The Long and Short of Eternity

Longevity: Should We Prolong Human Life by 30 Years? is, as its clumsy title implies, a novel that falls between two stools.

Does author, Rolf Margenau, wish to examine the complexities and pitfalls of extending life by medical artifice or does he aim at entertaining us with a black comedic thrills’n’spills murder mystery where the villains are all given increasingly impossible sticky ends?

I ask because as I read this latest addition to the author’s series featuring gung-ho retired lawyer Wylie Cypher, along came several real news stories that tell us the truth.

When it comes to duplicitous medical practice, for example, the alleged history of blood testing company founder Elizabeth Holmes takes some beating.

But of even greater interest are first, the experience of octogenarian Irish woman Eileen Macken who met her birth mother after a 62-year search only days before the latter’s 104th birthday.

Then,  as I read the end of Margenau’s ‘fable‘ came the first bulletins announcing the death of great US novelist, Herman Wouk who had kept writing until his very end - aged 103.

So if Margenau and his fans want to discover the secret to longevity they may do worse than read about it here!

** Longevity: Should We Prolong Human Life by 30 Years? is available on Amazon @ $2.99 (Kindle) and $11.83 (Paperback).

© Natalie Wood (18 May 2019)