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The Duplicate
Barbara isn't the most popular girl in school and she's hoping that the Ruth Warren self-help book can help her navigate through the questions in her life. How can she get Beth to be her friend? Why is Beth so popular? How can she get her true love, Tim, to notice her?
What is her mad scientist uncle working on in his basement laboratory? Why does he need an alcoholic homeless woman to live with them for nine months?
The terrible answers will affect Barbara's entire life and most of all, her own daughter.
PRAISE
"Helen Fitzgerald’s The Duplicate is a tense, speculative look at the power of dreams, the price paid to achieve them, and the pain of having them dashed. The story plays with the concepts of identity, nature, nurture, hope and desperation. With a deft touch, Fitzgerald has woven a feeling of dread into each scene as she explores the pain of broken dreams, and the eternal damage of the death of hope." - R. Thomas Brown, author of Hill Country
What is her mad scientist uncle working on in his basement laboratory? Why does he need an alcoholic homeless woman to live with them for nine months?
The terrible answers will affect Barbara's entire life and most of all, her own daughter.
PRAISE
"Helen Fitzgerald’s The Duplicate is a tense, speculative look at the power of dreams, the price paid to achieve them, and the pain of having them dashed. The story plays with the concepts of identity, nature, nurture, hope and desperation. With a deft touch, Fitzgerald has woven a feeling of dread into each scene as she explores the pain of broken dreams, and the eternal damage of the death of hope." - R. Thomas Brown, author of Hill Country
125 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 30, 2012
93 people want to read
About the author
Helen Fitzgerald
20 books345 followersHelen FitzGerald is the second youngest of thirteen children. She grew up in the small town of Kilmore, Victoria, Australia, and studied English and History at the University of Melbourne. Via India and London, Helen came to Glasgow University where she completed a Diploma and Masters in Social Work. She works part time as a criminal justice social worker in Glasgow. She's married to screenwriter Sergio Casci, and they have two children.
Follow her on twitter @fitzhelen
Follow her on twitter @fitzhelen
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 12, 2012
1.5 stars
I am not going to use spoiler tags during this review, but I am going to spoil the novel. The reason why I'm not using spoiler tags is, frankly, this book is so short that it's impossible to discuss it at all without spoiling something. But the larger reason is that everything is SO BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS that I really don't see the point. Anyway, consider this a spoiler warning, but also a tip off that the spoilers don't really matter that much, because I don't think I reveal anything that you couldn't guess from reading 20% of this very short novel.
This book is extreme Helen Fitzgerald. For people who aren't aware what that entails, usually it's complex, not always likeable heroines, black humour, twists and messed-up characters who insist upon messing each other up further.
The book is split into two very short sections. One is about Barbara, a lonely seventeen-year-old in the 1970s who is very book smart but totally socially tone-deaf. I mean totally. This girl makes Carrie White look adept in social situations. When a girl is mean to her, it is Barbara's natural instinct to bribe her for 'help' in becoming more socially acceptable. I thought it would be natural for me to pity and be invested in a main character like Barbara: she is still spiralling from her parents' death in a car crash (which she "caused" when she was ten) and abandoned with her uncle, an alcoholic mad scientist, which results in her obsession with cheesy self-help books and an average boy at her school named Tim, who reminds her of her father.
Yet her voice is just so off. I know my entire review is contradicting this impression, but I love weirdness. I love strange, offbeat characters. But this entire book just felt like 'trying too hard' to me.
Barbara isn't just awkward or uncertain. She's entirely fucking moronic. Reading her section is deeply frustrating more so than compelling or interesting because I just wanted to scream "can't you see?" throughout - can't you see that Tim doesn't want you, the bitches at school don't like you, everyone is setting you up for humiliation? Maybe this is the point, and maybe I should be praising rather than criticising Helen Fitzgerald for this. I don't know. I guess the reason why my rating remains so low is that I just couldn't enjoy this book in any capacity.
However, I think I have a good way for you to figure out if this book is for you or not:
Barbara, on the subject of masturbation: "It was a little like my first chicken korma in that it was surprising and left me feeling rather full."
Now, it's not the masturbation subject that bothers me about that line. I can't quite tell you what it is. But, whenever I think of it, I feel sick. Typing it out now, I feel sick to my stomach. Just...comparing masturbation to a chicken korma is just gross to me, but it's not just gross, it's so goddammn weird. It just seems to stink of trying too hard. It's like Helen Fitzgerald has taken the dark humour that I so enjoyed in "The Devil's Staircase" and pushed it too far. Maybe that it's. I'm at my limit, and I just can't stomach this book.
