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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
I want to see past my lifetime, past yours, into exactly what the paleontologist says will not exist: the narrative. I want to see the story. More than anything, I’m frustrated by the fact that I’ll never know how things turn out.
Future Home of the Living God is the rare dystopic novel that eschews world-building in favour of something more personal. The details of humanity’s plight didn’t matter to me—how it happened and what the whole “de-evolution” thing really meant. What mattered to me was Louise Erdrich’s wonderfully crafted story, told through a mother’s journal entries written to her unborn child. It's wrenching without ever being maudlin.
I was wary of the 3.55 average Goodreads rating, and kept thinking as I went along—loving the book—that maybe Erdrich botches the ending. But no. The ending is beautiful. It is one of the most bleakly hopeful endings I can remember.
Future Home of the Living God is the rare dystopic novel that eschews world-building in favour of something more personal. The details of humanity’s plight didn’t matter to me—how it happened and what the whole “de-evolution” thing really meant. What mattered to me was Louise Erdrich’s wonderfully crafted story, told through a mother’s journal entries written to her unborn child. It's wrenching without ever being maudlin.
I was wary of the 3.55 average Goodreads rating, and kept thinking as I went along—loving the book—that maybe Erdrich botches the ending. But no. The ending is beautiful. It is one of the most bleakly hopeful endings I can remember.
I never thought it would happen -- that Louise Erdrich would write a klinker. Oh, how I wanted to love this book. I kept waiting for it to fly, but it never got down the runway, let alone off the ground. Set in a dystopian America, it follows Cedar Hawk Songmaker, an adopted Ojibwe, through her pregnancy in a world where a shadowy government imprisons women and their babies. Cedar never knows who to trust or what exactly is going on. The reader is often in the same boat. The premise (that evolution reverses) has no science or logic behind it, and Erdrich spends no time explaining or inventing a science or logic. Religion gets short shrift, too. There's so much potential. Cedar originally introduces the father of her baby as an angel, but he's human, goldurnit. Cedar's baby is born on a most auspicious day, but disappears soon after birth. The book, the world, the baby, and Cedar all end with an inauspicious whimper.
I won’t spend much time with plot summary as I don’t want to spoil the novel. I will just say that FHotLG is a masterful piece of speculative/science fiction. Some reviewers feel that there are plot holes and loose ends not neatly tied up. None of this bothers me; nor does it detract from the power of the story. I’ve always felt that reading an Erdrich novel is akin to reading poetry (much like reading Chopin). The lyrical flow carries me along currents of passion, devotion, doubt, hope, and aching heartbreak. I cannot recommend this book enough: the exploration of belief, motherhood, family, and culture gives one much to consider in the haunting that follows upon finishing the novel.
Disappointing. The devolution premise seemed so promising, but the story suffered from first-person narration that was TOO close--for a novel about terrible things happening to the world as a whole, we see very little of that world. Including more explanation (or even just speculation) of how and why this was happening to the world, and what it really looked like, would have made this a much richer story. Without those elements, this is basically a reproductive dystopia a la The Handmaid's Tale or Children of Men, with the narrator spending most of her time hiding from...we don't know what.
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
What a book. It's a page-turner, but it's also a piece of poetry. It's one of those that I think I could read again and again and have a different experience each time because it's so full of details. I couldn't stop thinking about the ways in which so much of the book parallels real life atrocities committed against indigenous women in the u.s., and putting them in a modern day dysto ian context really drives home that horror. Fantastic, difficult, beautiful, heavy piece of work.
3.5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and thought it was going to get at least four stars for sure, but then - it just ended. Just like that. It felt so sudden. If this were a book 1, I could forgive that. But damn, that last fifty pages or so just felt so rushed! It didn't at all match the pacing of the rest of the novel. Still, thought this one was overall very compelling and thought provoking.
dark
reflective
tense
fast-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:
No
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Was going to give this book 2.5/3 stars but the last line was so epic it bumped it way up to 4. It really hit me hard.
There's a lot to like about this book. I like the premise and the language and all the philosophical sciencey gibberish, but something about the main character just didn't connect with me at all. Maybe because she was two things I've never been nor wanted to be: religious and pregnant. But I've read all sorts of books about people completely different from me that I connected to. That's kinda the point of books. There was also a big part of her story that I do share with her: we're both adopted. But that was maybe the part of the story that fell the most flat for me. Her reuniting with her birth mother just felt so matter-of-fact and was described in philosophical rather than emotional terms. I had the hardest time feeling her emotions in the moments that I have the most personal experience with, which is weird.
