Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

This story has all the hallmarks of a dystopian novel as it describes a period of environment collapse with widespread starvation and political turmoil. It's also a utopian story because it's about a dubious attempt to build a refuge to sustain the lives of select humans and animals. Zhang's potent descriptions successfully evoke both these genres, but it's more about highlighting the inequalities and moral conundrums which already exist in our society. The unnamed narrator describes a time in her life when the world was in turmoil while she was turning thirty. She's an American whose Chinese mother emigrated to the States, but found herself stuck in the United Kingdom after the borders closed when a crop killing smog covered the world. As a trained chef, she must work with dwindling ingredients and finds her chances of returning to the US are unlikely given the debt she's accrued. However, she finds an opportunity to work in a newly formed country for the elite on an Italian mountain top where the altitude allows rare access to the sun. As it turns out, her employment is less about her cooking skills and more about her profile. She's led into a scheme where the wealthy bargain to hoard/preserve what's left of the environment. This is an imaginative drama which challenges notions of hunger and nourishment in a world of hierarchies.

It's ironic that as soon as she arrives at this new country with access to a plentiful larder of ingredients she completely loses her appetite. So much so that it needs to be written into her contract that she needs to maintain a certain level of weight for her health. Being presented with a bounty of choice, she questions what she really desires. The narrator also engages in an affair with the sinister founder's entrepreneurial daughter whose appetite is voracious. Though it appears that this underdog has lucked out in landing somewhere that can sustain all her needs (including keeping wilful cat) this employment comes with many compromises. She ominously states at one point that “It has always been easy to disappear as an Asian woman.” Her experiences raise issues regarding how much we're willing to minimise ourselves and kowtow to power in order to survive when what really sustains us may be something very different.

Zhang has an evocative way of giving a sinister tone to what should be an idyllic setting. The narrator observes how “the sun mashed yellow against the edge of another relentlessly beautiful day”. Equally, the bountiful amount of fine and rare ingredients she works with comes to feel less delectable and more nauseating. It's a creative way to confound the senses and make the reader question what's really desirable. Sometimes the lyricism of Zhang's prose can obfuscate the action of the story so I'd feel confused about what's actually happening both in the immediate scene and in the wider world. However, the overall impression is impactful. When you step back it also appears less like fantasy and more like reality since the rich relish dining on rare ingredients or indulge in consuming the last of a certain breed. Equally, the less fortunate subsist on tasteless mass-manufactured staples. The narrator asserts that “Real food is whatever cooks are proud to make.” Surviving in a world of brash inequality with dignity is in some ways the greatest challenge and I enjoyed following this character's dramatic journey.

The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay

I always appreciate a non-stereotypical grandmother in fiction and Jean, the protagonist of “The Animals in That Country”, is foul-mouthed, hard drinking and sexual. She also adores her granddaughter Kimberly who is the only human with whom she shares a strong emotional bond. Her colleagues at the zoo where she gives guided tours don't think of Jean as a real ranger. She's estranged from her son. She's blocked from posting on certain websites. And her occasional lover is more devoted to his boyfriend. So it's only natural she feels a connection with the animals she cares for. She humorously makes up voices for them while guessing what the beasts are thinking and establishes what she believes to be a special kinship with a dingo named Sue. A mysterious disease quickly spreads across Australia that causes a pinkness in the eye and humans to hear everything that living creatures communicate. Life at the zoo is upturned. People go mad being bombarded with the thoughts of animals and most distance themselves from them as much as possible. When Kimberly's infected father takes her away to discover what whales are really saying, Jean sets out on a road trip to retrieve her alongside her companion Sue. This makes for a highly unique buddy journey as Jean gradually becomes more attuned to the surprising things that all the animals around her are really thinking and saying.

Gradually the text of the story becomes more populated by the animal speech which is a kind of garbled poetry mixed with a heavy dose of profanity. Though it seems like complete gibberish at first it gradually takes on more meaning and I enjoyed how this novel challenges the reader to enter the mindset of other species. Most often we project human consciousness onto animals when wondering what they're thinking but it's more likely that the pattern of their minds is very different from our own. Naturally, if we could actually hear everything the creatures around us are thinking we'd be more aware of the way we are dominating and abusing them. But this novel doesn't romanticise animal consciousness either. The creatures Jean hears are often selfish, crude or tedious. While this makes McKay's debut a really unique novel it also becomes quite confusing to follow the narrative of Jean's episodic journey. However, I was particularly struck by the emotional poignancy of the end. Though Jean is a feisty character her hard exterior conceals a loneliness dwelling beneath the surface and this becomes evident through the dilemma she's presented with at the story's conclusion. This dystopian novel is thoughtful and unsettling as well as moving in its depiction of alcoholism and alienation.

Salt Lick by Lulu Allison

I sometimes feel skeptical about fiction set in the near future which presents how our society might devolve and disintegrate in dystopian ways. Is this really what will happen? Ishiguro cannily avoided going into much detail about his projected future in “Klara and the Sun” by showing it through a limited perspective. Alternatively, one of the reasons Diane Cook's “The New Wilderness” didn't work for me was because the way her society had reorganized itself due to dwindling resources felt unrealistic. Lulu Allison takes an inventive method with her narrative which describes a near future England with coastal erosion, populations concentrated in cities, racist/homophobic clans, increasingly devastating pandemics and a United Kingdom that's disbanded. One could easily argue that this is only a lightly exaggerated version of the country as it currently exists. Given the way things so rapidly changed because of the recent pandemic it sometimes feels like the author is commenting on what's happening now: “all of them, young and old, know that the process of getting back to normal is still a long way off. It is called up like a spell, or a prayer, the earnest expression of a shared desire that is experienced now mostly as a matter of faith rather than expectation.” The story shows a gradual acknowledgement that whether we like it or not our society has been substantially altered because of viruses and climate change. Therefore, a collective desire for a return to a simpler recent past is a wish that probably won't ever be fulfilled. 