Still, there is relief from Barbara's utterly two-dimensional, creepy and odder-than-odd behaviour (such as saying "I have a very sexy body" out loud to herself in the playground), in the second half of the novel, which belongs to Rowena, Barbara's daughter. Rowena is refreshingly normal, although she has been brought up by the still-loopy Barbara.
Now, this is the point where you may want to stop reading, though everything that occurs in Rowena's section is so heavily foreshadowed by what happens in Barbara's (if that makes sense), so none of it cam as the slightest surprise to me, but still...
...Rowena is also Barbara's clone. She is obviously not aware of this, thinking of herself just as Barbara's daughter. This is not a twist in any sense of the word because it's obvious from a short way into the novel that Barbara's Uncle Ben was working on cloning before he died.
Now, Barbara has created a deeply odd plan, fitting for such an odd character. Though Rowena has grown up normal, so refreshingly normal, with friends and boyfriends and hope for a future, Barbara is still fixated on her own lost 'love' for Tim, who rejected her after playing along at having a relationship and humiliating her by putting intimate pictures of her all over the school during a dance. Barbara is totally obsessed with the fact that her only conceivable happy ending would be to marry Tim as her parents married, when they were eighteen. So she has cloned Tim, too, and left him with the drug addict mentioned in the synopsis to grow up. Throughout Tim's life, he has been abused by his "mother", and Barbara has given him a 'shining light' in the form of Rowena. Barbara has given Tim pictures and videos of Rowena from when she was very young and kindled a total obsession with Rowena.
This is not inherently bad. There are well-written touches, such as the inscription on Ruth Warren's grave and the disturbing rape scene, which is one of the few moments where Rowena's journey emotionally affected me, when Tim #2's true craziness becomes obvious.
The problem is that none of it is surprising or even particularly interesting. Well, what do you think happens when Rowena, Barbara's totally normal daughter, finds out about this little plan? Understandably, she reacts with horror and disgust and wants to leave immediately. In response, Barbara and Tim #2 both become violent and irrational. Isn't all of it just so obvious? And most of it is deeply convenient, too. The deep weirdness of the novel seems without deep feeling, surprise or emotional resonance, so instead it's a mechanical journey through the inevitable.
I am not going to use spoiler tags during this review, but I am going to spoil the novel. The reason why I'm not using spoiler tags is, frankly, this book is so short that it's impossible to discuss it at all without spoiling something. But the larger reason is that everything is SO BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS that I really don't see the point. Anyway, consider this a spoiler warning, but also a tip off that the spoilers don't really matter that much, because I don't think I reveal anything that you couldn't guess from reading 20% of this very short novel.
This book is extreme Helen Fitzgerald. For people who aren't aware what that entails, usually it's complex, not always likeable heroines, black humour, twists and messed-up characters who insist upon messing each other up further.
The book is split into two very short sections. One is about Barbara, a lonely seventeen-year-old in the 1970s who is very book smart but totally socially tone-deaf. I mean totally. This girl makes Carrie White look adept in social situations. When a girl is mean to her, it is Barbara's natural instinct to bribe her for 'help' in becoming more socially acceptable. I thought it would be natural for me to pity and be invested in a main character like Barbara: she is still spiralling from her parents' death in a car crash (which she "caused" when she was ten) and abandoned with her uncle, an alcoholic mad scientist, which results in her obsession with cheesy self-help books and an average boy at her school named Tim, who reminds her of her father.
Yet her voice is just so off. I know my entire review is contradicting this impression, but I love weirdness. I love strange, offbeat characters. But this entire book just felt like 'trying too hard' to me.
Barbara isn't just awkward or uncertain. She's entirely fucking moronic. Reading her section is deeply frustrating more so than compelling or interesting because I just wanted to scream "can't you see?" throughout - can't you see that Tim doesn't want you, the bitches at school don't like you, everyone is setting you up for humiliation? Maybe this is the point, and maybe I should be praising rather than criticising Helen Fitzgerald for this. I don't know. I guess the reason why my rating remains so low is that I just couldn't enjoy this book in any capacity.
However, I think I have a good way for you to figure out if this book is for you or not:
Barbara, on the subject of masturbation: "It was a little like my first chicken korma in that it was surprising and left me feeling rather full."
