Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #764920 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Liz Jensen's second novel, Ark Baby, is a dark, randy and riotous romp back to the future featuring twin plot lines as tightly twisted as a double helix. The novel (if not the story) kicks into gear on New Year's Eve 1999 when a sudden, heavy rainfall over Britain signals the end of fertility on the sceptred isle; with the turn of the millennium, every last specimen of British womanhood is rendered mysteriously barren. In the aftermath of this event, child-starved couples start turning to lower primates to satisfy their baby lust; enter veterinarian Bobby Sullivan, the hapless hero of Jensen's quirky meditation on evolution and survival of the fittest. After accidentally killing a client's beloved macaque monkey and being charged with murder, Bobby escapes to a remote northern seaside town called Thunder Spit and eventually gets involved with two slightly hirsute twins whom he manages to impregnate--the first fertile women in England since the millennium.

Not content to chronicle Bobby's adventures in Thunder Spit around the dawn of the new millennium, Jensen weaves in the 19th-century adventures of foundling Tobias Phelps as counterpoint. Discovered abandoned in the Thunder Spit church by a childless vicar and his wife, Tobias is raised by the couple as their own, but his unusual appearance (squashed features, odd feet, hairy body) spur him to find his biological parents. As Bobby muddles towards 21st-century parenthood and Tobias gets tangled up in Victorian England's fascination with the theories of Darwin, the two plots begin to converge in a welter of diary entries, exotic recipes, strange artefacts and curious coincidences. By the end of Ark Baby readers might well conclude that far from being "red in tooth and claw", nature has one hell of a sense of humour.

Synopsis
Five years have passed since a mysterious millennial downpour sent homo britannicus towards extinction. But as the fertility crisis deepens, Bobby Sullivan, Elvis fan and veterinary surgeon, has other things on his mind. Such as fleeing London for illegally exterminating a monkey named Giselle.

Customer Reviews

wonderful
What a great book. I discovered Liz Jensen through Amazon and am so happy I have all of her other books to look forward too.She is simply wonderful.So clever and funny and not a dud passage.splendid imagination,she makes up for all the other irritatingly bad books around.

A fantastic yarn...
Liz Jensen's 'Ark Baby' is a novel with three plots which converge at the end.

The first plot line is contemporary. Following the Millenium, all the women in the UK have become sterile and have resorted to adopting various animals, but mostly chimps and monkeys, as child substitutes. A London vet, Bobby Sullivan has been forced to flee to Thunder Spit in order to make a new life.

The two other plots are set in Thunder Spit and London in Victorian times.
The first involves the Queen's taxidermist and his daughter Violet and the second a young foundling called Tobias Phelps, who has a tapeworm called Matilda and excessive body hair!

This is a really involving, clever and witty novel. I really didn't want it to end. The characters are nothing if not peculiar, but by the end of the novel you really care about them. The way in which Jensen concludes the novel is masterly.

I didn't want it to end. Highly recommended.

A very interesting and exciting read
A very interesting read. Jensen provides three plots so engrosing you can't help reading the other two just to find out whay happens in the third.

One is set in 2005 and and combines satirical humour with a character so believble you think you've met him a thousand times before. Another set in the 18th century really brings out the escence of human nature. And the third set in Victorian Britain with some of the most outlandish characters you'll ever meet.

This really is a must-read book.