Ark Baby

Liz Jensen

From Shelf: The 1998 Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist

Since the year all British women became infertile, Bobby Sullivan's veterinary clinic has been packed with primate 'children' and, speaking as an alpha male, he's sick to death of them. Hoping to reincarnate himself, he moves north, but finds there is no escape from the Darwinian imperative - or from the sexual pull of the twins Rose and Blanche.

Since the year all British women became infertile, Bobby Sullivan's London veterinary clinic has been packed with primate 'children' and, speaking as an alpha male, he's sick to death of them. Hoping to reincarnate himself, he moves north, but finds there is no escape from the Darwinian imperative - or from the sexual pull of the luscious twins Rose and Blanche. As the legacy of the girls' ancestor, Victorian freak Tobias Phelps, begins to connect with a century of history, religion, and evolutionary theory, new hope looms for the nation's future.

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