The Hormone Factory

At the end of his life, Dutch Jew and dubiously ethical entrepreneur of the newly emerging field of pharmaceutical hormones, Mordechai De Paauw, is physically incapacitated but mentally fit enough to recount his life’s story, which he claims helps him by “putting off the time of departure.” The tale seems solely for Mordechai’s benefit, however, as he recalls cavorting with one factory girl after the next, refers repeatedly to the former power of his phallic “beast,” and generally drones along in an unconvincing first person. Set in the before, during, and after of World War II, Goldschmidt, who is Dutch and whose own father survived Bergen-Belsen, has a potentially riveting connection with the history. More often than not, though, that history is established through overly expository statements such as, “We were in the throes of the most serious economic recession the world had ever seen, and since those uncertain times a reorganization might become necessary, I wanted to be in a position to make the right decisions when the time came.” As both De Paauw’s own family and Europe as a whole crumble, he holds fast to his determination to invent what will next change the world all over again—the Pill, but the book never becomes as interesting as all its elements would suggest. (Nov.)