For women’s studies majors and hardcore fans of old-school science fiction, and probably nobody else.
A feminist classic revived.
This book was published in 1984, a year before The Handmaid’s Tale. The two share several similarities. Both take place in a not-too-distant future in which governments use Christianity as the rationale for stripping women of basic rights. Human reproduction is regulated by men. And women work together both to make their own lives bearable within this system and to create a better world for their daughters. Elgin (Peacetalk 101, 2002, etc.), who died in 2015, was a linguist as well as a science-fiction author, and the conceit at the heart of her dystopian narrative is brilliant: When humans make contact with aliens, people who understand how languages work will become an invaluable resource for connecting with other sentient species. Linguists become a sort of aristocracy, both necessary for interstellar trade and reviled for their elitism. While it’s true that the men of the linguist families enjoy some power and authority, the women of their houses are valued solely for their ability to work as translators and their capacity to produce children who will work as translators. Once they are infertile, they retire to the Barren House. The central household in this novel is the Chornyak family, and what the men don’t know is that the women in their Barren House have been creating a secret language, a language that will allow women to communicate with each other, a language that will let them express experiences for which they have found no word in any language that they’ve learned. The worldbuilding here is intriguing. The concept of women freeing themselves from patriarchy by developing their own language is awesome. The execution, though….This is a novel about language, but the characters all sound the same—and there are so many characters that it’s hard to keep them straight. Not only do they sound the same, they also sound quite distinctly like characters in vintage genre fiction. Who imagines a future that includes words like “honcho” and “damnfool” and “loobyloo,” let alone swears such as “Sweet jesus christ on a donkey in the shade of a lilac tree”?
For women’s studies majors and hardcore fans of old-school science fiction, and probably nobody else.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-936932-62-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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