A fortifying affirmation of human endurance in the face of our dire climate prognosis.
A woman braves a waterlogged world to find her daughter in this dystopian adventure novel.
More than a century in the future, when the coasts and the cities along them have been completely flooded and countries have been “cut to half their size” by the ocean, raider ships prowl the seas creating new colonies by separating families, seizing property, and brutally murdering anyone who resists. Myra and her younger daughter Pearl, however, are just trying to get by: They live on a boat and barter their fishing hauls at trading posts for valuable supplies. “I don’t join groups and I don’t care about resistance,” Myra tells a friend. She learns that her older daughter, Row, who was taken by Myra’s husband seven years prior when Nebraska finally flooded, might still be alive—but to reach her, she must make a treacherous voyage north to a raider colony known as the Valley near what used to be Greenland, an iceberg-dotted journey impossible in her too-small boat. But when Myra and Pearl join a ship called the Sedna, led by a charismatic but troubled man named Abran whose goal is to found a new settlement untouched by the violence of raiders, Myra suddenly faces a new set of problems she’s unaccustomed to handling. How can she justify changing the Sedna’s course for her own ends as the bonds she forms with the crew deepen? How can she fulfill her responsibilities to both her missing daughter and the daughter she still has? And can she manage to lay down her fundamental distrust in a world where everyone has his or her own objective? Debut novelist Montag manages to marry page-turning drama and emotional depth, vividly imagining a world where society rebuilds itself from scratch and history repeats, where bubonic plague flares up again and rope and sailcloth and antibiotics are all coveted goods, and where everyone is moving on in some way from insurmountable loss. “I keep thinking it feels like climbing a staircase while looking down,” one woman tells Myra about losing her children. “You won’t forget where you’ve been, but you’ve got to keep rising. It all gets further away, but it’s all still there”.
A fortifying affirmation of human endurance in the face of our dire climate prognosis.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-288936-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Will simultaneously intrigue both romantics and skeptics. The science might oversimplify, but it’s gripping enough to read...
Marrs’ debut novel traces the stories of five people who find their soul mates—or do they?
Imagine if you could submit to a simple DNA test and then receive your Match in your email. Not just an online date who might be geographically compatible, but a true and unique genetically destined partner. While the potential long-term benefits may seem to outweigh the negative consequences, the system is far from infallible; as any science-fiction fan could tell you, if it sounds too good to be true, there’s usually a catastrophe lurking at the other end. Marrs’ novel traces five individuals who meet their Matches under varying circumstances and with widely conflicting outcomes. During the course of their romantic adventures (and misadventures), the entire DNA matching algorithm will prove to be susceptible to hacking, also proving that (gasp!) just because something may be driven by science doesn’t mean that it’s free from the world of human error. The philosophy posed by the novel speaks not just to the power of love and the laws of attraction, but also serves as a commentary on today’s world of genetic exploration. Do these breakthroughs simplify our lives, or do they make us lazy, replacing the idea of “destiny” or “fate” with “science” as a larger power that we don’t need to question? These ideas keep the novel moving along and create a deeper level of interest, since most of the narrative threads are fairly predictable. The two exceptions are the psychopathic serial killer who meets his Match and begins to lose interest in killing and the heterosexual man matched with another man, both of whom must then redefine sexuality and love, commitment and family.
Will simultaneously intrigue both romantics and skeptics. The science might oversimplify, but it’s gripping enough to read all in one sitting.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-335-00510-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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