Description

“Of all the devices for communicating information, my favorite is the narrative: humanity’s psychological carry-on bag, in use since we huddled around our first fires. It can hold both factual information and ideas, real and imagined aspects of human experience. This book tells the extraordinary true story of Jeremy, the lefty snail. Snails with left-spiraling shells are a one-in-a-million rarity, and the search for a mate for Jeremy became a British media sensation. Popova’s lyrical retelling and Ping Zhu’s simple, charming artwork add so much to an already marvelous story, introducing readers to the genetic significance of Jeremy’s rare mutation and to the concept of deep time (and how life exists within it).” —The New York Times

“Author Popova takes readers on a journey through time, beginning with the emergence of single-celled organisms and ending on another one-in-a-million chance: a potential future snail with a particular, rare recessive gene.”  —STARRED REVIEW, Kirkus

“In a paean to the value of individual differences that is presented on a cosmic scale, Brain Pickings founder Popova (Figuring, for adults) relates the real-life story of Jeremy, a rare garden snail found in 2015 by a retired London scientist, whose shell spiraled to the left, signifying reversed internal anatomy—including a heart positioned on the right. Because of this, Jeremy, a hermaphrodite like all garden snails, required a similarly rare mate to procreate. Against a backdrop of biology, history, and genetics, Popova calls attention to differences of ability and the problem of the gender binary. In doing so, she elegantly underscores the desirability of genetic and other kinds of diversity, which is “always lovelier than sameness” and makes communities “stronger and better able to adapt to change.” Ping Zhu’s (The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor) art, however, turns a book about a humble snail into a riot of vibrant color, making for a celebration of the “strange and lovely little snail with a left-coiling shell and a right heart” that is shot through with a strange loveliness of its very own.” —Publishers Weekly

THE NEWS FROM THE GUARDIAN

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/19/jeremy-the-lonely-left-coiling-snail-loses-out-in-love-triangle