Cloning Miranda

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

Cloning Miranda is a novel of surprising depth and maturity. The two
main characters, Miranda and her friend Emma, are teens, as are the
target readers. The psychological, philosophical, and religious
underpinnings of the story, however, make it one of a kind.

Miranda lives in a wealthy California suburb and seems to have
everything—health, intelligence, and beauty—until her vision blurs
and the cause proves to be a genetic imbalance, a fatal flaw in her DNA
code. Plans for an operation and for Miranda’s hospitalization in a
private clinic become suspect after Miranda discovers a photograph of a
mysterious young girl whom her parents say is Miranda at the age 10. The
plot thickens as her parents’ explanations are exposed as lies.

Cloning Miranda explores, on a level accessible to teens, profound
ideas about cloning, including the possibility of making human clones.
Emma compares laboratory cloning with the traits we inherit and the
attitudes we are taught: “We’re more likely to be one way than
another but we can learn to be different. Maybe that’s what being
human is.”

Winnipegger Carol Matas has received many literary honors for her
fiction. With its parallels to The Tempest and the teens’ passionate
exploration of the levels of human freedom, Cloning Miranda is a deeply
provocative novel. Highly recommended.