In this dystopian suspense novel, a falsely imprisoned woman learns grim lessons about the new world order during her stint in a re-education camp in a postwar, matriarchal society.
This sequel to Aguila’s Women’s Work (2013) returns to a post-apocalyptic Pacific Northwest society in which a devastating war between the sexes has left women in power, and they place severe restrictions on men. This novel focuses on Rhia, a secondary character in the previous novel, who’s now tasked with delivering essential supplies to three coastal neighborhoods using her battered old boat, Betty. She goes overboard during a storm and gets rescued by two exiles, John and Carol. The trio, waylaid by Rhia’s injuries, get captured and taken to a re-education center for their alleged “transgressions.” The sickeningly sweet Miss Deacon runs the camp and seeks to transform the inmates into docile, compliant citizens. Rhia is hopeful that she’ll be released shortly and finds strength in her roommate, Ruth, whose will to resist remains unbroken. Rhia also comes to realize that the male prisoners are subject to barbaric experiments. Faced with the grim reality that she’s not getting out anytime soon, she befriends one of the male inmates and begins to hatch a plot to escape the camp and return to her boat. However, the leaders of the camp—and others—have different plans. The novel’s slow-burn plot and nuanced characters will draw in regular readers of dystopian fiction. Meanwhile, its multifaceted discussion of issues surrounding gender and power will appeal to those looking for more than just a beach read. For example, male prisoners are forced to “experience what pregnancy feels like. An expanding balloon is surgically inserted into their abdomen, and it’s filled up with saline over the next nine months.” The book works very well as a stand-alone novel, but it may be more fully appreciated in the context of its predecessor. Aguila’s depiction of this engaging world is sure to leave many readers impatient for the next installment.
A captivating story and a thought-provoking consideration of gender, systemic inequality, and the cost of willful ignorance.
Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9911650-3-2
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Coley Press
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
© 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
