- Fauna, by Donna Mazzo. Allen & Unwin. $29.99.
Stacey and her husband Isak are struggling.
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Financially; as a family, with two children; and with the stillbirth of their third. Stacey in particular cannot overcome the grief and depression of having to give birth to a child already dead.
I am not me any longer. I can feel her writing herself into my bloodstream. Ancient codes uttered in the pulse of our being. Homo neanderthalensis tracing back into the world through our cells.
This may be why they take on an IVF pregnancy with a shocking twist; they are being paid to participate in a biomedical experiment, in which Neanderthal genes are added to their own. The research company, LifeBLOOD, undertakes this highly speculative and secret experiment for the purpose of introducing robustness into genetic therapeutic procedures.
But Asta, when she arrives, is much more than a genetic oddity. The revival of an extinct human species, she shares a common human need for motherlove. As her life unfolds, a compelling story takes shape around the imagined experience of Stacey, mother to this special, "special needs" child.
Sometimes, the cells of the foetus cross the barrier into the mother. Parts of the baby transfer through the placenta, leaching out into the mother's body, creating anew parts of her tissue, installing the code of her unborn baby into her heart and her brain. She is no longer herself as she once was. She is a chimera, parts of her forever altered with the DNA of her children, human or not (p83).
The strength of Fauna's narration comes from it being told from Stacey's point of view. It is an absorbing portrait of motherhood; how giving birth to and raising a special needs child takes over this woman and becomes all she is and cares about.
How well it conjures the postpartum space of fatigue, softening and bodily sensation; pain, torpor and bliss.
Donna Mazza creates the intimacy of pregnancy and nursing through intense first person narration that makes the experience very real. This is a key part of the novel's success in making the hypothetical of such a birth imaginable.
It is also made believable by echoes of more common experiences; mothers of disabled children for whom the task demands so much that they make it their heart and soul.
Stacey's protectiveness and love for Asta is vivdly conveyed, as is her accompanying agoraphobia, defensiveness and depression.
"[Y]ou had some question about a birth certificate ... we can't register with the government as a birth."
"Why?"
"Technically, she's not a human birth."
Silence. Trying to process this statement.
... He continues, "She'd be considered fauna". (p139)
Stacey's story also draws on experiences of surrogacy and adoption. The contract states that Asta must be surrendered to the biotech doctors when she reaches puberty at seven years old, for her role in their therapeutics.
The story becomes chilling - Asta has been "bred to put living tissue of Neanderthal humans into clinical settings. It echoes ethical dilemmas like those faced by families who are advised to have a second child to provide some therapeutic benefit for a terminally-ill sibling.
Maternity rebels against the instrumentalism. As Stacey finds, motherhood is in the experience of giving of yourself without counting the cost.
But everyone is being used in the scenario - not least her family who are rewarded with a car, property and cash in exchange. The global biotech company is buying something not easily commodified - a family's nurture, a mother's love.
At the beginning, Stacey imagines her role as being to bringing to back an extinct life form - she was studying archaeology when she met Isak. But as Asta and her bond with her grows, she attempts to repudiate the contractual carapace placed around her love for this child.
She fails. The power gradient is just too steep between her domestic scene and the world of biotech, and even between her feelings and the rationality of her husband.
A contract was signed. Centuries of 'animal husbandry', appropriating the life force and reproductive labour of other species for human purposes, makes the possibility in which extinct species revived for commodification is perhaps only one step beyond the routine technologies of breeding.
These quandaries in the novel are beautifully realised in the estuarine setting in south West Australia. The indentured aspect of her maternity is contrasted with the wildness of seabirds, the tides and the dunes, on the rural property that the company provides for them.
The image of the estuary as a maternal cradle for life is compelling.
So much about this book is well judged. It shows the power of a novel to explore ethical issues set in the future of the human, by translating the technical scientific gloss into the emotional realities they traverse.
- Robyn Ferrell is adjunct professor in the Centre for Law, Art and Humanities at the ANU.