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A review by sandlynn
The DNA of You and Me by Andrea Rothman
3.0
Andrea Rothman’s 2019 book The DNA of You and Me really made me think. While I can’t say I loved the book. I definitely tried to puzzle out what I thought of it and what the author might have intended.
First off, I want to say that The DNA of You and Me is not a romance, and it would be misleading to shelve it that way. It’s much more general or women’s fiction. It centers mostly on post doc Emily Apell’s research and her relationships in an academic lab at what I believe is Rockefeller University in New York. All her life, only child Emily has been a solitary person. Because of a bad reaction to the smell of cut grass as a child, she didn’t play outdoors with other children, kept herself apart, and spent many hours hanging out in her scientist father’s lab. As such, she became fascinated and then driven by science, especially research into how smell works — and doesn’t work — in the human brain. As a postdoc, she gains a position in a lab of a scientist she admires. Unfortunately, the scientist leading the lab is not what he’s cracked up to be and his lab more or less is a toxic workplace. Emily, a loner all her life, finds herself being pitted against two colleagues, Aeden and Allegra, who are working together on the same type of research she is. This doesn’t endear her to them, but that doesn’t prevent her from developing an attraction to Aeden. Ultimately, Emily’s research proves more promising and through some subterfuge and maneuvering, she manages to get Aeden on her team, which forces Allegra out of the lab. Thus begins a relationship that starts out on a somewhat unhealthy note, leaving the reader guessing whether these two people will manage to right their relationship, how Emily’s research will be impacted, and how the lab chief’s, Justin’s, ambitions will hinder both the professional and personal lives of those he manages.
One can’t read this book without reflecting on how women have been and are impacted in their professional pursuits — in this case scientific research — and have often been asked to make false choices. Emily is a very driven scientist, who is socially awkward, but she also has desires to connect with others, with someone. That desire isn’t helped by professional prejudices and toxic work environments that influence not only Emily’s choices but also Aeden’s. Whether the two of them could’ve formed a better relationship had they been in a healthier workplace is something the reader might ponder. But clearly, the unsatisfying start of their personal relationship and the choices Emily and Aeden both make, affecting each other’s work and ambitions, leaves you wondering if they were ever right for each other or whether their personal failings could be balanced out by the other’s. I found it interesting that, of the two women who were Emily’s cohorts in the lab, both ended up leaving the lab and, I believe the scientific profession totally. Years later, in Emily’s own lab, we meet a young female post doc who is not only doing successful research, but is married and pregnant. Is that because “times have changed” or is Emily’s lab — a lab run by a woman — far less toxic or both?
In any event, it does leave the reader with a cloud of depression over how both genders — but especially women — ended up feeling like they had to make choices pitting the personal and professional that were totally unnecessary.
Despite the sliver of hope at the end of the book, this story just made me sad. Emily was a success but she was left feeling that she couldn’t have a life outside of her work or meaningfully share it with anyone, and she never comes to a conclusion as to whether that’s “unique” to her or part and parcel of the discriminatory world she grew up in.
Leaving aside all these personal situations, the story focuses heavily on Emily’s research and the scientific process, two things I know little about. Although it was interesting to read, as an animal lover, I was turned off by the need to breed and kill mice in order to do their work.
Altogether, Rothman’s book left me a bit down. Usually, when I read a story about a woman who makes big accomplishments, I feel happy for her and rejoice in her success, but this book made it feel like an empty accomplishment, especially since we never see Emily celebrate with anyone or even see her receiving the honor she was being bestowed. I wish this was more satisfying. I’d give the book a C/B-.
First off, I want to say that The DNA of You and Me is not a romance, and it would be misleading to shelve it that way. It’s much more general or women’s fiction. It centers mostly on post doc Emily Apell’s research and her relationships in an academic lab at what I believe is Rockefeller University in New York. All her life, only child Emily has been a solitary person. Because of a bad reaction to the smell of cut grass as a child, she didn’t play outdoors with other children, kept herself apart, and spent many hours hanging out in her scientist father’s lab. As such, she became fascinated and then driven by science, especially research into how smell works — and doesn’t work — in the human brain. As a postdoc, she gains a position in a lab of a scientist she admires. Unfortunately, the scientist leading the lab is not what he’s cracked up to be and his lab more or less is a toxic workplace. Emily, a loner all her life, finds herself being pitted against two colleagues, Aeden and Allegra, who are working together on the same type of research she is. This doesn’t endear her to them, but that doesn’t prevent her from developing an attraction to Aeden. Ultimately, Emily’s research proves more promising and through some subterfuge and maneuvering, she manages to get Aeden on her team, which forces Allegra out of the lab. Thus begins a relationship that starts out on a somewhat unhealthy note, leaving the reader guessing whether these two people will manage to right their relationship, how Emily’s research will be impacted, and how the lab chief’s, Justin’s, ambitions will hinder both the professional and personal lives of those he manages.
One can’t read this book without reflecting on how women have been and are impacted in their professional pursuits — in this case scientific research — and have often been asked to make false choices. Emily is a very driven scientist, who is socially awkward, but she also has desires to connect with others, with someone. That desire isn’t helped by professional prejudices and toxic work environments that influence not only Emily’s choices but also Aeden’s. Whether the two of them could’ve formed a better relationship had they been in a healthier workplace is something the reader might ponder. But clearly, the unsatisfying start of their personal relationship and the choices Emily and Aeden both make, affecting each other’s work and ambitions, leaves you wondering if they were ever right for each other or whether their personal failings could be balanced out by the other’s. I found it interesting that, of the two women who were Emily’s cohorts in the lab, both ended up leaving the lab and, I believe the scientific profession totally. Years later, in Emily’s own lab, we meet a young female post doc who is not only doing successful research, but is married and pregnant. Is that because “times have changed” or is Emily’s lab — a lab run by a woman — far less toxic or both?
In any event, it does leave the reader with a cloud of depression over how both genders — but especially women — ended up feeling like they had to make choices pitting the personal and professional that were totally unnecessary.
Despite the sliver of hope at the end of the book, this story just made me sad. Emily was a success but she was left feeling that she couldn’t have a life outside of her work or meaningfully share it with anyone, and she never comes to a conclusion as to whether that’s “unique” to her or part and parcel of the discriminatory world she grew up in.
Leaving aside all these personal situations, the story focuses heavily on Emily’s research and the scientific process, two things I know little about. Although it was interesting to read, as an animal lover, I was turned off by the need to breed and kill mice in order to do their work.
Altogether, Rothman’s book left me a bit down. Usually, when I read a story about a woman who makes big accomplishments, I feel happy for her and rejoice in her success, but this book made it feel like an empty accomplishment, especially since we never see Emily celebrate with anyone or even see her receiving the honor she was being bestowed. I wish this was more satisfying. I’d give the book a C/B-.