Alongside the primary story about a rural boy named Jesse and a young woman from London named Isolde, there are poetic descriptions of the transforming landscape and a chorus of feral cows who collectively comment upon the action. In this way the author creatively and energetically presents individuals searching for a sense of home and communities struggling to decide how to organize themselves within an increasingly strained environment. A pleasantly surprising aspect of this novel is the way that Jesse and Isolde's stories intersect with each other. Because the narrative switches back and forth between their journeys, the author manipulates their relative time periods and plots out when details are divulged to produce a wonderfully dramatic effect. It gripped me and allowed me to feel an emotional attachment to a story which sometimes meandered into the pastoral. However, it never grew too ponderous as idyllic descriptions of country life were balanced by inevitable conflict - even within an intentional community that strives towards harmony and self-sufficiency within the larger society. Initially I felt more engaged with Jesse's story but, as the novel progresses, Isolde came to feel like the most developed character. Other characters such as Jada and Lee don't feel like they get quite enough space in the narrative to become wholly rounded. However, this didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the suspenseful aspect of this tale. 

I especially appreciated how the author occasionally interjected short sections which describe the human history behind a decayed part of the physical landscape whether it be a crumbling house or an abandoned object. This gave small glimpses into other stories which briefly touch the main characters' narrative and the way different people are impacted by larger changes in the world. It's also effective the way the author presents the trauma and ongoing grief people feel: “Everyone carries these snap shots, these mosaic memories of the dead and dying.” There's a building sense of the strain and fear people feel which leads to groups of people growing increasingly distanced from each other and breakdowns in communication: “These rare settlements and the cities survive, by mutual consent, in avoidance of each other.” Inevitably, this leads to serious conflict which culminates in rustic warfare within the story. It shows how the author is in some ways more concerned with demonstrating the psychological and social effects of the challenges we face today rather than speculating on what society might look like in the coming decades. In this way, the novel is both absorbing and provokes a lot of quiet reflection. 

They by Kay Dick

Who can resist a story about a literary editor chancing upon a copy of a novel that's been out of print for over three decades and hails it as a lost dystopian classic? That's the seductive tale which accompanies the recent republication of “They”, a 1977 novel by a notorious figure from the 20th century literary scene. Though Kay Dick is barely remembered now, an obituary written for The Guardian in 2001 by Michael De-la-Noy makes her sound infamously unreliable, cash-strapped and vindictive. It's an ignominious end for a woman who was once George Orwell's editor and is called by Carmen Maria Machado “a trailblazing queer author.” This new edition of the novel is also covered with a string of endorsements from Margaret Atwood, Eimear Mcbride and Claire-Louise Bennett. If I'm focusing more on the author's reputation it's because I found myself more interested in the author herself than the content of her novel. 

By Machado's account, “They” is an unusual volume amongst Dicks' slender oeuvre as its cryptic stories describe a series of artistic individuals being intimidated by an unnamed group who are watchful, destructive and intensely creepy. The painters, sculptors, musicians and writers who populate this novel revel in nature, thrive in having intellectual exchanges and delight in friendship. However, their individuality and desire to express themselves makes them a target for the menacing figures who hover in the distance. These figures don't seem to belong to any one organization, but represent a homogenized bullying group. The artists realise that “We represent danger. Non-conformity is an illness.” They endeavour to find ways to cultivate their individual expression and exist on the margins of this repressive society even if some of them are punished, pillaged and have their memories wiped.

Though I appreciated the creepy tone to these stories and the eerie sense of being hemmed in, it was difficult to become emotionally invested in any of the characters because so few details are given about them or the nameless narrator(s). Instead we're just given snapshots of their behaviour wandering through the countryside walking their dogs or holing up together in places of refuge. The artists resent the figures in the distance not only for the way they terrorize them, but for their conformity in watching television and listening to pop music: “I could not endure the 90 dB intensity of pop music that street megaphones related at such times.” Equally, children generally rove around in marauding groups to torture animals. From reading about the author's life and the way in which the society outside this civilized circle of friends is represented makes me feel that this perception is coming more from a curmudgeonly author's point of view rather than an invented character's. Perhaps that's an unfair assumption, but I came to feel as critical of the pretensions of the artists as I did about the vicious figures that intimidated them.

I think reviews which came out when this novel was first published describe this book as a fever dream. That feels like a much more apt description than calling it a dystopian novel. Perhaps because I came to it with that expectation I was more disappointed because it felt quite different from any dystopian story I've read before. Perhaps that's a good thing and perhaps the dystopian novel now comes with expectations which are too limited. Nevertheless, the style of “They” left me with little to grasp onto or remember. There are some lovely evocative descriptions: “The damp sharp smell of newly mown grass stirred areas of childhood memories.” I admired the writing but it didn't build to a satisfying whole. The story could certainly be interpreted in many ways, but it felt too cryptic for me to feel impacted by it. Overall, I was left longing to read more about the author's life than to read more of her fiction. 

How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

It's impossible to know how we'll react to losing a loved one until it happens. Similarly, it's difficult to predict how an ongoing pandemic and environmental crisis will shape our society's future. But these are issues which Sequoia Nagamatsu movingly examines on many different individual human levels within his imaginative and absorbing debut “How High We Go In The Dark”. The novel opens with the discovery of the preserved remains of a prehistoric girl who is found amidst the melting permafrost in the Arctic Circle and, with her, a deadly virus is reintroduced into human civilization. By following the many lives of a number of linked individuals across hundreds of years we see the way our society splits apart, comes back together and grieves for what is lost. 

In some ways, this book functions like a group of interconnected short stories. The different chapters focus on subjects as varied as a theme park for terminally ill children, a pig grown for organ transplants that develops an ability to talk, a mechanic that no longer has the parts to repair families' beloved mechanical dogs, a scientific breakthrough that's implanted in one man's mind and an artist who paints murals in the corridors of a spaceship that seeks a new planet for humans. Yet the ending of the book circles back to the beginning in an innovative and surprising way. With its emphasis on themes of technology, space travel and a dystopian future this novel might appear like standard science fiction from the outside, but the story's real world resonance and psychologically complex characters feels more resonant of inventive hybrid novels such as “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers, “Station Eleven” by Emily St John Mandel and “XX” by Rian Hughes.

This is a narrative driven by deeply human stories centred around love, the painful experience of letting go, the ways we memorialise each other and our ability to persist through challenging circumstances. Certainly there are some characters which I connected with than others, but I enjoyed the way some more peripheral characters come to the forefront in different sections while also letting us know about the fates of other characters we know well. This not only gradually gives the reader a deeper understanding of certain people but shows how these individuals exist in a rich network of various different experiences. It's alternately horrifying and inspiring following how Nagamatsu imagines the evolution of humanity amidst dramatic global changes. But, just as one character chooses to name her own constellations in the sky, this story ultimately demonstrates how we can each form our own destinies. 

