An engrossing, character-driven cautionary look at a stark possible future.
In Bernard’s interconnected short stories, communities and individuals struggle to survive in post-apocalyptic Ohio.
The horrors of climate change, two pandemics, social media, nuclear war, and infertility define “Late-K,” or the “desperate end-stage for the world.” In these 10 stories, taking place between 2012 and the 2060s, the remaining denizens of the Ohio Valley face the darkness and ambiguity of this new, simpler, more brutal reality. Among them is Hestia, a young woman tasked to handwrite copies of the crumbling texts of yesteryear, who is caught up in the village of Andeferas’ superstition and prejudice—which finds a target in an aging neighbor. Meanwhile, Safiya Kamal has become the Cleopatra of the Ohio River, commanding a fleet of vessels that move supplies, and is involved with the Brothers of the True Vine, a strange religious order involved in child trafficking, slavery, and rape. Cameron Caldwell, a former assistant district attorney, seeks (along with others) to investigate and end such despicable practices. All the while, nature undergoes a resurgence as humanity begins to foster a new, more sustainable relationship with it (“The engine they removed, of course, ran on either gasoline or diesel. As far as I know, Weston has no intention of reverting to those fossil fuels, even if he could find and refine them”). Though a sequel to Late-K Lunacy (2018), this novel stands comfortably on its own, with a firm focus on the survivors rather than the catastrophe; its characters’ origins and motivations are presented candidly and with great pith. The dry, wordy dialogue comes up short in comparison, lacking the idiosyncrasies and slang societies often develop or any dialects common in Appalachia. The worldbuilding is otherwise thorough, emphasizing the dangers of the newly wild and resource-depleted environment while showing how new customs develop and how the fears of the pre-apocalyptic world govern decisions. Miller’s black-and-white illustrations further cement the setting, and readers familiar with the Ohio River area will find many recognizable touchstones.
An engrossing, character-driven cautionary look at a stark possible future.Pub Date: April 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781989048870
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Petra Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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