A rambling, overlong portrait of a country torn apart.
A dystopian thriller that foretells a dark future for America.
Miles’ debut novel constructs a world in which the United States, overtaken by a violent regime, has been divided into Areas where society is strictly stratified by class and race. The saga focuses on Area Thirty-Eight, the remnants of what was once Colorado, where Bella and Sullivan Stone, two of the masterminds behind the new system, reside with their enigmatic adult children and hold onto power with the help of the brutal People-Protection Agency they founded. The Stone family includes Caspian, the brutal hand that routinely doles out capital punishment at areawide Gatherings, who’s a well-known scourge to the people; his mysterious siblings, however, stay out of this harsh limelight. Jax, a miller in the laboring class, tries to survive the senseless violence while keeping his bullheaded adopted brother, Kip, in check; however, after the discovery of a metal box in his home filled with books (forbidden objects whose ownership is punishable by death), his position becomes untenable. The narrative flips carelessly between different perspectives and timelines, introducing new characters and history with little context. The two main timelines, involving Area Thirty-Eight at some unspecified point in the far future, and Boston in the past of 2036, slowly overlap to provide readers with a vague understanding of intertwined families and political history. However, it’s full of lingering gaps and questions. Miles’ narrative does have a clear political perspective, describing the outgrowth of the dystopia from the late 2010s onward and lamenting the state of society regarding gun control, abortion rights, and police brutality. However, it doesn’t mention any real-life political figures barring a mention of President Barack Obama’s third term and allusions to Christine Pelosi continuing a short-lived political lineage. The Area Thirty-Eight chapters record Jax’s unexpected involvement with plans to end the Stones’ reign. Still, the characters often feel unrealized, offering clumsy portraits of trauma and PTSD in a narrative that only reinforces the bleak violence of their daily lives. The plot often takes nonsensical turns, as well, possibly due to underdeveloped worldbuilding.
A rambling, overlong portrait of a country torn apart.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-28565-8
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A somber reflection on an increasingly hostile world.
As the world dies, the remnants of the patriarchy and their minions keep right on terrorizing the weak.
Caustically original in the same fashion as her chilling Tender Is the Flesh (2020), Bazterrica’s latest devises an end-of-the-world scenario with a Handmaid’s Tale vibe. The most palpable tragedy is that no matter how the world dies, women always seem to end up with the same sorry fortune. The story is set in an unknown wasteland where all the animals on Earth have perished, with callouts to a mysterious, poisonous haze and a collapsed world. Our narrator is a young woman relegated to sheltering in the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, an isolated, fundamentalist order subservient to an unseen, deity-like “He,” and divided into strict castes. Among these are the Enlightened, kept isolated from the rest of the order behind a mysterious black door; the Chosen, divine and devoted prophets who are ritually mutilated; and the servants marked by contamination, who sit just below the narrator’s caste, the unworthy young women. The story is a little tough to follow due to the narrator’s fragmented memory, not to mention lots of interruptions from the old ultraviolence and body horror. Although men are banned from the cloistered stronghold, it’s a relentlessly sadistic and violent society ruled by the Superior Sister, enforcer of His will and the instrument of punishment up to and including torture and death. The narrator is already mourning Helena, a spirited iconoclast who couldn’t survive under such oppression, when a new arrival named Lucía sparks fresh hope that may prove as fruitless as everything else in this bleak testament to suffering. As a subversion of expectations and an indictment of unchecked power, it’s unflinching and provocative, but readers expecting a satisfying denouement may be left wanting.
A somber reflection on an increasingly hostile world.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781668051887
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 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.
