The Bear by Andrew Krivak

In The Bear, Andrew Krivak weaves a hauntingly beautiful novel of elegant simplicity, visually rich and unforgettable. The story of a girl and her father surviving alone in a wilderness becomes a fable, a testament to familial love, and a portrait of humankind's place in the world.

This is a novel that entered my dreams, strangely offering a sense of peace and a feeling of oneness with the natural world. Strange because this is also a dystopian novel set in a future when mankind has disappeared and his civilization has crumbled, reverted to its basic elements. 

Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Desolation

These two remaining humans live an idealized oneness with nature. They have some antiques--a glass window, some moldering books, a silver comb--singular heirlooms of another time. The father teaches his daughter how to fish and hunt, how to turn animal fur into clothing and blankets, how to sew shoes from leather and sinew. They drink pine needle tea and gather nuts. The weeds we heedlessly poison become their salad. The maple helicopters that we curse when cleaning the gutters are their survival food.

What a long way we have come, we humans with our large brains and big dreams and greedy appetites! I look about my yard and neighborhood and understand suddenly the plenty that surrounds me. Not just my father's apple trees that bore thousands of fruit this year, but the maple trees and the oaks down the road. Not just my raised bed of chard and kale but the weeds I diligently pull up one by one.

Krivak's heroine is aided by her totem animal, the bear whose profile is seen in the mountain where her mother's bones rest. With winter, he sleeps and the girl is aided by a puma. These magical creatures feel a kinship--a kinship humanity has rarely returned.

Oh, no, we are to conquer and subdue and use and abuse! 

But what has that gotten us?--Decimation of species, destruction of the environment, pollution that poisons us, alienation.

The gorgeous style of Krivak's writing, his story of survival and death, the love and respect shown by his characters, themes eternal and crucial, earmark this as a must-read novel.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is unbiased and fair.

Read Andrew Krivak's personal note on writing The Bear here.

The Bear
by Andrew Krivak
Bellevue Literary Press
Pub Date 11 Feb 2020
ISBN 9781942658702
PRICE $16.99 (USD)

The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde

They were childhood friends who become lovers.

He wanted a comfortable life.

She wanted to save the world.

Would their love survive?

The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde is a compelling dystopian novel and a warning. It is also a heartbreaking story of lovers torn asunder by social forces.

The exotic pristine beauty of Norway is the symbol of the beauty and perfection of the world--which humankind is willing to sacrifice to continue an unsustainable lifestyle.

Signe's mother was willing to destroy their Norweigan habitat so the community could progress and thrive by the diversion of the river into a power plant. Her family hotel needed this to survive.

Signe's father protested the loss of the water ouzel, a tiny mollusk that cleaned the water and lived 100 years, and the natural beauty of the River Breio and its waterfall. He and Magnus's father tried to stop the plan. They failed.

At university, Signe and Magnus become lovers and seem to be following in their father's footsteps in protecting the environment. But Magnus opts instead for the status quo--a good life--working for Signe's mother. Signe leaves him.

Years later Signe learns that Magnus is harvesting the glaciers and selling the ice. It is time for one more act of resistance.

The legacy of their actions will impact future climate refugees David and Lou. In 2041, France is burning and the family flees. In the turmoil, David and his daughter Lou are separated from his wife Anne and their infant son. They travel to a refugee camp, at first an oasis of order providing basic needs. Later, things tumble into chaos.

This grim warning on the natural outcome of climate change also offers hope in the healing forgiveness of love.

I received a free ARC from the publisher through Bookish First in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The End of the Ocean
by Maja Lunde
translated by Diane Oatley
Harper Via
On Sale: 01/14/2020
hard cover $27.99
ISBN: 9780062951366
ISBN 10: 006295136X

The Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

In a world of governmental breakdown, wars, and natural disasters, winters without snow, the over expansion of American government, something--perhaps a virus-- has tampered with genomes to set off a cavalcade of reverse evolution.

In this world lives one twenty-six year old pregnant woman, Cedar, writing to her unborn child. After an ultrasound, the doctor tells her to flee and go into hiding. Congress has revitalized articles of the Patriot Act to round up pregnant women, searching medical data bases, considering it an 'issue of national security.'

Cedar decides to seek out her birth parents on an Ojibwa reservation. Her adoptive parents warn her about an impending state of emergency. Siri and GPS no longer work, the world is falling apart. But Cedar is determined.

As she nears the reservation she sees a billboard. "Endtime at Last! Are You Ready to Rapture?," and another that reads "Future Home of the Living God."

