An engaging triptych on the subjects of borders, climate change, and technology dependence.
A superstorm switches Earth’s magnetic poles and shuts down electrical power grids all over the world in this novel by Bronson, author of A Life Well-Lived (2018).
Laurie is the mother of two grown sons , and she feels “smothered by the familiarity” of day-to-day life as an empty nester. Accustomed to a lifestyle powered by “smart”devices, Laurie worries that her teaching job will eventually be made obsolete by technology. Halfway around the globe, Laurie’s eldest son, Brendan, teaches high schoolers in the (fictional) West African country of Loscoaya. Life there is “less complicated in many ways” because residents don’t depend on any sort of tech; however, Brendan knows well that “simple” doesn’t mean “easy.” Meanwhile, his younger brother, Josh, has hit rock bottom after running away from home years ago in an effort to forget a childhood trauma, and he wanders the Western United States. When Brendan comes back from Africa, he discovers that Laurie has fallen prey to a conspiracy theory that the world’s power will soon go out due to a magnetic shift in the poles. Disgusted by his parents’ hoarding of goods to prepare for an alleged apocalypse, Brendan notes that it will take more than canned goods to survive in a world without power—it will take drastic action and long-term adaptation to the environment, as the people of Loscoaya have done. Inevitably, when the superstorm arrives, there are things that even survivalists aren’t prepared for. Bronson manages to give the proceedings a sense of eerie familiarity, which has the effect of making her story utterly magnetic. Over the course of this book, there are a few instances of formulaic dialogue here and there, but the author also provides a number of details that will hit readers close to home in a narrative that takes place in what is essentially a thinly veiled version of our own everyday reality—complete with pandemics, border disputes, and an omnipresent media. As if to emphasize this point, Bronson makes this even clearer with the words of one of her characters: “This is not science fiction. This is real.”
An engaging triptych on the subjects of borders, climate change, and technology dependence.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
The novel’s voice remains engaging, and its spirit resilient, against some staggeringly tough times.
Amid the dystopian collapse of the near future, a musician embarks on a quixotic voyage from the shore of Lake Superior.
There’s both a playfulness and a seriousness of purpose to the latest from the Minnesota novelist, a spirit of whimsy that keeps hope flickering even in times of darkest despair. Things have gone dangerously dark along the North Shore, and likely for the country as a whole. A comet is coming that augurs ill, a pandemic has wreaked havoc with the public health, an autocratic despot and raging populism have made books and booksellers all but treasonous. There are corpses floating in the lake from climate change, and there are numerous instances of people swallowing something that kills them; the dead are generally considered seekers of whatever comes next (which has to be better than this) rather than suicides. As narrator Rainy sets the scene, “The world was so old and exhausted that many now saw it as a dying great-grand on a surgical table, body decaying from use and neglect, mind fading down to a glow.” Rainy is a bass player in bar bands, a jack of a variety of trades, and devoted husband to Lark, a bibliophile who runs the local bookstore. Before the collapse of the publishing industry, a cult author had been set to publish a volume with the same title as this novel, and finding one of the few advance copies has been like a holy grail for Lark. Then a copy finds her, courtesy of a fugitive pursued by the powers that be, and whatever tranquility Lark and Rainy had achieved is shattered. Rainy takes to the lake to escape the fugitive’s pursuers and reunite with Lark. He experiences a variety of hardship, challenge, and adventure, yet somehow lives to tell the tale that is this novel.
The novel’s voice remains engaging, and its spirit resilient, against some staggeringly tough times.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780802162939
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
