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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
FHotLG is a focused story in that it is the diary of a woman, Ceder, living through an evolutionary event where [that's a spoiler, you get to figure this out as you go]. We don't know everything. Questions are unanswered. Ceder doesn't know everything, her questions are avoided by other characters, and she does not always have access to her diary. Through this apocalyptic event, governments are breaking down, food and fuel are being hoarded, and Ceder is pregnant. We see everything unfold through her context of trying to build a community, by meeting her Ojibwe birth family and maintaining a connection with her white adoptive family, for her baby, and how that shifts to survival.
It's an amazing, if frustrating, book full of shifting power and frustrations that hits close to home at times.
It's an amazing, if frustrating, book full of shifting power and frustrations that hits close to home at times.
i generally love her writing so i started this somewhat blind. for me, something this apocalyptic, needs catharsis and a path to redemption or resilience. There is neither and it has no resolution. so it's just a bitterly depressing slice of dystopian life.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Louise Erdrich's book will receive the overused term 'dystopian fiction.' However, it is closer to work of post-colonial fiction, with the current trends of a culture and economy based on exploitation projected into the near future. One only has to read the novel's depiction of Thanksgiving. In this respect, Future Home of the Living God is consistent with the Erdrich catalog.
And while comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale may seem natural, Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God diverges in ways that should, in the way that good fiction does, inspire readers to pay closer attention to the movements happening just below the surface.
At an earlier time the evil envisioned by dystopias featured the work of an authoritarian regime. And while that exists here, the world lapses into chaos, created in part by questions a regime (it is intentionally unclear who that regime is – as if the curtain was pulled back to reveal a Wizard ill-prepared for the responsibilities of his power) designed to exploit but without any ability to create. In some ways as much Pynchon as Atwood.
The protagonist, Cedar, finds herself in a struggle to be human in a place that views her as a commodity with help in varying degrees, from her two families, one adopted and one biological.
In this environment rumors take the place of news and the offices one would think would be a part of this authoritarian government, like the Post Office and the National Guard, become at odds with it (sound familiar?). The traditional institutions attempt to preserve life while the new mixture of religion and law, the Church of the New Constitution attempts to preserve itself at any cost.
It is the old colonialist/capitalist mindset run amok, more horrifying because it is embedded in the minds of the citizens willing to turn each other in for food. The tension between the need to survive and the guilt over hurting fellow humans is shown on the faces and in the actions of the collectors, the postal workers, the medical staff. Even those who work in support of the regime find themselves used up.
Yet no one seems capable of breaking free of this idea that the commodification of people, especially women of child bearing age, is acceptable. Perhaps this mindset is summed up best in a late conversation between Cedar and her step-father Eddy who says “People sick for power have no song.” Which in one sense is a preference for the old, the human, the people who have been exploited time and time again by colonialists. But it is also a critique of the capitalism run amok in that it has no ability to create. It uses. A reality most horrifying in a hospital cemetery full of white crosses – those who did not survive childbirth - this system has no ability or interest in making birth safer, only in capturing those with an ability to survive it.
And it is this territory which Erdrich stakes out, a version that won’t go away with the defeat of one evil regime or tyrant, that moves into a more relevant, richer, more ambiguous story – one that is ultimately more horrifying.
And while comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale may seem natural, Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God diverges in ways that should, in the way that good fiction does, inspire readers to pay closer attention to the movements happening just below the surface.
At an earlier time the evil envisioned by dystopias featured the work of an authoritarian regime. And while that exists here, the world lapses into chaos, created in part by questions a regime (it is intentionally unclear who that regime is – as if the curtain was pulled back to reveal a Wizard ill-prepared for the responsibilities of his power) designed to exploit but without any ability to create. In some ways as much Pynchon as Atwood.
The protagonist, Cedar, finds herself in a struggle to be human in a place that views her as a commodity with help in varying degrees, from her two families, one adopted and one biological.
In this environment rumors take the place of news and the offices one would think would be a part of this authoritarian government, like the Post Office and the National Guard, become at odds with it (sound familiar?). The traditional institutions attempt to preserve life while the new mixture of religion and law, the Church of the New Constitution attempts to preserve itself at any cost.
It is the old colonialist/capitalist mindset run amok, more horrifying because it is embedded in the minds of the citizens willing to turn each other in for food. The tension between the need to survive and the guilt over hurting fellow humans is shown on the faces and in the actions of the collectors, the postal workers, the medical staff. Even those who work in support of the regime find themselves used up.
Yet no one seems capable of breaking free of this idea that the commodification of people, especially women of child bearing age, is acceptable. Perhaps this mindset is summed up best in a late conversation between Cedar and her step-father Eddy who says “People sick for power have no song.” Which in one sense is a preference for the old, the human, the people who have been exploited time and time again by colonialists. But it is also a critique of the capitalism run amok in that it has no ability to create. It uses. A reality most horrifying in a hospital cemetery full of white crosses – those who did not survive childbirth - this system has no ability or interest in making birth safer, only in capturing those with an ability to survive it.
And it is this territory which Erdrich stakes out, a version that won’t go away with the defeat of one evil regime or tyrant, that moves into a more relevant, richer, more ambiguous story – one that is ultimately more horrifying.
