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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2007, 384 pages
Paperback:
May 2008, 384 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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A fingerprint expert's investigation of a series of crib deaths leads her back to the mystery of her own childhood.
Lena is a fingerprint expert at a crime lab in the small city of Syracuse, New York, where winters are cold and deep. Suddenly, a series of crib deaths—indistinguishable from SIDS except for the fevered testimony of one distraught mother with connections in high places—draws the attention of the police and the national media and raises the possibility of the inconceivable: could there be a serial infant murderer on the loose?
Orphaned as a child, out of place as an adult, gifted with delicate and terrifying powers of intuition, Lena finds herself playing a critical role in the case. But then there is the mystery of her own childhood to solve....Could the improbable deaths of a half-dozen babies be somehow connected to her own improbable survival?
The beauty and originality of Diana Abu-Jaber's writing are here accompanied by deft, page-turning narrative tension and atmosphere, tugging the reader to an unforgettable conclusion.
Chapter 1.
I spot her as soon as I get off the elevator on the fourth floor. She’s waiting
on one of the metal folding chairs in the corridor just outside the office. Her
bright russet hair sliding out of a barrette, her skin mottled, her face
carefully neutral.
I stop short. Listen to the elevator doors slide shut behind me.
Victims exist in another dimension, as far as I’m concerned—they’re theoretical. The
police meet the victims; we work in an office. I wouldn’t have become a print
examiner if I wanted to meet victims.
I sidle past her, trying not to make eye contact, as I enter the office. Alyce,
the division leader, is trying to signal me with her eyes. “Hey—Lena—”
But the woman’s fast; she walks right into the office, between the cubicles, tall
and pale and intimidating with this kind of intensity that I realize must be
grief. A scary kind of grief. I don’t even make it to my desk, she’s saying,
...
A good choice for book clubs looking to read a mystery. Many book clubs are rightly cautious of selecting mysteries because, although they might offer an entertaining read, they often provide slim pickings when it comes to conversation. Origin is one of the relatively rare breed of who-dunnits that successfully combines mystery with the opportunity for good discussion...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog
With prose as cool as a razor yet as wildly impressionistic as a fever dream, Diana Abu-Jaber takes us deeply into Lena Dawson and her search for a killer that must first begin in the lost forest of her own psyche. Origin is a gripping exploration of the elusive nature of identity and one's own remembered past, the innocent and guilty alike. This is a superbly written and utterly compelling novel! Anita Shreve, author of Body Surfing and A Wedding in December
A dark, noirish literary mystery with an entirely unique detective-heroine. The characters stayed with me long after I had finished the book. I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything like it, which alone is reason to celebrate. Chuck Palahniuk, author of Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey and Fight Club
With the narrator, Lena Dawson, we get someone entirely new, a hybrid of forensic science and animal instinct. Here’s a brilliant protagonist who can trust her intuition when she reaches the limits of her professional training.Children raised by animals?
In
Origins, Lena believes she
spent her early years in the
jungle being raised by apes,
which begs the question, are
there any real cases of children
being raised by animals? You
will find the answer at
feralchildren.com which has
collated a number of claims and
attempts to separate fact from
fiction.
Mirror-touch synesthesia
Lana is able to sense things
that others can't, such as the
emotional residue left in a ...
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