literarysara's Reviews (45)

I can't recommend this book highly enough! 

Just didn’t do it for me. I kept reading because I was interested in how the author would resolve the impossible dilemma: a few strangers survive an apocalyptic pandemic in a hospital, but their supplies are running out. But the characters were not themselves very compelling, and the speculative elements (apocalypse, some kind of magical technology that lets you revisit your memories) are not well-married to the plot. 

This book made me feel like a first-year grad student at a party. This book is the cool girl in your lit theory seminar whose favorite authors are all white men who died young; she is lewd, funny, sexy, and unpredictably mean. There were moments I laughed out loud and moments I really felt for the narrator–a true disaster bi, and a rare instance of a 45yo woman as protagonist. Then there were moments I felt were a little too carefully designed to test my compassion, artfully distasteful in the way Brief Interviews with Hideous Men can be: content notes for suicide, assault, and adultery. Did I like it? I’m still not sure. But I inhaled it in two days. 

 I meant to just peruse the first few pages over lunch one day, but I ended up reading the whole thing over the next few days (which meant putting off my book club book, whoops!) The book opens and closes in the haunted setting of a mall aquarium that is home to an enormous, ancient Pacific octopus rescued from the dangerously polluted “Bering Vortex.” This made for a compelling opening, and a resonant recurring image throughout the book, but this is not ecofiction or spec fiction, as I assumed: it is a lovely, engaging novel about relationships–family, friends, romance–and transitioning into adulthood. The mysterious Vortex, the slightly mutated octopus, and a few other plot devices (like the dating app that matches user by algorithm rather than by profile) are what I would call speculative elements, but what drives the plot and draws in the reader is main character Ro and her relatable fears and griefs. 

My ecofiction book club selected this 1986 feminist sci fi classic. I had a little trouble getting into it at first–the writing style of the era is so different from what I’m used to–but we found it a really rich and interesting text to discuss. In this story, most of the planets and moons in the galaxy have been assimilated into a Space Empire (with a heavy dose of Space Capitalism, emphasis on metals and gems). Traders have only recently made contact with the ocean moon Shora, populated by the all-female, purple-tinged, web-fingered Sharers, but now the Space Empire is interested in mining this moon for its scientific knowledge more than its herbs and silks. Sharer language and culture is reflexive and cooperative: they carefully steward the sea resources they use for food and floating habitats, they have no leader, and every action implies its equal and opposite reaction (if you hit, you are hit; if you deceive, you are deceived; and so on). It’s not a perfect femtopia–there are disagreements, conflicts, and losses in the challenging ocean environment–but it was really interesting to read this shortly after seeing the Barbie movie, and considering how each woman-led society subverts what we take for granted in patriarchal capitalism. We also were really interested in the depiction of nonviolent resistance and disruption, even when confronting a Space Empire with so little regard for sentient life. 

I read half on my flight to Memphis and the rest on the way back, which was helpful, because this would have been a slow read if not for that space. The plot and main characters are fascinatingly twisty, centered on a New Zealand estate that abuts a national park. The estate owners, recently knighted by the British monarch, struggle to sell their land after a deadly landslide. A radical farming collective wants the land to grow crops to give to the needy. An American billionaire wants the land, and tells everyone different reasons why. The author’s style is a little on the dry and didactic side, which I sort of remember from her first book; different chapters feature different POV characters and present more as psychological profiles than as narratives. I can see the point of that, just as I can see the point of the bleak and abrupt ending, but I don’t think I care for it.