This is in many ways a difficult book to read, at least until you figure out where the protagonist is coming from. Dr. Evelyn Caldwell starts out as a wronged wife who is taking it particularly hard. Full of bitterness at her ex. She reveals more of herself as she goes along--a driven, brilliant scientist with a very complex inner life driven by an abusive upbringing. She is very bound up in living an ethical life, but it is all in relation to her own standards. This allows her to perform acts that, to an ordinary human reader, would be monstrous. One reviewer compared her to the Nazi scientists experimenting on concentration camp inmates in WWII, and I think that's accurate. She is in many ways sociopathic.
As you realize this, it might occur to you that her opinion of her ex-husband is distorted by this pain and distance from humanity. But events continue to evolve, as the process of preparing clones is detailed and it is clear that Nathan, the ex-husband, participates in the same monstrous "conditioning" processes that Evelyn does.
Then we meet a rule-bending clone, Martine, the "echo wife" of the title. Nathan has prepared her in secret to be a better version of Evelyn--"better" as in more responsive and subject to her husband's needs. Evelyn does not regard clones as human (nor does the law), but comes to view Martine that way.
The science in the book is hard to connect to the possibilities of cloning as it is today, but the book is aimed at a broader audience and hard SF people pay too much attention to this. They advise skimming past the overwrought feelings. Don't do it. The feeling expositions develop Evelyn, and all the other characters through her eyes. The science is there to make these characters possible, and it does that well. I'm more of a hard SF person which is why I'm giving this four stars.
The afterword explains all, very well. The book is not strictly autobiographical but these issues are front and center for Gailey, and the acknowledgments capture this effectively.
So far I would have given this the Locus, and am surprised it didn't get any other major nominations. It is tagged LGBTQ+, but only because of the author--issues of living as a sexual minority are not explored. Personally I'd tag it horror--the ending, where she is more enabled in her research, is classically horrifying. Read this and you'll have something to chew on and worry over for awhile.
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