Cedar had turned to Catholicism for an extended family. She writes and publishes a magazine "of Catholic inquiry." Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin thought evolution was bringing humanity to perfection. But all creation is devolving, backward, to prehistoric forms. Is God asleep at the wheel? Has God abandoned Earth? Will the written word die out, incomprehensible to whatever humanity is becoming? Is humanity losing its spark of the divine, their souls?

Cedar's birth father is nonplussed. "Indians have been adapting since before 1492 so I guess we'll keep adapting." Cedar counters, "But the world is going to pieces." "It's always going to pieces," Eddy replies.

Aware of the beauty of the vanishing 'now', haunted by an unknown future, Cedar must hide from the  American Government, now the Church of the New Constitution, which is rounding up pregnant women, controlling who is bred and who is born, endeavoring to save humanity.

Louise Erdrich's novel The Future of the Living God  is many things: an extended letter to an unborn child, the story of a woman seeking her family, a fable warning of the over-extension of governmental power, a warning of the consequences of tampering with nature. It is a theological reflection and speculative fiction. And it is the story of resistance and the fight for self-determination.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Future Home of the Living God
Louise Erdrich
On Sale Date: November 14, 2017
ISBN: 9780062694058, 0062694057
Hardcover $28.99 USD, $35.99 CAD

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter

The End We Start From arrived at my door and before day was over I had read the book. It is a small volume, sparsely worded, but thick with meaning.

Megan Hunter's first novel can be read as an homage to motherhood. Pregnancy and a child's growth and the bonds of baby and child are vivid and visceral, honest and truthful. I knew this journey.

"Pregnancy was the great adventure." The End We Start From

It is a dystopian story of a climate catastrophe causing mass migration, refugees seeking safety. Soon after the birth of their baby, a family flees rising flood waters that are overwhelming London. The father takes them north. As panic and disorder follows, the family retreat further from civilization. They find shelter in a refugee camp. They become separated.

There is a layer of symbolic meaning. The title, The End We Start From, comes from lines in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. It is my favorite Eliot poem.

What we call the beginning is often the endAnd to make an end is to make a beginning.The end is where we start from.

The story is told in a few short sentences grouped together and separated by asterisks, as if we hear the mother's spoken thoughts. Interspersed are italicized sentences, seeming quotations, that relate snippets of creation stories. Many readers will recognize the Judeo-Christian references to the Creation of the World, Adam and Eve, and Noah and the Flood.

Universal archetypes appear: references to world Creation Myths of emergence from water or a world egg, the symbolism of womb and a child's birth, the creation of  land and mankind, myths of paradise.

The structure of the novel may confuse some readers who prefer a strong narrative or character-driven story. But, if they give the novel a chance, these readers can relate to the story of a mother's love and the joys and concerns of motherhood.

The need to leave home for safety is, sadly, also too universal. Just consider the recent hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires.

And, Hunter has another message for us: When our lives seem to be torn asunder, and we have lost everything, there comes a child taking its first step. We know what we have lost. This child only will know the world as it is. The child is a new beginning.

Life is not linear, going from worse to better. Life is nothing but endings and starting over. We lose a loved one, a career, a home, mobility.

A child is born. Flood waters arose and covered London. People flee and gather to survive. The child grows. The waters recede. The people return. Nothing is the same. Life goes on.

I truly believe that Earth is changing and humans will suffer. Local climate changes will mean some crops fail and other will thrive, new species will move in and others will move out. Humans will migrate. There will be social, political, and economic stress. There will be violence and disorder. There will be an ending to the time we have flourished in, this interglacial period. There will be a new beginning, one born in violence of the death of all we have known. Somewhere, a baby will take it's first step into it's mother's arms.

It is the end we start from.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley and an ARC through Goodreads giveaway in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.



The End We Start From
by Megan Hunter
Grove Atlantic/Grove Press
Pub Date: November 7, 2017
Hardcover $22.00
ISBN: 9780802126894


Hear T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets read by Alec Guinness at
https://soundcloud.com/tomrobinson/4quartets

Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed

Once there was a young wife who was making her first ham dinner. She carefully sliced the end off of the ham before putting it into the roasting pan.

Her husband queried, "Why did you cut the end of the ham off?"

"Because," the wife replied, "that's how Mom always did it."

The husband suggested, "You should ask your mom why."

So, when her folks arrived for dinner the young wife asked, "Mom, why do you cut the end of the ham off?" "Because," the mother replied, " otherwise it wouldn't fit into my roasting pan."

We are sometimes slaves to tradition, chanting 'it's always been done that way.' We do not consider the reasons behind received wisdom and the custom of the country. When tradition has the church or government behind it, there is even less reason to question its validity.

Once in a while, a rare mind arises that sees another possibility, a higher moral order; someone sensitive to the lives of individuals caught in a crushing system. They preach, they lead, they stand up against the system, and engender a new vision of how things can be.

First, someone has to question why we do things the way we do.

Presented for your consideration:

An island with a small separatist society, refugees from a violent world consumed by war and fire.

They have inherited a faith and laws from their founders. Like other tribal societies, their strict rules make their survival possible. There shall be no more than two children per family. When adults become superfluous they drink the potion. Dutiful wives and daughters are the foundation of society. Wives must submit to their husband, daughters their father.

The daughters hate their lives. They dream of escaping their father's caresses, the early marriages, the horror of childbirth too often resulting in 'bleeding out' or delivering a mutant child. They wish they could enjoy their childhood summers of wild freedom forever.

One girl resists, inciting a rebellion and setting off a chain of events that brings retribution and reveals horrifying secrets.

Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed is a hard novel to read. The cult is so despicable and perverse, I was conflicted by what I was reading and physically felt stressed. The author is a psychiatric nurse practitioner specializing in traumatized children and child sexual abuse. She knows what she is portraying in the novel. And she does it very well.

The novel was also compelling, with sympathetic characters and enough mystery to keep me turning pages. Without graphic descriptions, the author subtly implies the girl's hated realities.

When I finished I asked what did the novel offer to redeem the horror I felt as reading? Why would someone read this book? What can it teach me?

And I remembered the sermon illustration I'd heard long ago about the ham and the daughter imitating without understanding.

This dystopian novel is a warning.

Everything we do because it's the way people do things can be reconsidered. The Protestant Reformation, the American Revolution, votes for women, Civil Rights--these movements all arose because a few people questioned and challenged the established order.

But also we should consider the 'little' things we do. How we spend our time or our money. We buy a product without considering its human cost or environmental impact. We allow advertising to drive our purchase choices.

I won't soon forget these brave daughters willing to fight for dignity and wholeness. May they inspire us all.

Jennie Melamed lives with two Shiba Inus. I approve. I have two myself.

Kamikaze and Suki, our Shiba Inu
mill mother rescues

I received a free book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Gather the Daughters
Jennie Melamed
Little, Brown & Co
Publication July 25, 2017
$26 hardcover
ISBN: 978031643652

Playing God: The Space Between the Stars by Anne Corlett

The Space Between the Stars is Anne Corlett's debut novel, combining dystopian sci-fi with a picaresque storyline, with a dose of romance and a touch of mystery added. There is a lot of eschatological table talk and a twisted thriller ending.

A virus has killed most of  humanity across the known universe. Jamie wants to get back home to Earth. She meets up with various survivors: spaceship captain Callen and his sidekick Gracie, and ex-priest Lowry and burned-out scientist Rena, who both had been at a retreat center. Together they go on a journey across space, stopping at various posts to refuel, learning how survivors have organized after the apocalypse, and picking up Mila, born into the 'whore' class, and Finn, who is perhaps autistic.

We learn that before the virus Earth had become overpopulated. A way of classifying people by status involved tattooing people. Some people were sent off-planet, with a resistance group opting to join them.

Jamie, Callen, Lowry and Rena are all on the run from their pasts. Cramped together on the small space ship, there are a lot of conflicts and divisiveness. And some underlying sexual tension.

Rena was a scientist with fixated on understanding the 'will of God' behind all that has happened. As she spirals into a madness of her own making, and each survivor struggles to make sense of their lives, horrible secrets are revealed. Should--will--these misfits survive?

When everything is revealed at the end, I realized the novel was also a warning about genetic manipulation in an endeavor to 'improve' on Mother Nature out of a false fixation on perfection.

Nature is messy. But it is always right.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through First to Read.

Publication Date: June 2017

Angels of Detroit: Dystopia Now

Detroit is America's poster child of a collapsed rust belt city. Empty houses and factories stare with empty windows, pillaged of anything salable. Crumbling roads lead to grasslands.

Detroit has a vibrant Midtown with a first class orchestra, amazing art museum, historical and science museums, trendy brew-houses and restaurants, and swanky stores that draw suburbanites.

Detroit is rising, reinventing itself. Detroit should be plowed under and forgotten.

The visions of the city and its future clash in Angels of Detroit, Christopher Hebert's sprawling novel charactered by old timers and a child, disillusioned activists from the 'burbs, and people who just stumble into alliances they come to rue.

The novel is not a paen to the past, although some characters remind us of Detroit's glory days. It is not an imagining of a rosy future. Instead Detroit is a battleground of idealism and profiteering.

A group of Millennial drop-out activists plot to bring down a huge Detroit based company whose drone is implicated in the destruction of a school. A man in debt is sent to set up housing for a human trafficking ring. A carpenter moves into his deceased grandmother's house and helps a 70 year old woman create a garden in the urban prairie while imagining the deconstruction of the past.

There are a lot of characters, a lot of back stories slowly revealed, but they are all brought together in the end. As flawed as each character is, we come to understand their journey.

"Set in a city that's either deteriorating beyond hope or rising from the ashes, Angels of Detroit pulls off the magic trick of all great fiction: it makes the world we live in now seem both wondrous and strange." Adam Ross, author of Mr. Peanut

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Angels of Detroit: A Novel
Christopher Hebert
Bloomsbury USA
Publication Date: July 5, 2016
$27 hard cover
ISBN:9781632863638

Dystopian Futures

I read David Mitchell's The Cloud Atlas for my book club and  Paolo Bacigalupi's  The Water Knife after reading the beginning through the First Look Book Club from  Random House. 


The Cloud Atlas was not easy to get into, but by the third section I started to see the connections, and by the time I got to the stories set in the future I was hooked. I ended up impressed and moved and loving the book. 

The novel is told through stories that cross time, each written in the language of a different genre. The structure is linear but then reverses backward through time as the ending of each story is revealed. As A.S. Bryant advises in her review appearing in The Guardian, you have to "trust the tale." It is worth it! 

The issues raised are deep and relevant: how humans perceive the world, what motivates human society and individuals, the way we condone and whitewash evil, the power of money, the evils of war, our denial of uncomfortable truths. The stories take us to a future that has reverted back to tribal warfare. But ending where he began, in the past, we are shown that individuals who choose to do good can, perhaps, alter the course of history. 

The Water Knife is set in a future world devastated by climate change where the Southwest and Western states are ruled by water cartels. The 'fivers' live in lush Chinese built communities where water is recycled; the poor, made of refugees from communities whose water has been turned off, live with Clearsac recycling of their own body fluids and huddle around water sources provided by charitable organizations. 

Angel is a Water Knife, hired to carry out the dirty work for the Vegas water lord. Lucy is tired of writing for the 'blood rags' reporting on ruin porn and follows a lead to perhaps another Pulitzer. Maria is a Texan refugee, on the lowest rung of society, just trying to survive. 

I really liked the issues explored in the novel. I did have trouble with the graphic violence and the descriptive kinky sex; I don't think these added to the story. But the novel does raise interesting issues and warnings of what could come. 

Emily St. John Mandel book signing 

Last week I attended a talk and Q&A with author Emily St. John Mandel whose Station Eleven I read a year ago and which I reread last month for book club. She addressed the issue of why dystopian novels are so popular and mainstream today. Emily listed reasons for the huge interest in dystopian novels which people across the country have suggested to her.

As Emily states in an NPR interview found here, post-apocalyptic fiction can be a reflection of the anxiety of life in an ever-changing world. No one likes change. Or perhaps we secretly like the idea of a do-over, another chance to get it right. Or perhaps the future is the only frontier left to explore.

I think this fiction allows us to see a projection of what will happen if we don't change and adapt. The visions are a warning, prophecies of doom based on our present actions. What I love about The Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven is the aspect of hope, that something of value is worth saving, that individuals who think morally original can challenge cultural norms and bring society one step closer to ideal. 

Too Good To Be True: The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

What are you willing to give up for security? Would you give up your free will?

Margaret Atwood's new novel The Heart Goes Last  is part of her Positron series, the first I have read. It has twists and turns that swept me into the plot line, and even when things got very icky I kept reading to discover what the heck was going on.

The novel is about Stan and Charmaine, a couple who have lost everything in an economic collapse. They are living in their car, fearful of night time attacks for theirs is a society were murder is common in the struggle for limited resources. Charmaine sees an advertisement for the Positron Project in the town of Consilience, offering full employment, a home, and work. They attend the marketing session. and are accepted. Charmaine buys into the dream world and Stan wants to let her have it.

The society is based on people willing to work one month in 'prison' for one month of normalcy.

The reader knows something is not right here and we want to find out what is behind this ideal society. It involves a complete loss of personal control, smarmy and immoral business practises, and scientific marvels that benefit the rich and powerful.

I warn you that there are very seedy things going on. Sex is used for control, and sexual desire and addiction is the motivation for some amazing technological developments.

Our couple learn they are pawns in a convoluted and bizarre scheme that will impact the future of Positron. Murder, threat of 'termination', loss of will, posing as robots--what these poor people endure!

In the end Charmaine and Stan get their just rewards, find peace, and learn how to love each other and enjoy what the heart has to offer.

I thank the publisher and NetGalley for a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Heart Goes Last
Margaret Atwood
Penguin Random House
Publication Date Sept. 29, 2015
Hardcover $29.95
ISBN:9780385540360