Now, it's not the masturbation subject that bothers me about that line. I can't quite tell you what it is. But, whenever I think of it, I feel sick. Typing it out now, I feel sick to my stomach. Just...comparing masturbation to a chicken korma is just gross to me, but it's not just gross, it's so goddammn weird. It just seems to stink of trying too hard. It's like Helen Fitzgerald has taken the dark humour that I so enjoyed in "The Devil's Staircase" and pushed it too far. Maybe that it's. I'm at my limit, and I just can't stomach this book.
Still, there is relief from Barbara's utterly two-dimensional, creepy and odder-than-odd behaviour (such as saying "I have a very sexy body" out loud to herself in the playground), in the second half of the novel, which belongs to Rowena, Barbara's daughter. Rowena is refreshingly normal, although she has been brought up by the still-loopy Barbara.
Now, this is the point where you may want to stop reading, though everything that occurs in Rowena's section is so heavily foreshadowed by what happens in Barbara's (if that makes sense), so none of it cam as the slightest surprise to me, but still...
...Rowena is also Barbara's clone. She is obviously not aware of this, thinking of herself just as Barbara's daughter. This is not a twist in any sense of the word because it's obvious from a short way into the novel that Barbara's Uncle Ben was working on cloning before he died.
Now, Barbara has created a deeply odd plan, fitting for such an odd character. Though Rowena has grown up normal, so refreshingly normal, with friends and boyfriends and hope for a future, Barbara is still fixated on her own lost 'love' for Tim, who rejected her after playing along at having a relationship and humiliating her by putting intimate pictures of her all over the school during a dance. Barbara is totally obsessed with the fact that her only conceivable happy ending would be to marry Tim as her parents married, when they were eighteen. So she has cloned Tim, too, and left him with the drug addict mentioned in the synopsis to grow up. Throughout Tim's life, he has been abused by his "mother", and Barbara has given him a 'shining light' in the form of Rowena. Barbara has given Tim pictures and videos of Rowena from when she was very young and kindled a total obsession with Rowena.
This is not inherently bad. There are well-written touches, such as the inscription on Ruth Warren's grave and the disturbing rape scene, which is one of the few moments where Rowena's journey emotionally affected me, when Tim #2's true craziness becomes obvious.
The problem is that none of it is surprising or even particularly interesting. Well, what do you think happens when Rowena, Barbara's totally normal daughter, finds out about this little plan? Understandably, she reacts with horror and disgust and wants to leave immediately. In response, Barbara and Tim #2 both become violent and irrational. Isn't all of it just so obvious? And most of it is deeply convenient, too. The deep weirdness of the novel seems without deep feeling, surprise or emotional resonance, so instead it's a mechanical journey through the inevitable.
October 17, 2017
This upset me so much. No time to do a proper review but ugh. That ending.
August 2, 2012
I'm pretty sure I'm not in the group of readers to which this book might mainly be targeted, but I picked it up as a fan of Helen Fitzgerald and of Snubnose Press and I'm glad I did.
In Part One of the book, Barbara tells her story. She's a misfit orphan who lives in a mansion with her crazy mad-scientist uncle. She delivers the most amazing (and shocking) of projects at the science project presentation day, inspired in part by her being an assistant back home to the cloning of animals; in the mansion, they're paving the way towards to cloning of a human.
Barbara is infatuated by a boy and she's prepared to do anything to get him. She has a lot to do, mind, being and unkempt crazy with hairy legs and a taste for the macabre.
For help, she turns to a self-help book, which might not seem like a bad idea. Taking it as gospel, however, isn't necessarily the way to go.
Barbara's obsessive nature is a wonder to behold. The sequence of events that follows the project presentation as seen from her perspective is emotionally charged and tinged with a disturbing trust in empiricism and a reader's knowledge that not everyone is as naive as she.
Barbara might be autistic. Definitely has serious attachment issues. She's emotionally scarred and is impulsive to boot. It's difficult not to warm to her and to want to turn the light on as she fumbles down passage of darkness to allow her to see the bigger picture. It's funny, hilarious at points and always edgy and original. Superb stuff.
In Part Two, I felt a little less connected with the book. This might be because I'm a middle-aged man and was in slightly unfamiliar reading territory (only at this point did I feel the strength of this as a Young Adult book).
We follow the story of Barbara's cloned daughter.
This allows us to consider how much Barbara's state of mind is nature and how much nurture - that's still got me thinking quite a while after reading.
