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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
[4.5 stars] I really enjoyed this book and can already tell it will be one of my favorites for the year. I'm not much of a sci-fi or dystopian reader, but Erdrich manages to blend literary fiction with a speculative twist in a very effective and gripping way. I will say that I didn't love the twist at the end, though. I didn't hate it either, but I think Erdrich could have done more with the themes of kinship and Ojibwe sovereignty that were discussed throughout the book, had she ended it in a different way.
Several reviews have criticized this book for being a bit too similar to The Handmaid's Tale. To that point, I would like to echo some arguments made by another reviewer (linked below): (a) books that confront threats to women's reproductive and bodily autonomies are important and should continue to be published; (b) Erdrich's perspective is different than Atwood's, and she brings something new and fresh to these conversations; (c) Future Home of the Living God centers the narratives of non-white women; something that The Handmaid's Tale does not do and has been criticized for.
Taryn's full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1994453691?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1
Several reviews have criticized this book for being a bit too similar to The Handmaid's Tale. To that point, I would like to echo some arguments made by another reviewer (linked below): (a) books that confront threats to women's reproductive and bodily autonomies are important and should continue to be published; (b) Erdrich's perspective is different than Atwood's, and she brings something new and fresh to these conversations; (c) Future Home of the Living God centers the narratives of non-white women; something that The Handmaid's Tale does not do and has been criticized for.
Taryn's full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1994453691?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1
The strength of this book is not in its weird science. If you judge the book on that basis, the story falls apart. In the acknowledgments, Erdrich says that the concept for this novel came to her in 2001. That makes sense. It feels out of time from its publication date. What doesn't feel out of time is dystopian collapse and how people might mobilize into factions and how the wicked federation uses women (again and always) for its own purposes. Cedar/Mary's narration to her baby, the way it captures her thoughts, intellectual abilities, connections to religion, culture, and relationships to other people, is the moral center of this novel, the thing that keeps us going from beginning to end. FHotLG is not Erdrich's strongest novel and it sometimes feels slight compared with The Round House or La Rose or her short story chronicles. I wouldn't recommend it as a first encounter with Erdrich's rich writing history. But some of it is prescient and I will remember Cedar/Mary's voice.
I first have to admit I picked this one up for the cover- the special olive edition. I bought it because the premise was intriguing. I finished it because I thought for sure there would be some substance to the story. But really this was just a tale of a pregnancy with some vague weird stuff mixed in.
An absolute slog to finish—I was skimming as quickly as I could by the end to just get it over with.
Sometimes, inadequate substitutes are referred to as "the poor man's ___". Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God isn't the poor man's Handmaid's Tale or Brave New World...it's the broke man's version of those novels. The unique opening premise—that evolution has halted or reversed, affecting all life on Earth including future human births—goes completely unexplored beyond a few, fleeting references to strange animals and painful labor. What instead transpires is an unresolved identity quest and a tonally dissonant mix of HT and Children of Men. There exists a wide gulf between an author's refusal to hold her reader's hand and the use of ambiguity to cover up an under-developed narrative; Ms. Erdrich remains firmly entrenched on the losing side of that divide. Only the initial premise recommends this book, and given her failure to develop it beyond a fledgling idea, I can't even use that as an excuse to give Future Home a try. This was a great disappointment on all fronts.
Sometimes, inadequate substitutes are referred to as "the poor man's ___". Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God isn't the poor man's Handmaid's Tale or Brave New World...it's the broke man's version of those novels. The unique opening premise—that evolution has halted or reversed, affecting all life on Earth including future human births—goes completely unexplored beyond a few, fleeting references to strange animals and painful labor. What instead transpires is an unresolved identity quest and a tonally dissonant mix of HT and Children of Men. There exists a wide gulf between an author's refusal to hold her reader's hand and the use of ambiguity to cover up an under-developed narrative; Ms. Erdrich remains firmly entrenched on the losing side of that divide. Only the initial premise recommends this book, and given her failure to develop it beyond a fledgling idea, I can't even use that as an excuse to give Future Home a try. This was a great disappointment on all fronts.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
Slow to start. Best part was Part 2. The premise was excellent but the book was slow and lacked the details that would have made it truly excellent. 2.5
This book takes certain toxic threads of our society and politics that, left unchecked by democracy and human rights, mutate in terrible ways. It isn't that far of a stretch. It's less of a stretch than The Handmaid's Tale. The way it's presented is so effective it's easy to see how this could no longer be fiction, and it's terrifying. Sometimes it feels like we're much closer to the world of this book than we think.