The Scientists
A Family Romance

This is a frank, intelligent, and deeply moving debut memoir. With the precociousness expected of the only child of a doctor and a classical musicianfrom the time he could get his toddler tongue to pronounce deoxyribonucleic acid, or recite a French poemMarco Roth was able to share his parents New York, a world centered around house concerts, a private library of literary classics, and dinner discussions of the latest advances in medicine. That world ended when his father started to suffer the worst effects of the AIDS virus that hadinfected him in the early 1980s. What this family could not talk about for years came to dominate the lives of its surviving members, often in unexpected ways.The Scientistsis a story of how we first learn from our parents and how we then learn to see them as separate individuals; its a story of how growing up quickly can slow us down when it comes to knowing about our desires and other peoples. A memoir of parents and children in the tradition of Edmund Gosse, Henry Adams, and J. R. Ackerley,The Scientistsgrapples with a troubled intellectual and emotional inheritance in a style that is both elegiac and defiant.