There's also the fact that especially near the end this book kept focusing on the mystical bond between mother and fetus and between women (more accurately people with uteri but that's not acknowledged in the book) solely because of their ability to have babies. There's literally a "women's song" that all women instinctively know and only women sing. I could handle all the Catholic stuff the main character went on about because I find the reasons that people are drawn to religion fascinating and there was a critical eye towards people using religion to exploit vulnerable people in times of crisis, but I can't stand all that women's intuition crap. I'm particularly surprised because the author was critical of the way white people assume that Native people are "closer to nature". Doesn't she see how both ideas that Native people have a mystical connection to the land and that women "just know" are part of the same ideology that says that white men are superior because of their better ability to "reason" and "think rationally" while placating marginalised groups with stories about how we're superior to them in some "lesser" form of knowledge? I feel like I must have missed something and have been trying to come up with excuses like maybe the women's song bit is a sign that she's giving into the cult that's using these narratives to exploit women but I've read it over a few times and it happens very literally and she has thoughts like these earlier on, particularly in relation to just knowing things about her fetus, so I don't know.
This is especially disappointing because the author clearly knows a lot about science and is very invested in it. As a biologist who loves sci-fi I've gotten very good at suspension of disbelief. It doesn't matter to me if the cause of the apocalypse isn't biologically possible if the story and characters are compelling and it gives me a fun thought experiment of "wait, would that be biologically possible?" In this case the apocalypse is that suddenly all animals including humans start having offspring that are going "backwards" evolutionarily. Is that possible? No. But the author clearly knows this and spends some time explaining that there is no linear "forwards" or "backwards" in evolution which is miles better than most people's understanding of evolution. And she also throws in all these asides on different sciencey things about rocks and stars and fetal development with faffy philosophical musings and I'm just a sucker for that stuff even if it is ultimately kinda meaningless to the story.
But the fact that she dwells so much on actual science means that the things that don't make sense bother me more. For example, this "devolution" has only been happening for a few months when the main character sees a saber-toothed cat kill and eat a Labrador. This confused me because modern big cats take around 2 years to reach their full size and hunt on their own. It bothered me so much I had to look it up and scientists think Smilodon took 3 years to reach their full size so there's no way this cat could have been born only a few months ago and is now on its own and hunting large dogs. This really took me out of the story and I couldn't stop thinking about how since it's in Minnesota its mother must have been a cougar and would a cougar recognise a saber-toothed cub as her own and if she did would she be able to teach the cub to hunt? They have very different teeth which must mean different hunting styles as I don't think a saber-tooth could latch on to prey with its teeth the way a cougar does to subdue it. Maybe it could learn to hunt small prey but a Lab is pretty big, bigger than a cougar at 6 months old and most likely bigger than a Smilodon at 6 months, and so on. These kinds of mistakes aren't usually a big problem for me as they're fun to think about but there was so much accurate science that it stood out and took me out of the story a bit.
So overall I guess if the main character's philosophising had been balanced with a bit more emotionality and if it hadn't all turned into this big pregnant-women-having-a-psychic-connection thing at the end I would have really liked this book. And as I said that last line really hit home.
There's a lot to like about this book. I like the premise and the language and all the philosophical sciencey gibberish, but something about the main character just didn't connect with me at all. Maybe because she was two things I've never been nor wanted to be: religious and pregnant. But I've read all sorts of books about people completely different from me that I connected to. That's kinda the point of books. There was also a big part of her story that I do share with her: we're both adopted. But that was maybe the part of the story that fell the most flat for me. Her reuniting with her birth mother just felt so matter-of-fact and was described in philosophical rather than emotional terms. I had the hardest time feeling her emotions in the moments that I have the most personal experience with, which is weird.
