Wardini Book Review: The Seventh Son – Sebastian Faulks (Penguin, $37.00)

In Sebastian Faulks' book The Seventh Son, a young academic in need of money believes she is simply carrying a child for a grateful family. However, the baby inside her is different from any living human.

OPINION

An English couple struggling to have a baby is offered the chance of parenthood through surrogacy by the Parn Institute, which will track their child along with several others for research purposes.

A young post-doctoral anthropology researcher can’t raise the funds to continue her work and is paid to be the surrogate. It’s 2030, and the Parn Institute is up to something.

Talissa travels to the UK to meet Mary and Alaric and have their embryo implanted in her womb. They bond, and the pregnancy goes well.

Seth is born and Talissa returns to the States. Seth is an undemonstrative child, quietly impulsive with no apparent sense of consequences for actions.

He develops early, has a higher-than-average IQ and, because of the Parn Institute’s illegal and secret intervention in his conception, is more than 50 per cent Neanderthal.

The narrative then follows Seth through childhood and young adulthood, his differences only blindingly obvious to the reader and the institute monitoring him.

Talissa remains in touch with Mary and Alaric; their relationship is warm and mutually grateful. But the shenanigans of the Parn are inevitably leaked, and what this means for Seth’s family, and science and humanity in general, is enormous.

The story is a complex and deeply philosophical conversation about the development of humanity’s traits, evolution, imagination and invention.

Seth is unusual, but in a world of diversity, he’s not unusual enough to gain too much attention. His genetic abilities are fascinating, but the author presents them subtly – we do not descend into a superpower debate.

There are also conversations around the diversity of sapiens, how they came to be the dominant species and what that has meant for humanity. Faulks cleverly gives us enough science to fascinate, but not enough to overwhelm.

The Seventh Son is a clever mix of propulsive storyline and mind-blowing dissection of who we are and where we come from.

There are deeply engrossing moral dilemmas told through the universal story of love and what makes us human. This one will keep me thinking for quite some time.