The High House by Jessie Greengrass

It may seem perverse to read an apocalyptic novel when we've spent the past year living through a pandemic. I can certainly understand the hesitancy to engage in a fictional crisis when there's so much in reality to make us anxious or angry or mournful about what we've so recently lost. Yet, I think it's ingenious the way Jessie Greengrass has written about an environmental disaster which floods the country and leaves a small group of people subsisting on a small plot of elevated land. This story reassuringly solidifies the physical world at a time when our minds are consumed with calamity. When you're in a moment of deep distress it's common for someone to calmingly say to you “there, there.” To be reassured that “you are there” when feeling trapped in an interminable limbo is a precious comfort. Similarly, reading the accounts of three individuals recalling the events which brought them to this house and the stark nature of their meagre living energetically brings us back to the present moment.

Francesca is a world-renowned environmental scientist and activist who sees with alarming clarity that there will be a widespread disaster due to climate change. This has been highlighted by scientists and the media so often that it doesn't need to be explained in the narrative. The difference in this story is that Francesca knows it will occur sooner than we thought possible or were willing to admit so she makes provisions in a house she inherited and its surrounding farmland to prepare for this crisis. Unlike most survivalists, she does this not to save herself but her young son and his older step sister. She also arranges for a local young woman and her grandfather to live in this sanctuary to help maintain it. The fact of this cataclysmic event is inevitable from the start of the novel, but what Greengrass presents so meaningfully is the journey of how Caro and her brother Pauly and Sally and her grandfather (who is nicknamed Grandy) arrive at this place. Just because we know what has happened and where they will end up doesn't decrease the spellbinding tension of their flight or their sober realisation of the large-scale devastation.

There's a pared down simplicity to this story which enhances its effectiveness. From the characters' actions to their dialogue there doesn't need to be any philosophical speeches, whimsical descriptions or melodramatic flourishes because what they are dealing with is the stark reality of tragic situation. For instance, the question of survivor's guilt is presented rhetorically: “What option is there, in the end, for those few of us who have survived, but to be the unforgivable, and the unforgiven? All those who might have lived instead of us are gone, or they are starving, while we stay on here at the high house, pulling potatoes from soft earth.” The unstated emotions of sorrow, doubt, grief and existential crisis are all here beneath the surface of the immediate necessary action of pulling potatoes from the soft earth so that they may continue to eat and live.

I found it especially poignant the way that salvaged objects, the things they grow and the stored supplies are enumerated because we know their importance in this strained new reality. Equally, we strongly feel the longing for objects that were taken for granted and have now been lost when Caro recalls a half-consumed chocolate pastry or the forgotten scissors which would have made cutting her brother's hair so much easier. These present and absent objects are what bring Greengrass' story into such sharp focus. It's akin to how Virginia Woolf described the power of “Robinson Crusoe”: “by means of telling the truth undeviatingly as it appears to him – by being a great artist and forgoing this and daring that in order to give effect to his prime quality, a sense of reality – he comes in the end to make common actions dignified and common objects beautiful. To dig, to bake, to plant, to build – how serious these simple occupations are; hatchets, scissors, logs, axes – how beautiful these simple objects become.” In the specificity of these realistic details the world of Greengrass' characters with all their attendant emotions arise fully formed in the reader's imagination. Thus we come to better appreciate what we have and take for granted.

Greengrass has previously imagined what effect widespread disaster would have upon an individual in her fiction. In her collection “An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw it” there is a story called 'Some Kind of Safety' in which a narrator is trapped in a bunker with a dwindling food supply. It's unsurprising that an author prone to testing out philosophical concerns should fictionally conjure scenarios where individuals are cut off from the wider society to arrive at a place that allows deep contemplation. What's admirable about this novel is the way no special insight about humanity or the cycle of nature is achieved from arriving at this state. The grandfather simply states: “All I can think is that what's different now is that no one can claim this is progress.” Nor does it prompt the characters to lyrically describe the ruins of the world that's left. Rather, it simply gives them a perspective about the true value of the things they have and the agency they possess to support each other and continue to survive.

If you follow the news for any length of time it's difficult not to feel an imminent threat of crisis and thus we often bear the weight of the world's problems on our shoulders. Of course, we watch the news because we want to be informed, but like the characters in the novel we can be left wondering “what difference did my knowledge make?” Lucy Ellmann voluminously documented this condition in her lengthy novel “Ducks, Newburyport”. Where Ellmann skilfully captured this mental state, Greengrass has encapsulated the dignity of our individual actions and the true value of what we possess. In the past year we've become all too aware of the potential lack of the things we take for granted because the merest hint of scarcity sends us all racing to the shops to stock up on toilet paper. Equally we now know what it means to be physically removed from a collective and many of us have felt intense loneliness and isolation while being in lockdown. Like the characters in the novel we've run the risk of losing “that sense of being a small part of a whole which persisted, even when we might dislike everything about it.” So reading about characters forced into a state of self-reliance when the larger world is drowning around them gives a strange sort of comfort. It connects us to humanity and makes us grateful for what we still have and what we have to lose.

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

“Leave the World Behind” begins like a delicate portrait of a typical family going on vacation to a rented home in a remote part of Long Island, but it soon turns into a much darker story filled with dread. At first it feels like an Anne Tyler novel and then slides into Cormac McCarthy. I think it's clever how Alam draws you into the lives of parents Amanda and Clay to fully understand the minutiae of their psychology and self-centredness. They are probably no more egotistical than most people, but definitely justify their attitudes and actions based on notions of inherent privilege. Therefore, they find it deeply challenging and frightening when, after settling into their accommodation, an older black couple named the Washingtons arrive on their doorstep late one night. Ruth and G.H. Washington assert that they are the owners and need to stay in their home because there's been a peculiar blackout in NYC. While they have no means of getting information through the news or internet, we follow the story of how this group is terrifyingly cut off from larger world events as the world descends into chaos. It's a kind of dystopian story as felt through the limited perspective of a group of characters but also says something larger about the flimsy magnanimity of white middle-upper class life. 

