Offered Books:
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
Artemis by Andy Weir
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
Bonfire by Krysten Ritter
Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks
Selected:
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
Others Purchased Read:
The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman
This book was hard to read. So hard, in fact, that despite this being my Book of the Month selection from November of 2017, it was only in the past month that I was finally able to force myself to finish it. I had attempted to read it multiple times beforehand, but just could not get into it. It took an act of will to force myself past the 20th page or so and read through to the end.
I was not rewarded for my efforts.
The book follows Cedar Songmaker as the world finds itself in a unique situation: evolution is reversing itself, with women giving birth to a more primitive type of human and animals also reversing to previous evolutions. Cedar is 4 months pregnant, and finds herself hunted by those trying to preserve the human race.
Sounds like an interesting premise, right? Well, don't expect that premise to be explored much. The character of Cedar is self-centered and boring, and the entire novel is written from her perspective. And given that she is incurious about what is going on in the greater world, we only get the barest snippets of what is going on unless it directly affects her day-to-day life.
The main character of a novel doesn't have to be likable - there have been numerous novels told from the point of view of horrible people, not to mention the many that are unreliable narrators - but dear God I'd prefer it if they were at least interesting. Cedar is probably the last person who I would want to read about in this scenario, which is terrible for a first-person narrative.
And it's not just that she is unlikable and boring - she's also kind of dumb. She has gone into hiding because of pregnant women being hunted, and not only does she open the door for the mailman at one point, but she publicly goes to pray out in the open at a time where bounties are being offered for the capture of pregnant women. The novel has an ambiguous ending for the character, and I can't be bothered to even begin to care about what happened to her simply because of how she behaves throughout the entire novel - she does not grow from her experiences at all.
The few instances of outside character perspectives - mostly from letters written to Cedar - are ten times more interesting than anything we get from her. And they do not appear frequently enough.
I know I talked about the missed potential of The Power in October's Book of the Month review, but that is nothing compared to this novel. I'm not sure what Erdrich could do outside of completely restructuring the novel to include multiple perspectives to fix the core issue of a terrible protagonist, but the novel we received doesn't just waste its premise, it makes one wonder why it was introduced given the complete lack of exploration of it.
This is the first book (chronologically) that got a 'did not like' rating from me at the Book of the Month website - and not to spoil future reviews, but the two others to have received that rating from me in the 3+ years I have been a member are actually worse than this one. So when I say I would never recommend this book to anyone, imagine how bad the other books must be.
1.5 out of 5
First of all, thanks to my sister for loaning me this novel to read - I'd prefer not to have just a single exceptionally negative review for this month, even if that will happen eventually. looking at my future selections.
Unlike Future Home of the Living God, I read this one fairly quickly after it was loaned to me all those years ago, so this review won't be as in-depth (or as long) as that one. Which is a shame, because I really enjoyed The Rules of Magic.
A prequel to Hoffman's Practical Magic, it thankfully doesn't require the other novel to have been read - it works perfectly well as a stand alone. Following two sisters and their brother as they grow up learning about the magic inherent to them, the novel has a slightly stylized format that, in my opinion, serves it well.
Each of the characters gets long parts of the narrative focused on them, while still weaving together with the overall narrative. The journey of Vincent is my personal favorite, but both Franny and Jet are also engaging characters, so following them for chapters at a time doesn't feel like a chore to get to the character I really want to read.
There isn't a terrible amount of action in the novel, but it still moves at a brisk pace and one could easily make it through multiple chapters without realizing how quickly you made it through the story.
This novel is a definite recommend from me.
4 out of 5
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