I love Louise Erdrich but I did not love this book. I hate to give it only three stars because it is very well written. I had not read anything about it prior to picking it up in the bookstore and the first few pages caught me however reading on it was not what I signed up for in my mind. Any more would be a spoiler, there is an audience for this book but it’s not your typical Louise Erdrich audience. I hope she is able to market to that crowd.
This book was so disappointing. So many interesting plot points were just tossed aside. Tell me about the ladybugs the size of cats! Tell me about the prehistoric birds. Most of all, tell me about how evolution is going backwards! Through the whole book it keeps being mentioned-- "evolution is going backwards....babies are being born that are in previous stages of evolution" but nothing is described or done about that. If you just wanted fertility to be down and women to be dying, just...say that. Blame it on a rogue virus or climate change or nothing at all! It read like a less descriptive Handmaids Tale, a less compelling Jodi Picoult book, and overall was really not worth the read.
My first book by this author and her writing is superb. In this story it’s almost a dystopian scientific thriller of sorts... evolution is going backwards, the world as we know it is on its way out, certain food and animals are gone, and babies aren’t Homo sapiens anymore... women are being taken and then their babies are taken and both their survival rates are low... at Times I wished there was more science in it, but many people wouldn’t like that.
Finished this and am still not sure what I think about it.
dark
This is so good. Louise Erdrich is an amazing writer, and this is perhaps her best. It’s a dystopian novel which bears some resemblance to The Handmaid’s Tale, but is more mystical and yet also more personal.
The narrator, Cedar Hawk Songmaker, is a young woman from the Ojibwe tribe, adopted by white Minneapolis liberals, and as the book begins, two things are happening. Cedar has found she’s pregnant, and has decided to go meet her Ojibwe parents. And the world is changing dramatically, perhaps ending, since biology has taken an odd fork. Birds, animals and insects are no longer breeding true – and neither are people.
The biological changes have spurred a great many social changes, since people panic in the face of the unfamiliar. The old institutions break down and new ones spring up. And there’s a spotlight on the process of human reproduction, with women of childbearing age becoming pawns in the struggle for power.
The novel is composed of journal entries written by Cedar throughout her pregnancy, beginning when things are still somewhat normal, and moving through an increasingly dangerous social environment. Cedar’s parents – both her adoptive ones, Sera and Glen, and her Ojibwe birth mother, Sweetie and her husband, Eddy – are very powerfully drawn. Cedar too, is a woman of awareness and courage. These are characters I’m glad to know.
Spiritual sustenance is a theme of the novel, with people finding it where they can. And the Underground is another theme, with people finding ways to be quietly subversive, and to help each other survive. Cedar is assisted by many people, as she is captured and escapes several times. But if you’re looking for a reassuring ending, don’t read this book.
Within the book are portions of another book, written by Eddy, which contains a reason not to kill yourself on every page. Here’s a description of Cedar’s first meeting with Eddy:
< Then he tells me that he elects to believe that he shares his condition only with writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and great statesmen like Winston Churchill. He doesn’t have the modern sort of depression, he says, the kind that can be treated with selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors. His is the original black dog.
“We’re all going down the tubes, the fallopian tubes that is, not to mention the seminal vesicles,” he says, as he cheerfully throws back his head and lets the sun hit his face. “Ah, that feels good.” >
In some ways, these two paragraphs encapsulate the novel. Yes, we’re all going down the tubes, but life is still full of abundant small joys. And a lyrical, perceptive and intelligent book like this is one of those joys.
The narrator, Cedar Hawk Songmaker, is a young woman from the Ojibwe tribe, adopted by white Minneapolis liberals, and as the book begins, two things are happening. Cedar has found she’s pregnant, and has decided to go meet her Ojibwe parents. And the world is changing dramatically, perhaps ending, since biology has taken an odd fork. Birds, animals and insects are no longer breeding true – and neither are people.
The biological changes have spurred a great many social changes, since people panic in the face of the unfamiliar. The old institutions break down and new ones spring up. And there’s a spotlight on the process of human reproduction, with women of childbearing age becoming pawns in the struggle for power.
The novel is composed of journal entries written by Cedar throughout her pregnancy, beginning when things are still somewhat normal, and moving through an increasingly dangerous social environment. Cedar’s parents – both her adoptive ones, Sera and Glen, and her Ojibwe birth mother, Sweetie and her husband, Eddy – are very powerfully drawn. Cedar too, is a woman of awareness and courage. These are characters I’m glad to know.
Spiritual sustenance is a theme of the novel, with people finding it where they can. And the Underground is another theme, with people finding ways to be quietly subversive, and to help each other survive. Cedar is assisted by many people, as she is captured and escapes several times. But if you’re looking for a reassuring ending, don’t read this book.
Within the book are portions of another book, written by Eddy, which contains a reason not to kill yourself on every page. Here’s a description of Cedar’s first meeting with Eddy:
< Then he tells me that he elects to believe that he shares his condition only with writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and great statesmen like Winston Churchill. He doesn’t have the modern sort of depression, he says, the kind that can be treated with selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors. His is the original black dog.
“We’re all going down the tubes, the fallopian tubes that is, not to mention the seminal vesicles,” he says, as he cheerfully throws back his head and lets the sun hit his face. “Ah, that feels good.” >
In some ways, these two paragraphs encapsulate the novel. Yes, we’re all going down the tubes, but life is still full of abundant small joys. And a lyrical, perceptive and intelligent book like this is one of those joys.