Recently I read Don DeLillo's most recent novel “The Silence” which has a very similar premise. A group of people find themselves isolated and ignorant about the larger cataclysmic events of the world when they are cut off from the media. It's a potent and timely situation as we increasingly find ourselves utterly dependant on understanding events and the shape of society as filtered through the internet. Yet, where DeLillo's book felt more like a studious exercise, Alam's story was much more successful as a satisfying novel that raises a number of compelling ideas while delivering a chilling, compulsively-readable tale. It's cleverly structured in how we're trapped in the limited perspective of the characters through much of the story, but later on we glimpse the devolving structures of the world. The reader fully understands how everything is going badly wrong but also feels the agonizing fear of the characters as they experience little signs which indicate that they're all in deep trouble. Deer flock past the house in unusually high numbers. Flamingoes unnaturally inhabit their area. Amanda and Clay's son becomes strangely ill. Their control and grasp of the world slowly seeps away and this results in a horrifying kind of derangement. It made this novel an effective, potent and unsettling read.

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook

Given the urgency of the climate crisis and the difficulties of changing our way of living to save the planet, it's no wonder that we can easily envision a time when nature has been plundered of its resources and humans are scrambling to survive. Diane Cook dramatises this conflict in “The New Wilderness” not by showing the fall of society but by presenting a group of people who've reverted to a nomadic life where survival is truly a day to day struggle. The majority of the population lives in an overpopulated and smoggy city where the air is so toxic children are often seriously ill. Because Bea's five year old daughter Agnes frequently coughed up blood and the doctors had no way of treating her, this mother and her partner Glen took the radical step to form a group of volunteers to venture out into the rural landscape which had been abandoned due to pollution. But this experiment is strictly regulated by the government and its rangers who study and regulate their existence. They're not allowed to settle in any location or leave any physical impact on the rewilding of the environment. The novel begins at a point where this group has been struggling to navigate this wilderness for some time and life has come to mean very little beyond the animal instinct to survive. 

The trouble I had with this story is that I found it hard to buy into the structure and workings of its society. Dystopian fiction must build a plausible scenario through which its drama can proceed. Even if this isn't explicitly laid out there have to be logical indications of how society has come to this point. The negative impact humans are having on the environment is very real and with urban populations becoming so dense I can see why the author has set her novel up this way. But I struggled to get a sense for how society was being governed, the ways in which the wilderness was being so strictly regulated and why the volunteer group adhered to their rules. Of course, one of the elements of suspense is that there is a sinister government plan occurring in the background but I just didn't believe in the overall structure of how this society had come to operate. So I found it a challenge to emotionally invest in the plot or its characters. I also felt the plodding detail of their day to day lives wasn't engaging enough to make me feel the desperation and tension of their situation. There were occasionally moving scenes between the characters and creative observations about the hidden workings of the natural world, but overall the novel felt a little overlong and was a bit of a slog to get through.

I enjoyed the complicated way the story portrays motherhood. I felt the tension of Bea's genuine love for her daughter combined with the sometimes tedious obligations of it: “motherhood felt like a heavy coat she was compelled to put on each day no matter the weather.” The author shows the compelling and heart wrenching ways this parent-child bond is warped by the urgency of their circumstances. The story actually begins with Bea having a miscarriage. This grief must instantly be internalized because of pressing practical concerns and there is an emotional toll for this necessity. The same is true in how she relates to her daughter where the concept and practice of protecting one's child takes on a very different meaning. I became fascinated and felt engaged with the way that her daughter Agnes grows, develops and processes emotion herself. But it takes some time in the narrative to get to this point and after a while it didn't continue to strongly hold my interest. Overall I felt the impact of this novel's message got lost in a lack of clarity about this society's construction. So I was left questioning the author's creative choices rather than pondering the important issues at the heart of this book.

The Silence by Don DeLillo

When I was at university it felt like Don DeLillo was one of the most important contemporary writers that you should be reading if you wanted to be serious about literature. His novels “White Noise” and “Libra” were hailed as brilliant critiques of American society and “Underworld” was considered one of the finest recent works worthy of that canonical accolade 'Great American Novel'. I have no quibble with his lofty position in literature's firmament, but I will say that while I appreciate and enjoy his novels I have never loved them. I've found it curious that over the past two decades he's produced a series of relatively slender novels compared to the girth and swagger of “Underworld”. I haven't read any of his books since the publication of “The Body Artist” in 2001 so I was excited to dive into his latest novel. 

“The Silence” is only 116 pages long with large type so I read the novel aloud in its entirety to my partner while we were on a recent cross-European car drive. Since we're in the midst of a pandemic we weren't allowed to stop in certain countries such as France or Switzerland (because their rates of infection are high and we'd have to quarantine when we got back to the UK if we interacted with anyone there.) So reading aloud from a dystopian novel that ominously predicts the breakdown of our technology-addicted world was quite a visceral experience. Luckily my partner and I weren't flying because the novel describes a couple's journey on a plane from Europe to America. During their flight an inexplicable technological “blackout” occurs across the world leading them to crash. However, after dealing with the administrative process that follows the wreckage, they continue with their planned trip to visit a friends' house to watch the Super Bowl despite the fact that their computers, phones and television don't work anymore. The year is 2022 and, though it appears the modern world has utterly collapsed, it feels like nothing is more important to this assemblage of people than carrying on with this great American tradition of watching a football game.

This dialogue-heavy novel has the tone of an absurdist play by Harold Pinter or Eugene Ionesco. Stripped of their virtual connection to the wider world, the individual characters are reduced to sputtering near nonsense acting out what they assume would have been announced on the television or conjuring conspiracy theories about the reason for this technological breakdown. Their thoughts are clouded with the jargon of advertisements and sensational news headlines. It's as if the characters have become so accustomed to virtual engagement that their ability for actual verbal and physical communication has atrophied. Amidst what has become our almost total reliance on technology, DeLillo overtly refers to Einstein's ominous prediction: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” This novel is posited on that precipice of civilisation's regression. It also asks timely questions about what's left of our personalities when our virtual identities disappear. 

