Reviews - Future Home of the Living God

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2.07k reviews for:

Future Home of the Living God

Louise Erdrich

3.66 AVERAGE

15bedford's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark funny sad medium-paced

tjwallace04's review against another edition

3.5

challenging dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Louise Erdrich is an absolute powerhouse of a writer; there's no question about that. Her prose wraps its tentacles around my brain and doesn't let go. I especially love how she writes relationships with the sharp, complicated edges of reality. The connection between an adult daughter and her mother in "Future Home of the Living God" is so well-done: the complexity of love and frustration and irritation and sacrifice and comfort and trust and hatred, all mixed together. I was also very impressed with the adoption storyline in this novel. Cedar's knotty, frought reaction to meeting her birth mother for the first time felt very believable.

Now...the plot of "Future Home of the Living God" left me with mixed feelings. This dystopian novel is very vague. In some ways, that makes it enjoyably creepy and disorienting, but I was mostly just left wanting more. The premise that evolution is moving backwards is cool, and I wish more had been said about it. The rapid degeneration of society could also have used some more firm, explanatory details. It is never clear why women are being rounded up or what is happening to them and their babies. The whole book has a dreamlike quality, and the idea of forced reproduction was done better and more persuasively by Margaret Atwood.

But overall, I enjoyed it. It is a fairly quick read, although there were parts where Cedar gets introspective about life and religion that dragged. I almost wished I could just have a whole non-dystopian story about Cedar, Sweetie, Eddy, and Little Mary - the "confronting the complexities of adoption" story. No neanderthals needed.

maddness22's review against another edition

4.5

emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Man I was vibing with this book for so long but that ending was trash. <Spoiler> For how much she loves her baby, Ceder really made a stupid call on how to best protect said baby. Like! Just stay inside! I know this was written pre-COVID (which makes it a lil spooky) and </Spoiler> I know the ending is likely a deeper metaphor that I don't fully understand but goddammit I'm mad!

Helluva sci-fi dystopian tho. There was an excellent peace in this prose and Ceder really did start out so strong. Too bad it fell off so deeply in the last act. Still a solid time overall though.