In the sci-fi-ish opening chapters of this unusual novel by the author of Merry-Go-Round and Hothouse, we are starkly introduced to "the Place" - a commune-like settlement where "the People" all seem to be seriously deformed, where there is no sex or literacy, where everyone dies young, where all stages of life are controlled by the distant, never-seen "Fathers." There is relative contentment, however, thanks to artful prostheses, total ignorance about "normal" physiognomy, and dedication to work. Legless, one-armed hermaphrodite Bartholomew, for instance, is entirely immersed in his lyrical, challenging duties as the video-producer for the Place, assisted by eager protege Ringer (one-armed, one-legged, furry). Moreover, Bartholomew takes pleasure from his position of trust with Brother Alice, the scaled leader of the Place - who must make occasional visits to "the Fathers." Is this, then, a post-nuclear-holocaust fantasy? No, not at all. Because it soon becomes clear that "the Place" exists in present-day America (circa 1981, somewhat distractingly); Brother Alice, once out of her deformed/scaled disguise, is actually Dr. Alice Halliburton - the "Mother Teresa of the Mutants." And the Place is an isolated community, set up by JFK in the early 1960s, for the hushed-up care of the deformed children of nuclear-plant workers. (At birth the defective babies are secretly stolen away, replaced with healthy infants.) Now, however, the Place - an expensive operation - is in danger: either funding will be cut off or the People will have to be made useful. . . as subjects in genetic experiments. So Alice, deeply affected by her years at the Place, closer to the and rogynous People than to normal outsiders, determines to save the Place by going public. She breaks the news about the world outside to Bartholomew, introduces him/her to sex, and encourages the People to fight back - by making a videotape about their lives to show the rest of the world, And, in the final chapters, Alice and the People capture some scientist-invaders, forcing them to confront the Place's reality. . . while Bartholomew and Ringer venture into the world of the Fathers, trying to get someone to show their videotape on television. These final sequences slip into Twilight Zone corniness - with tired bits about Bartholomew and Ringer not understanding life outside the Place or rock/drugs slang. Throughout, too, the novel is marred by preachiness, by strains of pretentiousness, by implausibilities (especially at the fadeout). But the potent premise is rendered with enough restraint and imagination to make this frequently touching and occasionally powerful - with the strongest moments coming in the People's awakening to the fact that not everyone is born as they are. ("Why are we broken? Who broke us?") (Kirkus Reviews)