I enjoyed the way this book paints a thought-provokingly surreal picture of the world and how its characters differently get lost in the echoing ruins of their interior reality. But it's a novel that's much more about its mood and atmosphere than forming a probing study of personality. I found it perplexing how one of the wives engages in a bungled erotic exchange with her esoteric former student who has crashed the Super Bowl party. Tessa Berens, a mixed-race character from the plane who obsessively records things in her notebooks, at one point “studies the backs of her hands as if confirming the color, her color, and wondering why she is here and not somewhere else in the world, speaking French or a kind of splintered Haitian Creole.” It's irritating to me when white authors include a non-white character in their stories and then inevitably make their skin colour into a point of identity crisis. This contributed to the sense that these individuals are just character sketches rather than fully fleshed out human beings. Otherwise, I appreciated the unsubtle way DeLillo hammers out his points concerning the modern world because in a political climate dominated by certain factions that barely bother concealing their contempt for humanity there's probably little need for subtlety in novels. In his later years, this accomplished author seems to have found his niche in producing slim finely-carved set pieces that dramatise his worst fears. 

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder)

On its surface “The Memory Police” feels like a typical dystopian novel about an oppressive military force. The narrator lives on an island where certain objects such as roses and music boxes totally disappear. Not only do these things vanish overnight but so do people’s memories of them. Anyone possessing or even recalling these things after they’ve been outlawed disappear themselves through the enforcement of an impersonal group known as the memory police. This leads people (such as the narrator’s mother who is taken away) to conceal objects which were supposed to disappear and people who remember outlawed things go into hiding. Events such as the systematic burning and destruction of outlawed objects have obvious parallels with historic fascist regimes. While it portrays this nightmarish world in a moving way, Yoko Ogawa’s novel isn’t as concerned with the mechanics of totalitarianism as it is with the philosophical mysteries of the human heart as well as the meaning and function of memory.

The narrator is a novelist and over the course of the book we also get snippets of a story she’s writing about a typist and her instructor. As the novel progresses the parallels between the narrator’s world and the typist’s world become surreally aligned as they seem to reflect her internal reality. While I found the sections of the narrator’s novel-in-progress somewhat intrusive at first they take on an increasing power as her reality grows increasingly bleak and restricted. The interplay between these stories is given a further complexity in how the narrator’s editor (only referred to as R) goes into hiding and tries to coax the narrator into remembering what’s been lost in the disappearances. It’s so interesting how this shows the complex process of memorialisation and prompts the reader to question things like: what’s vital to remember and what’s better to forget? How much do we imaginatively insert false memories into the truth of what occurred in the past? To what degree is our memorialization of certain things or people about our own ego rather than honouring what’s been lost?

From reading Ogawa’s previous novel “The Housekeeper and the Professor” it’s clear these complex issues about memory are ones which doggedly preoccupy the author. I admire how she explores them in surprisingly subtle ways and from different angles in her brilliantly unique novels. She also has an interesting way of approaching the parallel issue of romance – both romance between people and our romantic relationship with our own pasts. In “The Memory Police” there’s a lot of discussion about the heart and how “A heart has no shape, no limits. That’s why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much. It’s much like your memory, in that sense.” When things disappear it’s described as leaving holes in the hearts of people who can’t remember them and, because their absence forms these “new cavities”, it drives people to destroy any remaining physical trace of the thing. It’s like destroying sentimental letters, photographs or mementos when a relationship ends or a person dies – as if that can cancel out our feelings of bereavement.

The narrator’s mother is a sculptor: “My mother had loved to sculpt tapirs, even though she had never seen one in real life.”

In contrast to the resistant attitude of the editor R, the narrator also has a long-time friend and supporter in a figure only referred to as the “old man”. Although he assists the narrator in hiding the editor and rescuing disappeared goods, he has a more apathetic attitude about the worrying frequency with which things vanish. He states: “The disappearances are beyond our control. They have nothing to do with us. We’re all going to die anyway, someday, so what’s the differences? We simply have to leave things to fate.” Paired with the disappearances of memories is an inertia and lack of resistance from most of the general population who simply comply. This echoes many examples from history where people are unwilling to defend their values, way of life and the lives of others when threatened by a perceived authority. I’m sympathetic to this dilemma and it’s a complex subject. I admire the way this excellent novel wrestles with these issues that we all face both as individuals and citizens of our communities.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

I can’t think of any other literary novel that has had such a build-up prior to its release. Details of the story were shrouded in secrecy and its shortlisting on this year’s Booker Prize all contributed to an anticipation which culminated in a midnight release of the book this week and a live interview with Atwood that was streamed to over 1,300 cinemas around the world. I have to admit, I jumped right on board the hype train and read the novel over the course of a day. Personally, I was especially excited to see how the story would continue 15 years in the future after Offred’s final scene and discover more about Gilead’s downfall because I reread “The Handmaid’s Tale” so recently. In “The Testaments” we get a lot more about the workings of this dystopian society because it’s narrated from three different perspectives who all have unique views and access to different layers of this totalitarian state. In doing so, Atwood offers further perceptive critiques on the nature of patriarchal society and presents moving psychological insights into how people survive (or perish) within oppressive regimes. I have to say the way the central characters’ stories come together is a bit forced and the plot is somewhat predictable. Nevertheless, it’s a continuously engaging and gripping experience reading this book.

Central to the tale is Aunt Lydia who appeared in the original novel in Offred’s memories as an imposing tyrant who trains her as a handmaid. In “The Testaments” we get Lydia’s secret account that she stows in her private library describing her journey from pre-Gilead times as a left-leaning judge to her imprisonment, torture and eventual position as one of the architects of Gilead society. She’s a complex and difficult character who hoards secrets as a means of maintaining her power: “I’ve made it my business to know where the bodies are buried.” Lydia experienced a traumatic wakeup call as she witnessed a democratic American society shift to a puritanical totalitarian state: “People became frightened. Then they became angry. The absence of viable remedies. The search for someone to blame. Why did I think it would nonetheless be business as usual? Because we’d been hearing these things for so long I suppose. You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.” Rather than perish she proved her durability as a survivor and someone willing to compromise her morals in order to persist. She also takes pleasure in her power and position when denouncing her enemies or extinguishing those she views as weak: “I judged. I pronounced the sentence.” I appreciate the way Atwood depicts Lydia as an oppressor, but someone who is nonetheless sympathetic in her desire to live no matter the cost and becomes entombed in a perilous loneliness: “Having no friends, I must make due with enemies.”

