Book Review

By Derryll White

Thoft, Ingrid (2014).  Identity.

This is Ingrid Thoft’s second novel featuring trash-talking Fina Ludlow, a Boston-based private investigator.  Thoft quickly builds a web of family-based loyalties and dissonances, centred around the father and famous personal injury lawyer, Carl Ludlow.

The social focus of this novel is cryogenics and the right to privacy.  In the beginning of the industry a lot of sperm donors were guaranteed privacy.  Now British Columbia has outlawed anonymous sperm donations classifying them as unconstitutional.  The U.S. is still supporting the old arrangements of privacy.  The question Thoft poses is – what rights do mothers and children, the cryokids, have?

Fina is an interesting character.  Tough, straight talking, good looking, no one eats as constantly and drinks as many diet sodas as she does.  Thoft is quite skilled at playing with the dysfunctional aspects of the Ludlow family – from high-powered lawyer dad to controlling mom, bringing in a supporting cast of brothers, nieces and nephews – Fina remains at the centre of it all.

The author runs an amazing number of story lines in this novel, and manages to keep them straight for the reader and legitimately concludes most of them.  There are a few that simply fade away without resolution.

I liked the book.  I do have a criticism however – only that nobody could eat as much junk food as Fina does!  The story moves at a fast pace.  The author makes the city of Boston a part of the story.  Fina Ludlow is an upbeat character with strong moral principles that aren’t constrained by ordinary legal niceties.

So, a good read and I will try another Fina Ludlow novel some day.  I am sure there will be more coming.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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