Mendel's dwarf

by Simon Mawer

Dr. Benedict Lambert is a genius - the top of his class at Oxford and a recipient of prestigious research fellowships as well as the admiration, grudging at times, of his colleagues. There is only one thing Benedict Lambert wants more than anything else in life, and he cannot have it - he wants to be normal. For Benedict Lambert is a dwarf. Ironically, Benedict was born of two average-height parents, neither of whom could trace any genetic abnormalities through their distinguished family trees. He is also the great-great-great-nephew of the reclusive but brilliant Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, who pioneered the study of genetics, and who unwittingly set the stage for Benedict to go in search of the gene that causes achondroplasia, or dwarfism. Inured to the world's sidelong stares and ill-disguised revulsion, Ben never expects to find anything approaching reciprocated love, until he meets Jean, a shy and simple woman whose husband is everything Benedict is not - including infertile. Thi