The other two narrators are much younger and were born in Gilead so have no knowledge of a world without it. But they live on opposite sides of the border. Agnes lives in a privileged family within Gilead. She’s raised as a true believer and reared to become the high class wife of a commander. Daisy lives in the neighbouring democratic state of Canada and becomes involved with anti-Gilead protests. Both these girls experience severe disruptions when their intended paths in life abruptly change due to larger events and secrets are unearthed about their true origins. While their journeys are compelling the way Atwood brings together her three narrators’ stories relies too heavily on chance and convenience. The girls also perhaps serve too neatly as optimistic perspectives in contrast to Aunt Lydia’s position of corruption and vengeance. They are innocent as Agnes explains “We’d been protected… I’m afraid we did not fully appreciate the extent to which those of Aunt Lydia’s generation had been hardened in the fire. They had a ruthlessness about them that we lacked.”

Something I found really powerful about Agnes’ story is her friendship with a girl named Becka. While the other girls in their class enthusiastically embrace the idea of marrying a commander for the privileges such a position will bestow upon them, Becka adamantly refuses to marry because of her fear of sexual contact with men. It’s clear she’s experienced some unconfessed trauma, but Agnes doesn’t feel like she can discuss this with Becka because of her fear of the associated repercussions. While “The Handmaid’s Tale” meaningfully depicted the way women hesitate to be emotionally open for fear of being denounced, “The Testaments” further develops the way in which state pressure can reinforce these silences and prevent close friendships.

Atwood on the evening of the launch of The Testaments

More than the circumstances of the stories being portrayed, I probably felt more moved by the parallels between events “The Testaments” depicts and instances in the real world. Atwood has famously stated how “The Handmaid’s Tale” doesn’t portray anything which hasn’t already happened in human history and the same is true for this novel: governments “temporarily” take away citizens’ rights in a move towards totalitarianism; children are stolen from their birth parents and allocated to state-sanctioned couples; men use their positions of power to sexually abuse young females and sacred texts are wilfully misinterpreted for sinister motives. It’s all depressingly familiar and current. These universal themes about the deleterious effects of corrupt patriarchal governments reinforce the enduring power of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and show why it’s become such a well-known part of popular culture. That Atwood feels the need to further examine the machinations of such a brutal regime and the moral conundrums these societal shifts present to individuals feels prescient.

Atwood has stated that one of the reasons it’s taken her so long to write a sequel to her famous novel from 1985 is that it took a long time to decide upon a structure and choice of narrators. I can’t imagine any better trio of narrators to continue Gilead’s tale than the ones she’s chosen. But strangely I wish she’d concentrated less on building such a tightly woven plot and neat conclusions for her characters. Rather than being taken to the centre of Gilead I’d have been content to dwell in the periphery with characters whose lives have hardened from living in such a restrictive society. Part of the power of “The Handmaid’s Tale” was in the necessarily restricted view and understanding Offred had of her surroundings. It’s what heightened the horror because this experience more accurately reflects our own. This new novel will satisfy the curiosity many Atwood fans who want to know what happened next, but at the expense of that terrifying ignorance we felt dwelling in the restrictive cowl of a handmaid’s bonnet.

The Heavens by Sandra Newman

Sandra Newman’s “The Heavens” begins like a quaint modern love story about two individuals named Kate and Ben who meet at a “rich girl’s party” in New York City in the year 2000, but it steadily turns into a highly innovative and entertaining meditation on time, psychology, memory, reality, ambition and destiny. When Kate goes to sleep she finds her mind has melded with that of Emilia Lanier, the Elizabethan-era poet, member of the minor gentry and the person some scholars speculate to be the “Dark Lady” referenced in Shakespeare’s more “bawdy” sequence of sonnets. And when Kate wakes again she finds the world around her has changed in small and large ways. She becomes convinced she must manipulate history to try to save the world and change the present for the better – even though she runs the risk of making things worse. This is such a surprising and playful tale as well as being one which asks us to seriously question our relationship to history. It’s also a totally original and beguiling time travel fantasy.

The only other book I’ve read by Newman is her previous novel “The Country of Ice Cream Star” which imagines a post-apocalyptic future run by warring tribes of children. The author seems especially adept at creatively considering how our society might radically morph due to cataclysmic events. It’s also notable how Newman consistently includes a diverse cast of characters in leading roles - from her previous novel led mainly by African American and Latino characters to this new novel where the heritage of her protagonists are mixtures of Bengali, Jewish, Hungarian, Turkish and Persian. Other than simply representing the full breadth of society, this inclusion of a range of ethnicities and nationalities deepen our consideration of how notions of history are often highly politicised. Newman’s heroines also challenge our ideas about the roles women play in shaping the past, present and future.

One of the most pleasurable things about “The Heavens” is the way Newman playfully undermines Shakespeare’s stature as the most revered figure in Western literature. She’s spoken in an interview about how she purposefully wrote this as a “disrespectful version” of Shakespeare and when he first appears in the novel he’s referred to as “Sad Will”. This isn’t to say Newman doesn’t admire Shakespeare’s plays and poetry, but it’s both challenging and refreshing to think about a version of reality where Shakespeare might have only been a footnote of history and considered a minor poet. Indeed there were probably many writers – especially female poets such as Emilia Lanier who is credited as being the first Englishwoman to assert herself as a professional poet – whose creative writing didn’t fully survive through the ages because of chance or the happenstance of not being lauded in the way Shakespeare’s work has been throughout the centuries.

In this way the innovative plot of this novel raises compelling questions about the nature of ambition. What are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of our own legacy or for the betterment of society? And what does the betterment of society even mean? One of the most fascinating characters of the novel is Sabine, the “rich girl” who throws the party at the novel’s beginning. She has a high level of insecurity in the way she gossips and manipulatively speaks about other characters. But she also has good-hearted (if questionable) munificent tendencies in how she instigates charitable causes whether it’s housing a huge variety of wayward individuals or attempting to foster a more harmonious society by purchasing an entire impoverished town. These strands of the story seem to be questioning how adept capitalism is at “solving” some of the most pressing dilemmas at the heart of our civilization.

Emilia Lanier as painted by Nicholas Hill

I’m so impressed by the way this novel carries out multiple timelines and strands of its story which weave in and out of various potential histories. She plays upon various thematically-linked pop cultural references including ‘Terminator 2’ and she notes in an interview how the genesis of the novel began a joke where it was pitched as “Highlander set in the era of Shakespeare”. Parts of the story also felt like it was playing with ideas similar to ‘The Matrix’ in questioning what version of reality is real. I think this novel also has a similarly creative approach to Joyce Carol Oates’ recent novel ‘Hazards of Time Travel’ in considering ideas of personal responsibility and how we shape history. And even though “The Heavens” contemplates so many bigger ideas and issues, it still works as an effective and compelling love story where we follow this couple’s unusual struggle to be together. It’s a novel that I know will warrant rereading in order to pick out the subtle way its characters and settings change through subtly manipulated different versions of the present.

Leila by Prayaag Akbar

There’s been a notably high number of dystopian novels being published in recent years and it feels like this reflects a widespread anxiety. Novels such as “Station Eleven”, “The Country of Ice Cream Star”, “The Power” and “Hazards of Time Travel” have all taken very different approaches to creating scarily convincing counter-realities to our present landscape, especially in regards to misogynistic attitudes towards women. It’s always interesting to see how new dystopian fiction tries to create an urgent, radical dialogue with society today. The presumption being: if we don’t pay attention to what’s happening around us this nightmarish landscape might come sooner than we think. In the case of “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Atwood has famously said the novel contains nothing which hasn’t already happened in the world.

Prayaag Akbar’s debut novel “Leila” deals directly with issues of the caste system in India which has such a far-reaching, complex history and continues to incite horrific instances of violence. The novel takes the divisions between castes to the extreme where physical walls are erected to separate communities from each other, shore in resources for members of “elite” castes and strive towards a “purity” of race and social status. This is filtered through the perspective of Shalini who mourns the disappearance of her daughter Leila when she was suddenly lost after Shalini was seized and taken to a government-sanctioned reform camp. For years she’s secretly schemed how to find her daughter again amidst an aggressively conservative and strict system. Finally her plans might be carried out. We follow her journey as she puts her plot into action and recalls the horrific events which led to this dire situation.

I feel like some of the references in the novel were definitely lost on me because I have such a slim understanding of how the caste system works in India. There’s such a profusion of subcastes and subtleties to the way religion and social status play into how classifications of caste dictate the position of individuals in society that I sometimes felt disorientated and confused. I don’t think that mattered though because what carried me through the story was Shalini’s plight, the urgent concerns of motherhood and the egregious violence inflicted upon her mind and body. I felt the impact of her struggle and Akbar renders scenes of trauma with skilled clarity. Shalini was living quite a comfortable existence in a liberal lifestyle though she was aware that regressive attitudes and mob-like violence inflicted by a puritanical group called the Repeaters were increasing. But all this felt quite removed from her life until it reaches her doorstep and when it does it’s really effective.

What’s particularly interesting about Akbar’s narrative is that, though Shalini is a very sympathetic character, it gradually becomes apparent that she has her own prejudices and ignorance about the suffering of members of different castes. At the same time, she’s just an ordinary woman whose primary concern is for the welfare of her daughter. But, when the political landscape changes and a woman named Sapna who used to be Shalini’s nanny has acquired a very different social position, Shalini is forced to consider what mental walls she maintained against others. While this shift might feel overstated at points, it’s nonetheless effective in creating a multifaceted story which is as riveting in its mystery as it is in prompting readers to consider how we might all possess forms of  blindness to the suffering of people who are different from us. Akbar’s writing also has a beautiful fluidity which is a pleasure to read. He formerly worked as a journalist and it’s striking how his concern for investigating social issues has now translated into fiction.

Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates

It’s a common trope in Young Adult novels to feature a teenage protagonist in a dystopian future who is penalized for fighting against an oppressive system. That’s exactly the story Joyce Carol Oates writes in her new novel HAZARDS OF TIME TRAVEL. However, this is not a Young Adult novel. Oates is certainly familiar with the form and nature of YA fiction having written several books in this genre. It’d be natural to assume that she’s utilizing her expertise in this form and is also making a departure from her typically realistic fiction to branch into feminist dystopian fiction. There is a cycle of novels in this form particularly prevalent in literature today (as described by Alexandra Alter in a recent New York Times article ‘How Feminist Dystopian Fiction is Channeling Women’s Anger and Anxiety’ in which she cites Oates’s novel.) But the journey and outcome of Oates’s highly unusual new novel is much more startling and darkly subversive than any tale that could be categorized as Young Adult. Instead, HAZARDS OF TIME TRAVEL engages with ideas of behavioural psychology and Cold War politics to form an utterly unique commentary on society today. It also incorporates many autobiographical elements which surprisingly might make it one of Oates’s most personal and reflective novels yet.

The year is NAS-23 in the 16th Federal District, Eastern-Atlantic States. To put this in perspective, this novel actually takes place only a few years in the future. History proceeding the 9/11 attacks has been erased and dates in the North American States (NAS) begin from this point. In this newly reconstituted country which has absorbed the territories of Mexico and Canada, free speech and private thoughts are tightly controlled by the government. People are segmented into official racial categories determined by skin colour. Adriane Strohl is a curious and intelligent high school student who has been recognized as the class valedictorian and she’s invited to give a speech to the student body. She takes this opportunity to ask general questions which the government doesn’t like to be asked. As a consequence she’s punished by being designated an EI (Exiled Individual) and transported back through time to Zone 9. Here it is the year 1959 and she’s required to attend a university in Wisconsin “to train yourself in a socially useful profession.” She is equipped only with a new name (Mary Ellen Enright) and a list of instructions which prohibit her from leaving the area, developing intimate relationships or speaking about the future. Adriane knows that any deviation will result in her being “Deleted” – an example of what being deleted entails is vividly and terrifyingly portrayed in an opening section. From this point, she sets out to navigate this tricky and unfamiliar landscape of the past.