Barbara knows that there is no chance for her to put the pieces of her shattered life back together after the experiences she's had in Part 1, but she's hoping that science might allow her the opportunity to witness the recreation of history to produce a new outcome. Better still, she's motivated by a need for revenge.
For me, this is a book of 2 halves. The first is wonderful and, if you're up for watching the unfolding of science-fiction nightmares and their likely impact on matters of the heart, you might feel the second part is too.
In Part One of the book, Barbara tells her story. She's a misfit orphan who lives in a mansion with her crazy mad-scientist uncle. She delivers the most amazing (and shocking) of projects at the science project presentation day, inspired in part by her being an assistant back home to the cloning of animals; in the mansion, they're paving the way towards to cloning of a human.
Barbara is infatuated by a boy and she's prepared to do anything to get him. She has a lot to do, mind, being and unkempt crazy with hairy legs and a taste for the macabre.
For help, she turns to a self-help book, which might not seem like a bad idea. Taking it as gospel, however, isn't necessarily the way to go.
Barbara's obsessive nature is a wonder to behold. The sequence of events that follows the project presentation as seen from her perspective is emotionally charged and tinged with a disturbing trust in empiricism and a reader's knowledge that not everyone is as naive as she.
Barbara might be autistic. Definitely has serious attachment issues. She's emotionally scarred and is impulsive to boot. It's difficult not to warm to her and to want to turn the light on as she fumbles down passage of darkness to allow her to see the bigger picture. It's funny, hilarious at points and always edgy and original. Superb stuff.
In Part Two, I felt a little less connected with the book. This might be because I'm a middle-aged man and was in slightly unfamiliar reading territory (only at this point did I feel the strength of this as a Young Adult book).
We follow the story of Barbara's cloned daughter.
This allows us to consider how much Barbara's state of mind is nature and how much nurture - that's still got me thinking quite a while after reading.
Barbara knows that there is no chance for her to put the pieces of her shattered life back together after the experiences she's had in Part 1, but she's hoping that science might allow her the opportunity to witness the recreation of history to produce a new outcome. Better still, she's motivated by a need for revenge.
For me, this is a book of 2 halves. The first is wonderful and, if you're up for watching the unfolding of science-fiction nightmares and their likely impact on matters of the heart, you might feel the second part is too.
July 6, 2012
Barbara is in love with Tim and it looks like, finally, he may have the same feelings for her.
Doesn't sound like my kind of book, then. But wait - there's a twist or three that will appeal to fans of well written, off beat stories. Helen Fitzgerald draws you in with her beguiling narrators, throws in some nice humour and interesting characters while building the tension as things slowly derail for Barbara and her daughter, Rowena.
Reminded me a little of Never Let Me Go in it's subtlety and tone and comes highly recommended.
Doesn't sound like my kind of book, then. But wait - there's a twist or three that will appeal to fans of well written, off beat stories. Helen Fitzgerald draws you in with her beguiling narrators, throws in some nice humour and interesting characters while building the tension as things slowly derail for Barbara and her daughter, Rowena.
Reminded me a little of Never Let Me Go in it's subtlety and tone and comes highly recommended.
January 9, 2016
Helen Fitzgerald's black humour is responsible for me being the crazy person laughing out loud on the bus and startling my fellow passengers. Plot is another great Fitzgerald combination of bursts of the ridiculous/surreal/mortifying, with gripping storyline and enjoyable (if not necessarily likeable) character profiles. This is the book I chose to smash (more or less) a year of reading malaise and kick-started what I hope will be a regained love of reading, and it's turned out to be a pretty perfect choice.
February 6, 2016
This book held me capture from start to finish. I found myself opening my kindle every spare moment to continue the dark tale. Helen Fitzgerald manages to inject black humour , fear and astonishment into the subject matter. At times I felt terribly sorry for the protagonist but equally she would make me cringe with disbelief at her actions . A very good read for me indeed.
January 9, 2015
I read this book very quickly - the story was unusual and had me gripped from the start. A real page-turner - strange but excellent plot and a great writing style that draws you in and makes it difficult to put the book down. Very enjoyable.
May 4, 2014
A great read that I couldn't put down and read in no to eat all.
Unfortunately the ending was odd and seemed a little used and unfinished but other tags that, a real thinker!!!
Unfortunately the ending was odd and seemed a little used and unfinished but other tags that, a real thinker!!!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews