In the current fetishization of longevity, from Netflix episodes on centenarian-rich Blue Zones to blockbuster health manuals such as Peter Attia’s Outlive, no one talks about the downsides of reaching the upper limits of the human lifespan. But let’s say you make it to your 100th birthday. How fun is it to blow out all those candles when your bosom buddies are long gone? And even if you stay sharp as a tack, what are the chances you’ll still be travelling or downhill skiing at 110? A new novel by Canadian author Shelley Wood – bestselling author of The Quintland Sisters – urges us to be careful what we wish for.
In The Leap Year Gene, Kit McKinley copes with the doubled-edged sword of an ultra-rare (and purely fictional) quirk of her DNA. Born on Feb. 29, 1916, she grows in “leap year time”: For every year of normal development, her physical and emotional growth take four.
Longevity to die for? Not for her parents. Twenty years after Kit’s birth, she still looks and behaves like a kindergartener. To make matters worse, Kit is born at a time when abnormalities are suspect – and early geneticists will go to any lengths to eradicate them from the human gene pool.
Desperate to crack the code of Kit’s DNA, her botanist mother Lillian dedicates herself to studying how “jumping genes” move to different locations on the chromosomes of corn maize. Meanwhile, sibling rivalry takes on new meaning with the birth of Helen, who eventually looks more like a mom to her (older) sister Kit.
An engrossing family saga, The Leap Year Gene winds its way from suffragette-era Montreal to interwar Paris, Nazi Berlin, 1950s New York, 1970s Delhi, 1980s Vancouver and beyond. Wood’s English-lit studies shine through in the scrumptious words she uses to describe the period in which Kit is born: frowsy, gongoozlers, “young smatchets,” and “small pots of what looked to be womanly unguents.”
The novel marks a departure from Wood’s debut bestseller, The Quintland Sisters, a work of historical fiction based on the famous Dionne Quintuplets. Part speculative fiction, part medical thriller and part romance, The Leap Year Gene focuses on Kit through the lens of four different characters over a period spanning a century. As much as it is Kit’s story, Wood says, “it is also the story of the people who kept her safe and who loved her.”
But in many ways, Kit remains unknowable. Like the vintage watch she wears around her neck, time is ticking for those closest to her – aging and death threaten to whisk them away. When Kit falls in love, she makes every moment count: “Kit snuggled into him under the covers while he slept, her fingers making a slow glissando over the keys of his ribs, through the taut valley of his waist, before rising up and over his glutes, trying to memorize every angle, every slope.”
Wood, based in Kelowna, B.C., says the idea of a “leap year gene” came to her as she approached 50. Grey hairs and a slower running pace delivered harsh reminders that she’d already lived more than half of her expected life. What if she could stay young? Around the same time, Wood, now 52, faced a series of painful losses, including that of her mother. She began to wonder, “What is the point of being alive and being young if you can’t keep pace with the people you love? That was the driving idea [for the book].”
Wood’s background as a medical journalist compelled her to buttress Kit’s fictional condition with real science, a decision that elevates The Leap Year Gene above and beyond its fanciful premise. Outside her day job as editor-in-chief of a cardiology news website based in New York City, Wood set out to understand the genetics of aging and the savage history of genetic research.
In the novel, Kit’s birth coincides with the rising eugenics movement – the push to “better” the human race through selective reproduction, which was mistakenly believed to reduce rates of “defects” ranging from deafness to epilepsy. Wood says she was shocked to discover how widely eugenic beliefs were held by historical figures she had long admired. The real-life Nellie McClung not only fought for the women’s vote, but also lobbied for enforced sterilization of the “feeble-minded” under the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928 (which was not repealed until 1972).
By the time Kit attends school in 1930s Berlin, an even more horrifying manifestation is gathering steam: the mass killings of Jewish, Roma, Black and Slavic peoples, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and many others deemed inferior by the Nazis.
But the threat to Kit doesn’t end with the Nazi regime. As genetic science hurtles toward the Human Genome Project and gene-editing technology such as CRISPR, everyone in Kit’s orbit must hide her exceptionally slow rate of aging from researchers and pharmaceutical companies eager to exploit her DNA.
Wood points out that all of today’s genetic technologies – from prenatal testing to a new gene-editing treatment for sickle-cell disease currently awaiting approval by Health Canada – ultimately have roots in eugenics.
Now that science allows us to alter our genes, Wood says, “I do think there are deeper questions about how much do we really want to perfect who we are? And what is the benefit of having true diversity in our populations?” If, down the road, we find a way to extend the human lifespan by tweaking our DNA, she adds, “we need to think long and hard about what it means to do this.”
The Leap Year Gene demands a high suspension of disbelief, aside from Kit’s preternatural youth. Coincidences, chance encounters and sudden deaths propel the narrative, while a major plot twist hinges on a series of improbable events. Nevertheless, this book has a cinematic quality that will carry all but the most resistant reader along for the ride.
The novel’s strong female characters, historical settings and themes of love, secrets and family bonds make it easy to picture a dazzling adaptation for the silver screen. Wood admits the thought has crossed her mind – and that Saoirse Ronan (“Jo” in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women) would be her dream actor to play Kit.
Regardless of its Hollywood prospects, The Leap Year Gene sends a comforting message to anyone in the throes of age-related angst. Instead of obsessing about prolonging our lives, Kit’s story suggests we should spend more time nourishing our connections with the people we love and figuring out how to live the years we have left with purpose and grace.