According to Greg Johnson’s biography of Oates, INVISIBLE WRITER, the author was also a valedictorian given the dubious honour of making a speech to the student body. Like Adriane, Oates was terrified about making this speech. It’s interesting how Oates’ own apparent fears and preoccupations manifest throughout the entire novel. In effect, Adriane is transported back in time to live through Joyce Carol Oates’ own university years in a region analogous to Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison where the author earned her graduate and post-graduate degrees. Like Oates, Adriane/Mary Ellen finds it necessary to earn her keep while she’s a student by working gruelling hours in a part time job in a library for a pitiful amount of money. Some of Oates’s fiction, most notably MARYA: A LIFE and I’LL TAKE YOU THERE, revolve around periods of adolescent experience which are very similar to Oates’ own. HAZARDS OF TIME TRAVEL is a novel that seems to borrow more freely from her autobiographical experience. As such, I believe the author uses her own past as a metafictional device to creatively explore issues concerning memory, guilt, free will, psychology and history.

At university Adriane is plagued by feelings of loneliness and she becomes fixated with an assistant professor of psychology named Ira Wolfman. Not only does she feel a romantic desire towards him, but he is also revealed to be an Exiled Individual from the future serving out a punishment. At one point, Wolfman calls into question the validity of their surroundings: “’Exile’? ‘Teletransportation’? ‘Zone Nine’? None of this is real, Adriane. It’s a construct.” This introduces dilemmas poised somewhere between the metaphysical issues raised in the films Blade Runner and The Matrix. Are these characters only imagining that they’re from the future? If they’ve been exiled to the past are they really being monitored? Is their “rehabilitation” really a part of a larger design? Adding to these sinister questions are those raised by Adriane’s classes on B.F. Skinner and his morally dubious behaviouralist experiments. The novel begins with the epigram from Skinner “A self is simply a device for representing a functionally unified system of responses.” Are Adriane’s choices and decisions ultimately the result of her environment and the government she lives under? How much agency does she have to enact change in her surroundings and determine her own future? These questions pile on top of each other over the course of the story and build into a fever of paranoia and uncertainty so that the novel’s conclusion (which would be considered positive in any other circumstance) feels incredibly sinister and horrific.

The many issues this novel raises over the course of the story powerfully coalesce to reflect anxieties and fears about the current political climate in America today. It also allows Oates opportunities for more playful commentary about the direction our culture is taking. In NAS-23 there are no democrats or republicans; there is just the Patriot Party. Voting is performed by placing a smiling emoji next to the candidate of choice. But Oates also pokes fun of some antiquated aspects of culture from the 50s and 60s. Adriane observes how agonizing it is wearing hair curlers to bed. Paper feels horribly inadequate to her as a reading device. Adriane’s unique point of view also casts new light on the Red Scare and threat of nuclear war which coloured this time period. By considering a period of personal and political upheaval in US history through this form of speculative fiction, Oates prompts us to question what are the real threats to the country as well as deeper anxieties about how our society is evolving. At one point Adriane/Mary Ellen states “time turns back upon itself. You believe that you are making progress, but it is an illusion. Yet, this is progress of a kind.” Given our proximity in time to NAS-23, Oates appears to be postulating how we need to step back before leaping forward.

This review also appeared on Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch

I think some of the greatest feminist dystopian fiction includes Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Angela Carter’s “The Passion of New Eve”, Sandra Newman’s "The Country of Ice Cream Star" and Naomi Alderman’s “The Power”. They don’t just speculate about terrifying ways that humanity can go wrong for women, but also powerfully comment upon the continued subjugation of women today. Lidia Yuknavitch has created an utterly original and wildly imaginative take on this narrative in her new novel “The Book of Joan”. This novel takes readers to the near-future 2049 when a series of cataclysmic events have reduced our planet to a “dirt ball” around which orbits a slipshod repurposed satellite. Upon this resides the mutant elite of humankind who survive on the scarce resources they can suck out of the decimated planet Earth. This will most certainly be the end of the human race as these mutants’ genitals have dropped off or sealed up and people’s skin has turned so (ugly) white they are nearly transparent. They are led by a powerful former self-help guru Jean de Men who organizes trials and executions of “offending” citizens as entertainment. But there is a resistance to this tyranny in the form of a strike branding artist Christine who tattoos poetry on the grafted skin covering her body. She mythologizes the story of Joan who created chaos across the planet and was ritually burned like her 15th century French-warrior namesake. The ensuing conflict is not only a mesmerizing and grisly adventure but makes striking observations about gender, genetics and the meaning of story-telling.

So I couldn’t help thinking that Yuknavitch was speaking directly about today when Christine comments: “We are what happens when the seemingly unthinkable celebrity rises to power. Our existence makes my eyes hurt.” It’s difficult not to read this as a reference to the current American president. It’s interesting how she engages with the way that popularity and power intermingle and the compromises and resolutions such a leader must make to either maintain their image as a beloved celebrity or flagrantly abuse their power to ensure the general population falls into line. This is shown differently in both of the figures of Jean de Men and Joan. Notably, she does so not just in these characters’ actions but in the way their bodies are radically transformed and mutate as they utilize previously untapped elements from both nature and technology.

It’s difficult in dystopian fiction to maintain a balance between explaining the conditions of an imagined future reality and developing characters that readers can really connect with. There were sections of this novel which flew over my head. Yuknavitch ambitiously builds this distorted future by playing upon many elements of philosophy and science such as subatomic physics. She also hints at bands of rebels and subservient robots. To fully flesh out this future would have taken thousands of pages, yet there could have been ways to briefly round out her fantastical reality to help me fully picture it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t always clearly see it so parts of the novel felt too chaotic to me. But she makes up for it with some fantastic characters whose very bodies carry the scars of what they’ve gone through. There is Christine’s gay friend Trinculo who affectionately and relentlessly spouts antiquated bawdy insults at her. There’s also the love affair between Joan and Leone who is a Vietnamese-French girl that fights alongside her in battles across the world.

One of the most striking things in this novel is the way that poetry and verse becomes an adornment that symbolizes privilege. Christine emphasizes that tattooing text is an art and since their group of mutant beings keep grafting on layers of skin it’s like parchment which they carry with them everywhere. She emphatically holds onto the importance of storytelling because “To have a story was to have a self.” The difficulty with real historical tales like that of Joan of Arc is that her story can be shaped into whatever its tellers need it to be. She could be portrayed as a saint or a heretic. Yuknavitch poses the question “What if, for once in history, a woman’s story could be untethered from what we need it to be in order to feel better about ourselves?” In the character of Joan she creates a woman that untethers herself from the script which is assigned to her and becomes fiercely individual – someone that can only be defined by what she loves.