A wrenching exploration of the consequences of survival.
In the aftermath of an environmental apocalypse, a family must make a terrible decision, the consequences of which will reverberate through the rest of their lives.
In French author Collette’s (Nothing but Dust, 2018) second book translated into English, half the world has been erased. For as far as 11-year-old Louie can see, the once-familiar valleys, towns, and even the closest neighbors have been inundated with water, the result of an apocalyptic tidal wave that has left him, his parents, and his eight siblings stranded on an island that used to be merely the top of a hill. At first the family’s survival seems miraculous, but the waters are still rising, and, as the land they perch on shrinks and resources become scarce, the parents know they must seek higher ground or risk drowning. The father estimates that with 12 days of hard rowing they can reach an area likely to still be above water, but, with only one boat, there will not be enough room to carry all the children and all the supplies they will need to survive the dangerous passage. The parents must make the devastating choice of whom to leave behind and settle on the three middle children, Louie, Perrine, and Noah, intending to return for them as soon as they reach land. At this point the narrative splits. On the island, the three children—ages 11 to 8—struggle with the implications of their abandonment as their supplies dwindle and the water continues to rise. On the boat, the siblings and the parents grapple with the consequences of their new identities as, alternatively, the ones who were chosen and the ones who were forced to choose. In tense, tightly controlled, and genuinely devastating prose, Collette explores the existential dilemma of pitting the good of the many against the good of the few with both nuance and great linguistic beauty. In a time when families across the globe are being forced to make very similar choices due to war, forced migration, and the depredations of climate change, Collette’s evocation of the human reality of this philosophical logic puzzle is a timely and fiercely excoriating narrative.
A wrenching exploration of the consequences of survival.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-60945-567-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus.
Tremendous in scope—tremendous in depth of penetration—and as different a Steinbeck as the Steinbeck of Burning Bright was from the Steinbeck of The Grapes of Wrath.
Here is no saga of the underprivileged—no drama of social significance. Tenderness, which some felt was inherent in everything Steinbeck wrote, is muted almost to the vanishing point in this story of conflict within character, impact of character on character, of circumstances on personalities, of the difficult acceptance of individual choice as against the dominance of inherited traits. The philosophy is intimately interwoven with the pace of story, as he follows-from New England to California over some fifty odd years-the two families which hold stage center. There are the Trasks, brothers in two generations, strangely linked, strangely at war the one with the other; there are the Hamiltons (John Steinbeck's own forebears), a unique Irish born couple, the man an odd lovable sort of genius who never capitalizes on his ideas for himself, the tiny wife, tart, cold-and revealing now and again unexpected gentleness of spirit, the burgeoning family, as varied a tribe as could be found. And- on the periphery but integral to the deepening philosophy which motivates the story, there is the wise Chinese servant scholar and gentleman, who submerges his own goals to identify himself wholly with the needs of the desolate Adam Trask, crushed by his soulless wife's desertion, and the twin boys, Cal, violent, moody, basically strong enough to be himself—and Aron, gentle, unwilling to face disagreeable facts, beloved by all who met him. In counterpoint, the story follows too the murky career of Adam's wife, Cathy—who came to him from a mysteriously clouded past, and returned to a role for which she was suited—as a costly whore, and later as Madame in Salinas most corrupt "house," where the perversions of sex ridden males were catered to—and cruelty capitalized upon.Shock techniques applied with rapier and not bludgeon will rule the book out for the tender-skinned.
But John Steinbeck, the philosopher, dominates his material and brings it into sharply moral focus.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1952
ISBN: 0142004235
Page Count: 616
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1952
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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