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In Alaska we meet Birdie, a young single mother barely holding it together. Into the roadhouse where she works comes Arthur, a strange fellow who doesn’t say much. But when Birdie’s young daughter, Emaleen, disappears, Arthur finds Emaleen in the woods and a deep bond develops between him and Birdie. The three go off to live in his very remote cabin. At first it feels like freedom and love to Birdie, but Arthur’s increasing absences and behavioral changes worry her greatly. Now it’s time to reveal that Arthur is part bear, like a figure from a myth, and we know it won’t end well. Magical realism for sure, but so exquisitely rooted in the natural world that I suspended disbelief completely.Very haunting.
Zelu, this novel’s protagonist, lost the use of her legs when she tumbled out of a rotten tree at age 16. She’s a tough, independent soul and wants no one’s pity. Very outspoken, she got fired from her job as an adjunct professor because she tells it like it is. An inventor contacts her with the prospect of an innovative device that wraps around each leg to support and respond to her signals; they’re almost sentient. When she agrees to be a test case, she gets lots of pushback from her large Nigerian family who see it as potentially dangerous. The disability community give her grief as well; they judge that she’s trying to be “normal.” In her spare time, Zelu’s writing a dystopian science fiction book featuring the last human on earth, her robot friend, and the war that erupts to save the planet. I don’t read a lot of sci fi (though this is catalogued as fiction) and sometimes got confused about interplanetary and AI skirmishes, but the story gripped me so deeply that I totally lost track of time. The book reflects the author’s experience with disability and racism, and the denouement left me gasping.
Leave it to this brilliant author to tackle dystopia with a horse named Gliff, which is a word that translates as a glimpse or shock. The novel centers around two children who must make their way to safety in a world fraught with surveillance and constant, quixotic restrictions. Their desperate strategies and ingenious improvisations, plus help from a few kindred souls, make this possible. Very short chapters bearing titles that are anagrams of Brave New World, trace their journey. No quotation marks for dialogue and stripped-down language bring immediacy to the story, embodying the very quality of gliff itself.
Middle-aged Ivy is stricken with Ansel, a devastatingly charming musician almost two decades younger. I use that verb because her obsession brings more pain than pleasure into her life. She’s a single mother juggling many elements, and Ansel is straightforward about his outlook on relationships—no strings—and frustratingly elusive. Yet she feels she’s finally come alive when they’re together. It takes her young son’s terrifying health crisis to free her, and I breathed a sigh of relief at last. Intense.
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