elementarymydear's Reviews (967)

 This book was WILD ride, not just in the plot and the events of the book, but also in my enjoyment and opinion of the book. I could never have predicted the direction this book went in, and I’m undecided on whether or not that was a good thing.

In the not-so-distant future, Earth has been destroyed by climate change and humanity is about to make its first steps in settling on another planet. After an increasing number of conservative laws have caused a gender equality to lose generations of progress, a group of female scientists, all pushed out of their own research projects, steal the ship meant to take the first humans to the planet Cavendish in a far-off solar system.

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Our main character is Naomi, a young woman who is recruited as the ship’s botanist by her adopted mother, leading scientist Valerie Black, who is spearheading the plan to steal the ship. I eventually warmed to Naomi, but for a long time it was quite difficult to get to know her as a character. Her personality and her backstory were revealed to us in a series of cliffhangers and ‘shock’ reveals that didn’t really hold any actual shock value, and eventually I realised why. The story was bookended by two first-person chapters from a perspective unknown to us until the end, but otherwise the book is in third person. Without another protagonist between us and Naomi, we don’t have a familiar character to be shocked by these reveals. The “she has an ex-husband, dun-dun-duh” vibe doesn’t really work when you a) know nothing about that character that might contradict that and b) don’t know her well enough yet to really care. Once we knew her better and she was the one uncovering secrets, I began to settle into the book more.

But that’s when things took a turn for the strange.

From the start, it had been clear that Valerie, the lead scientist on the mission and Naomi’s adopted mother, was a morally grey enigma who pursued her own agenda no matter the cost. Personally, I think that makes for an interesting antagonist: someone who truly believes they’re doing the right thing, but takes questionable steps to get there. The problem is for this to work, the steps have to be not so terrible that they don’t become a bad Batman villain, and by the end that was the territory Valerie had strayed into.

Valerie believes they can begin a utopia on the new planet with no inequality, no borders, no nationalities, just people living in harmony. The first problem is, she believes this is best accomplished by appointing herself supreme leader. Not a great start, but understandable if someone is power-crazed enough. Next, she reveals she has stolen the records of thousands of orphans and a few families she has helped with fertility issues via her research. Her plan is to ship out her hand-picked children to Cavendish first, raise them to live this utopian lifestyle, so by the time the rest of the humans get there they already have a robust infrastructure. Again, definitely not a good thing, but you can understand why she did that for what she believes will be a positive gain for humanity.

Then things got even weirder. The other crew discover thousands of frozen embryos on the ship, ready to be grown in the artificial wombs Valerie has invented. Naomi and her best friend on the ship (Hart, who is honestly the unsung hero of this book) wonder if, should the artificial wombs fail, they would be “asked” to carry the embryos. Given the weight this book put on the reproductive rights of women on Earth, I was surprised the moral and philosophical consequences of this weren’t further explored.

To top it all off, Valerie also decided to KILL 95% OF THE WORLD’S ADULTS WITH AN AIRBORNE VIRUS OF HER OWN CREATION. She secretly inoculated the people she thought worthy of saving, and happily let the rest die, so they wouldn’t come and ruin her utopia with pesky ideas of capitalism.

(Also this book was published over a month into lockdown, with some passages having clearly been changed to reflect COVID’s existence, so that’s a whole other nightmarish aspect of all this.)

After the rest of the crew find out Valerie has committed genocide, they decide it might be time to coup and lock up Valerie (after forcing her to hand over her formula for the antidote and vaccine and emailing them back to Earth). Naomi, coming to terms with the plethora of crimes against humanity her adopted mother committed, realises that her biological mother did actually die in some pretty suspicious circumstances and, yes, you guessed it! Valerie killed Naomi’s biological mother because they used to be business partners and Naomi’s mother wanted to leave the business or something like that.

There were so many interesting ideas brought up in this book, I just wish we’d been able to explore them more. The history of how women were pushed out of the work force didn’t feel particularly fleshed out, and lots of the philosophical and ethical ideas raised weren’t followed through. The biggest let-down for me was Valerie’s descent into Thanos-level villainy. By positioning her as the ultimate villain, her milder ideas didn’t get room for consideration. I wanted to get to the end and be able to make my own decision as to whether ultimately she was a good or bad person, but all of that nuance was brushed away in the final chapters.

This book had so much potential, and raised so many interesting questions and ideas, but it just didn’t come together for me in the end.

I have never read any of Simone de Beauvoir’s fiction before - I admit I haven’t read much of her non-fiction either - but this beautiful novella has me itching for more.

In The Inseparables, we follow two friends, Andrée and Sylvie, through their childhood and early adulthood. The story is semi-autobiographical, based heavily on Beauvoir’s own friendship with her childhood friend Zaza. It was clearly a very formative friendship for her on a number of levels, ending prematurely with Zaza’s tragic death.

It’s impossible to separate the truth from fiction in this story. Having never been published in the author’s lifetime, there is a sense that writing this story was an emotional, cathartic process, as she attempted to put into words what this friendship meant to her. Andrée’s pain and Sylvie’s yearning feel so vivid and real, you can’t help but feel your heart go out to them. 

It’s also worth mentioning the translator, Lauren Elkin, who not only did a fantastic job of conveying the emotion of the original text (not that I can do a direct comparison) but also wrote a fascinating foreword explaining not only some of the decisions she made in translating the text but also highlighting some details that couldn’t be carried over into English. Both the foreword and the afterword, which gives us an insight into the biographical elements of the story, really added to the reading experience and made me appreciate it all the more.

Whether you’re a lifelong fan of Simone de Beauvoir, or if like me you haven’t yet read many of her books, this book is a gem of a must-read. 

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a free copy for review. All opinions are my own.

 

I absolutely loved The Silence of the Girls, so when I (somehow) got the opportunity to review The Women of Troy I jumped at the chance. Directly following on from the previous book, we follow Briseis and the other women who have been taken prisoner by the Greeks following the Trojan War.

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This book was – dare I say it – even better than The Silence of the Girls. From the very first page we are thrown into the action, in the belly of the Trojan Horse. My one criticism of the previous book was how towards the end we suddenly jumped to perspective to Achilles (who we had grown to hate) to advance the plot. That wasn’t a problem here; the ‘plot’ of the Trojan War, told through the men’s eyes, was interspersed with our main story, so it didn’t feel quite as jarring when we switched perspectives.

Briseis, now a married woman (though not by choice), is now in a position to help the other women in the camp, many of whom have gone from being the daughters of Trojan nobility to Greek slaves. We really got to see both the strength and flaws of her character in the way she interacted with the other women, and she has the self-awareness at one point to admit that the way the men view the women has influenced the way she does.

Once again Pat Barker does not shy away from the reality of war and its consequences for women, both in the violence that they experience and the way it shapes them as people. Briseis’ repeated statement that she hopes her sister is dead rather than enslaved captures the depth of trauma these women go through. That being said, there are still moments of joy, made all the more precious by the women’s day-to-day lives.

One touch I particularly enjoyed was Briseis’ interactions with Cassandra. Cassandra has the gift of prophecy, but is cursed that she will never be believed. The way this was written was fantastic; it would be so easy for the other women to be mocking and outright dismissive of Cassandra, but instead they were sympathetic and pitying. It made Cassandra’s curse even more heart-wrenching. When she made a prediction she was met with care but still with a total lack of belief.

This book was everything I hoped it would be and more. It’s the perfect sequel, both continuing the task the first book set out to do and achieving more. It is an absolute must-read.

I received a free ARC from the publisher. All opinions are my own.