There's also the fact that especially near the end this book kept focusing on the mystical bond between mother and fetus and between women (more accurately people with uteri but that's not acknowledged in the book) solely because of their ability to have babies. There's literally a "women's song" that all women instinctively know and only women sing. I could handle all the Catholic stuff the main character went on about because I find the reasons that people are drawn to religion fascinating and there was a critical eye towards people using religion to exploit vulnerable people in times of crisis, but I can't stand all that women's intuition crap. I'm particularly surprised because the author was critical of the way white people assume that Native people are "closer to nature". Doesn't she see how both ideas that Native people have a mystical connection to the land and that women "just know" are part of the same ideology that says that white men are superior because of their better ability to "reason" and "think rationally" while placating marginalised groups with stories about how we're superior to them in some "lesser" form of knowledge? I feel like I must have missed something and have been trying to come up with excuses like maybe the women's song bit is a sign that she's giving into the cult that's using these narratives to exploit women but I've read it over a few times and it happens very literally and she has thoughts like these earlier on, particularly in relation to just knowing things about her fetus, so I don't know.
This is especially disappointing because the author clearly knows a lot about science and is very invested in it. As a biologist who loves sci-fi I've gotten very good at suspension of disbelief. It doesn't matter to me if the cause of the apocalypse isn't biologically possible if the story and characters are compelling and it gives me a fun thought experiment of "wait, would that be biologically possible?" In this case the apocalypse is that suddenly all animals including humans start having offspring that are going "backwards" evolutionarily. Is that possible? No. But the author clearly knows this and spends some time explaining that there is no linear "forwards" or "backwards" in evolution which is miles better than most people's understanding of evolution. And she also throws in all these asides on different sciencey things about rocks and stars and fetal development with faffy philosophical musings and I'm just a sucker for that stuff even if it is ultimately kinda meaningless to the story.
But the fact that she dwells so much on actual science means that the things that don't make sense bother me more. For example, this "devolution" has only been happening for a few months when the main character sees a saber-toothed cat kill and eat a Labrador. This confused me because modern big cats take around 2 years to reach their full size and hunt on their own. It bothered me so much I had to look it up and scientists think Smilodon took 3 years to reach their full size so there's no way this cat could have been born only a few months ago and is now on its own and hunting large dogs. This really took me out of the story and I couldn't stop thinking about how since it's in Minnesota its mother must have been a cougar and would a cougar recognise a saber-toothed cub as her own and if she did would she be able to teach the cub to hunt? They have very different teeth which must mean different hunting styles as I don't think a saber-tooth could latch on to prey with its teeth the way a cougar does to subdue it. Maybe it could learn to hunt small prey but a Lab is pretty big, bigger than a cougar at 6 months old and most likely bigger than a Smilodon at 6 months, and so on. These kinds of mistakes aren't usually a big problem for me as they're fun to think about but there was so much accurate science that it stood out and took me out of the story a bit.
So overall I guess if the main character's philosophising had been balanced with a bit more emotionality and if it hadn't all turned into this big pregnant-women-having-a-psychic-connection thing at the end I would have really liked this book. And as I said that last line really hit home.
While often disturbing, this book doesn't flesh out its dystopian vision well enough to make a true impact. The concept of evolution running backwards isn't really explored or explained. True, the story is told through the eyes of its main character, Cedar, and she can only tell what she herself knows -- but that narrow viewpoint limits the reader's ability to grasp the outside events and understand how the world could change so dramatically in so short a time. Within mere months, pregnant women are hunted, tracked, and imprisoned, forced into reproductive centers with no choice but to bear and then lose children.
Meanwhile, Cedar's exploration of family, roots, and faith meander and lack coherence. The book is at its best during its most harrowing sections, when Cedar is on the run or in the midst of an elaborate escape plot. Her inner monologues and writings on religion take away from the building tension.
It's a shame, because the big-picture concept could be intriguing if we had more information on why it's happening, or really, a better view of what actually is happening. Instead, it's a little bit Handmaid's Tale but without the urgency or connection of that classic. Overall, I walked away disappointed by a book I'd been so eager to read.
Meanwhile, Cedar's exploration of family, roots, and faith meander and lack coherence. The book is at its best during its most harrowing sections, when Cedar is on the run or in the midst of an elaborate escape plot. Her inner monologues and writings on religion take away from the building tension.
It's a shame, because the big-picture concept could be intriguing if we had more information on why it's happening, or really, a better view of what actually is happening. Instead, it's a little bit Handmaid's Tale but without the urgency or connection of that classic. Overall, I walked away disappointed by a book I'd been so eager to read.