Review of The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne
TL;DR: 1 of out 5 stars.
This review has been cross-posted to my Goodreads. Feel free to add me on there!
If you're wondering just how terrible I found this book, I actually created a DNF shelf because I felt like I couldn't continue with it any further. Should probably add that I have a bachelor's degree in biotechnology, so I'm more familiar with the basis of Cray's work than the average reader.
Theo Cray is a computational biologist. We know this because he repeats this to everyone he meets - all while he secretly judges them for not knowing what that is. Actually, that's all the guy does, seemingly - boast about his profession and judge people. Off the top of my head:
> Implies a forensic tech isn't a scientist because she doesn't know about a fungal infection exclusive to frogs (!!!) - and takes a leap further and says she only collects samples, doesn't examine them. This is patently incorrect since a forensic technician's job requires at least a bachelor's degree in some sort of science.
> Says he hates explaining his work to non-scientists - because of course a freaking police detective should be able to parse a university-level explanation on phenotype plasticity so our hero isn't inconvenienced.
> Makes a crappy inside joke and then notes that his audience doesn't react. Non-STEM people don't have a sense of humour at all!
> Thinks people with doctorates in fields unrelated to medicine/science who insist on being addressed by a title they earned are just hot air. Because they're not in hospitals curing cancer.
> Calls it "emasculating" when a colleague tries to comfort him when a one-time student of his dies.
> Pretends to be humble about a research grant as if he's not been dissing non-STEM people since the first page.
> Did I mention he's scientific? Data gives him a mental boner. Totes.
> All this, and suddenly he goes off track to spend pages on explanations like DNA testing or how GenBank works. But don't you hate explaining your work to non-scientists?
If the author has written this with the intent of it being ironic and wanting us to dislike Theo - that's a great concept, but what makes it great is the apparent authorial intent behind such a premise. Off the top of my head I'm reminded of Madame Bovary. Flaubert was masterful in narrating the story at two levels - one from Emma Bovary's point of view and one as the omniscient narrator who wastes no time in poking fun at her. All we have in The Naturalist is Theo's self-absorbed, insipid monologue, filled with useless interjections about his opinion on everything.
The writing is clunky and strange in places. The dialogue attempts to be witty in places, but I don't know whether it's because I disliked the rest of the book - it fell flat. In some places, it feels like the book was written in third-person and then switched to first-person.
she felt her warm blood drip down the cold flesh of her stomach
with my spectacles and absentmindedly combed hair
My words are terse and filled with self-loathing. "It's not her that I blame."
She could pass as a Brazilian or any other beautiful mélange
Oh, and this isn't even including the plot holes.
> One of Theo's former students, from like six years ago, dies. She took one class under him in one semester. She never contacted him after that, but apparently she told everyone he inspired her(?) and when she dies of a bear attack, his first instinct is that it's his fault because he didn't caution his students enough about the dangers of nature. What?
(Spoilers under the Read More link.)
