Politicians confront environmental doom in this prophetic and altruistic tale about the near future.
A presidential adviser becomes stuck in quarantine after exposure to a deadly pathogen in this political novel.
Lucia Jackson is America’s first Hispanic female president, and 34-year-old Aleks Verdan works alongside her in the White House as an environmental adviser. The tale takes place five years in the future, and it is a time of great ecological crisis. Hurricanes and typhoons have hit hard, pollution is out of control, and epidemics have become the norm. After a debriefing, Aleks learns he was exposed to a disease a doctor brought back from Tunisia, and he is locked away in quarantine for six days. The pod he is kept in is light, efficient, and designed by a genius before IKEA picked up the manufacturing. Aside from the furniture and his antibacterial clothing, Aleks has nothing but his tablet. With minimal communication from his keepers, Aleks pores through the tablet’s files and videos, revisiting his time in government. The portrait of a planet in crisis is harrowing and is tempered by the deft leadership of President Jackson, whose political savvy leads the world toward some sort of healing. Missing his partner, Keon, and distressed to have to be offline for so long, Alek continues his journeys into the recent past, which show an American government that is concerned with the big picture and the greater good but one that makes difficult moral decisions about humanity. As the days wear on, it becomes clear to Aleks that the six-day quarantine may go on longer, leaving him increasingly fearful for not just the globe, but himself. Baer’s (Beggar’s Chicken, 2013) not-quite-dystopian tale offers a frightening premise, and the details about world political, environmental, and health problems are intricate and impressive. The author’s ability to identify difficulties and design solutions through his characters gives the story an almost hopeful feeling about this dreaded future, imperfect as these fixes may be. The book is necessarily digressive, and under those constraints, Baer has managed to fill it with action. But some of the foreign conferences and their endless meetings can become tedious. The distressing ending compensates for all, serving as an indictment of a society in which politics has become a personality contest.
Politicians confront environmental doom in this prophetic and altruistic tale about the near future.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5427-7016-3
Page Count: 382
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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