Artifact

May 15, 2020
The making of a woman scientist over four decades of change in the middle of the 20th century. "So what do you actually do?" Dr. Lottie Kristin Hart Levinson--aka Dr. Rat Westheimer--is asked at a cocktail party in 1984. "This may sound odd to you," she replies, "but I study rat salivary glands. They're more important than people think." Her subsequent explanation details the role of cunnilingus in rat sex. Neither Lottie nor her creator is squeamish in any way--not about rat sex, or rat dissection, or human sex, all described with brio in these pages. As Lottie tells her football-star high school boyfriend, who becomes her first husband, "I want to know everything about my body, about your body, I want to try everything there is in the world, I want to try it all with you." Actually, she saves some for her intrepid second husband 30-odd years later; there hasn't been a menstruation sex scene like this since Scott Spencer's Endless Love. Heyman's debut novel after a successful story collection, Scary Old Sex (2016), also brings to mind Marge Piercy's domestic dramas of the 1980s, which told the stories of women whose consciousness and lives were changed by the feminist movement and the new options it created in American life. From Lottie's childhood in Michigan in the early 1940s through her struggles in the Vietnam War era to her maturity as a scientist, mother, and stepmother in the mid-1980s, her curiosity and intellect drive her as strongly as her hormones. It takes decades to tunnel her way through the walls sexism builds around her potential and find her way to the career in science she was made for. Caring as much about her work as she does about domestic life is a constant issue in Lottie's adulthood; tragic consequences threaten and are not always averted. Like its heroine, intelligent and lusty; full of real joys and sorrows.

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May 25, 2020
Psychiatrist Heyman’s richly drawn debut novel (after the collection Scary Old Sex) delves into the life of Lottie Levinson, a 42-year-old college science professor. It’s 1984, and Lottie, happily married to her second husband, Jake, balances an intricate research project with battles against misogyny in the lab and the demands of being a wife and mother. Times weren’t much simpler in Lottie’s Midwest childhood in the repressive 1950s, when Lottie’s authoritarian father could not quash her excitement about science and sex, and she became pregnant at 16 with her high school boyfriend, Charlie. Lottie’s miscarriage brought the couple closer, and they got married after Charlie’s promising college and pro football career was crushed by a leg injury in his senior year at the University of Michigan. Lottie, against Charlie’s objections, becomes a medical lab tech and gains the self-confidence she will need when her first marriage implodes. Every achievement Lottie makes in life is one she fights hard for, whether it’s the professional recognition she deserves or finding a life partner in Jake, who adores her for who she is and fulfills her carnal needs as she matures into middle age. The explicit sex of Heyman’s stories is on full display here, just as daring if occasionally gratuitous. This no-holds-barred account of a woman’s quest to find satisfaction in her life is a showcase of Heyman’s remarkable style.

June 1, 2020
In 1984, Lottie is working in a lab to prove the validity of her scientific discoveries, sorting data from "artifacts" to justify her work to an all-male review panel. Artifacts are errors that would corrupt her data. In contrast, readers detect a different kind of artifact as the narrative shifts back to Lottie's early days and traces her life, from a sexually precocious youth through tragic loss, a doomed marriage, single motherhood, an awakening to the political world of the 1960s, and her journeys in academia to the world of science. Lottie's life proves to be a collection of damage and triumphs, joyful moments and painful loss, societal expectations and Lottie's rejection of them, and the indelible marks of love. Short story writer Heyman (Scary Old Sex, 2016) presents a first novel with prose shaped by a keen ear for language, and she confronts female sexuality, aspiration, motherhood, and sexism with eyes wide open. Lottie's life experience will feel familiar to her contemporaries and find a ready audience in readers of Sue Miller and Margaret Drabble.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)