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Cloning Miranda

by Carol Matas

Fourteen-year-old Miranda has it all and more: beauty, talent, wealthy adoring parents, an irresistible best friend…and a fatal genetic disease. Her formerly flawless life unravels at a furious clip as her parents set about “curing” Miranda in a spooky research facility that they own. Doggedly, Miranda and her outrageous friend Emma unearth truth from a lifetime of lies. Cloning Miranda begs to be read in one sitting.

Award-winning author Carol Matas is a master story-spinner and this engrossing medical thriller is no exception. The subject of cloning is red hot. A Bantam series called Replica, featuring cloning conspiracy stories about a girl named Amy, is gearing up to be a huge American hit. But Matas doesn’t settle for topicality. She likes to turn things on their ear, which makes for a thoughtful thriller. Are Miranda’s honorable parents patently evil? Conversely, is her lying and cheating best friend totally honorable? On the road to piecing together the truth of her life, Miranda gropes with life’s big and little mysteries. Do all normal families fight? Are we born hard-wired or do other things shape us? This page-turner tackles the question of what makes us us. All of this is seamlessly woven as Miranda stumbles across horrifying clues of just who and what she is, bit by unsettling bit.

Literate and tightly edited, the book is a fast-paced easy read. The last few chapters are a bit too tidy and perhaps too many of those unanswerable questions are answered. Nonetheless, this won’t stop Cloning Miranda from flying off the shelves.

 

Reviewer: Teresa Toten

Publisher: Scholastic Canada

DETAILS

Price: $5.99

Page Count: 140 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 0-590-51458-X

Released: Apr.

Issue Date: 1999-3

Categories:

Age Range: ages 10–14