?) and of nature versus nurture.

This is a book about fractured women and about the future of the human race. I must read more by Weldon.

[Margo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is excellent.
So the science is wacky and a little dated, but the characterization is spot on.
This is an easy to read modern paperback which asks some pretty unsettling and challenging questions about privilege and personhood.
Our lead, Joanna, switches enticingly between icily distant and sympathetic and keeps you guessing. She is a brilliant portrait of a upper class woman who has isolated herself to such an extent from anyone she considers inferior that she really doesn't know how interact with anyone unless she needs them for something.
Honestly, read it. It is so worth your time and you would be giving tribute to a criminally underrated feminist author.

[Avd.Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this novel.
After she divorces her controlling husband Carl, sixty-year-old Joanna May finds that her ex had cloned her thirty years ago. She searches and finds her four clones, the sister/daughters she has never had. Though their genes are identical, the five women are not as alike as one would imagine. They all have different interests and life-styles, and the new generation of Joannas now actually has the choices pioneered by the old. This book is more about the interaction of the women than it is about the freaky, futuristic cloning project of Jonanna's husband, for whom the story ends rather badly. This was a really good read.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Categorizing novels in one genre or another is often based on arbitrary criteria, like the author's previous work, or the lack of a better label. Many authors who are labeled 'science fiction' would argue that their stories are not sci-fi in the least, but rather explorations of the human condition. The Cloning of Joanna May falls into this category, I think. It's not so much about cloning as it is about the dissatisfaction after a life spent dedicated to a self-absorbed man.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Male domination and loss of control over one's own body and identity are frequent themes in science fiction that often yield enjoyable tales. But this one, for me, lacked a believable plot and relatable characters.

[Suzette · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't believe I hadn't read this before, but it is still a timely and chilling story. Carl May sounds and acts like Donald Trump which makes this book even more chilling in terms of it's impact on women.

[Karschtl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Back cover sounded interesting, bit like "The third twin". But I gave up after 60 pages, didn't like the story up to there and especially not the style.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this is an hostel in Vancouver all a bit creepy the thought of cloning and a bit depressing.

[Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an odd book. I enjoyed the story, but it was somehow unfulfilling.

[Bookguide · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better the more I read. See my full review: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/8...

[Kathy-Ann Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is funny in spots but can seem dreary at others. But the subject matter is definitely intriguing yet it ends in an unbelieveable manner.