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speculativebecky 's review for:
All City
by Alex DiFrancesco
I stayed up til almost 2 am finishing All City by Alex DiFrancesco, a climate change fueled dystopian that feels very much in conversation with Butler’s Parable novels and Severance by Ling Ma.
All City imagines a future New York City decimated by a powerful superstorm that leaves much of the city flooded. The wealthy have evacuated, and the novel follows a motley cast of those left behind. Alternating perspectives follow primarily a young woman named Makayla, and a genderqueer person named Jesse as they land in a community together, making their homes in vacant luxury apartments in an abandoned building. DiFrancesco weaves in a mysterious Bansky-esq artist who paints murals throughout the city, seemingly to call attention to the plights of those left behind. There's a stark tension between the exhortation of those who fled to return and rebuild against the unparalleled freedom carved out in the abandoned city by those without the resources to evacuate.
The book does feel a little young, perhaps due to the characters' ages, and the ending fell somewhat short in resolving some of my biggest questions, but still it was undeniably un-put-down-able and emotionally full. Reading dystopians during a global pandemic won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if the genre is your jam I'd definitely recommend this novel as an intriguing offering for the canon.
Cw for rape, transphobic/homophobic violence, suicide, drug use/abuse, violence against animals, a (really well done) scene dealing with the complexity of period induced dysphoria during a disaster.
All City imagines a future New York City decimated by a powerful superstorm that leaves much of the city flooded. The wealthy have evacuated, and the novel follows a motley cast of those left behind. Alternating perspectives follow primarily a young woman named Makayla, and a genderqueer person named Jesse as they land in a community together, making their homes in vacant luxury apartments in an abandoned building. DiFrancesco weaves in a mysterious Bansky-esq artist who paints murals throughout the city, seemingly to call attention to the plights of those left behind. There's a stark tension between the exhortation of those who fled to return and rebuild against the unparalleled freedom carved out in the abandoned city by those without the resources to evacuate.
The book does feel a little young, perhaps due to the characters' ages, and the ending fell somewhat short in resolving some of my biggest questions, but still it was undeniably un-put-down-able and emotionally full. Reading dystopians during a global pandemic won't be everyone's cup of tea, but if the genre is your jam I'd definitely recommend this novel as an intriguing offering for the canon.
Cw for rape, transphobic/homophobic violence, suicide, drug use/abuse, violence against animals, a (really well done) scene dealing with the complexity of period induced dysphoria during a disaster.