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3.24 AVERAGE
3.24 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I haven’t posted a book review in a while, purely due to the fact that I have been reading digital manuscripts and they don’t picture well.
This one took me a bit longer than it should have. It’s been a busy two weeks. I was hesitant to read about a pandemic in a pandemic but Beukes has threaded this story so well. It was equal parts pandemic breakout and world madness to equal parts thrilling plot.
There is a break out of a “flu” that causes cancer in men, eliminating them almost completely. Women rule the world - perfect right!?! But no. Cole is on the run with her son Miles. Everybody wants a piece of a surviving male. It’s a great novel about gender, being on the run and a world gone mad.
This one took me a bit longer than it should have. It’s been a busy two weeks. I was hesitant to read about a pandemic in a pandemic but Beukes has threaded this story so well. It was equal parts pandemic breakout and world madness to equal parts thrilling plot.
There is a break out of a “flu” that causes cancer in men, eliminating them almost completely. Women rule the world - perfect right!?! But no. Cole is on the run with her son Miles. Everybody wants a piece of a surviving male. It’s a great novel about gender, being on the run and a world gone mad.
"You can’t imagine how much the world can change in six months. You just can’t."
Oh no?
Not sure the timing of this book is perfect or much-too-ironic but it hit the spot for me and got me thinking. Which is why I read.
I enjoy the writing, love the varying perspective, and appreciate the depth of characters drawn, even the ones I don't like. Especially the ones I don't like.
Oh no?
Not sure the timing of this book is perfect or much-too-ironic but it hit the spot for me and got me thinking. Which is why I read.
I enjoy the writing, love the varying perspective, and appreciate the depth of characters drawn, even the ones I don't like. Especially the ones I don't like.
I'm a sucker for dystopian fiction, but I didn't love this as much as the reviewers do or as much as I loved Beukes' prior work. Her writing is choppy, and I didn't buy one of her central conceits ("Reprohibition"). Also, most of her characters tend to sound the same. I found it hard to get into, and I tended to set the book down and not pick it back up again for a day or more until I made myself continue. When I was halfway through, I finally got into the book; a cult she introduced was the one thing I found engrossing.
3.5 stars. This felt like a bit of a departure for Beukes. Afterland was much drier than her previous fantastical/thriller/genre romp novels. I think I would have enjoyed this sci-fi pandemic dystopia more if we weren't basically living in a sci-fi pandemic dystopia. I know some readers have leaned into pandemic fiction and if that's you, this book might hit the spot. At least the pandemic in the book is significantly worse than ours so that was some small comfort. I will say that Beukes' writing is high quality as always and unlike other books that deal with sudden biological changes associated with x/y chromosomes (cough cough The Power), it actually spent some time considering what that would mean if you were trans. Beukes' vision for what life might be like if most men died suddenly was the most interesting part of the book for me. She really put a lot of thought into how it would feel to live and function in that world and it felt very believable.
If Broken Monsters was Lauren Beukes’s great Clive Barker novel, then Afterland is her great Stephen King novel. By the way, I personally hate it when blurbs state breathlessly that if you loved ‘x’ by ‘y’ … then this is JUST the book for you because it is MORE of the same!
Beukes has carved a niche for herself as one of the most innovative speculative-genre writers at work today, on the same level as Clive Barker and Stephen King. I deliberately use the term ‘speculative’, as opposed to the more restrictive ‘horror’ or ‘SF’, because she is one of those writers who effortlessly transcends (and transforms) genre, while adding a uniquely South African twist.
We have been waiting a long time for Beukes to finish her next book. In a ‘live’ Facebook launch for Afterland, with the actual event cancelled due to the ongoing lockdown in South Africa, Beukes admitted that while it took her five years to finish Afterland, she was busy with a range of other projects during this time, from comics to a book of essays and short stories.
She said that the first three chapters were the most difficult to write, as she struggled to slip into the skin of her characters. Eventually she came to the inevitable realisation that her ‘bad guy’ would have to be a woman, and thereafter everything clicked into place.
Beukes added that she ended up cutting about 50 000 words of back story, which must have been a brutal editing process. But the rigorous discipline and commitment to her story that this implies is abundantly evident in the final product.
There is not a single superfluous or misplaced word in this nearly 350-page book. Despite its length, it does not feel overlong at all. Neither are there any lulls or those kinds of ‘filler’ patches that so many ‘big books’ seem to have these days. The chapters are short and punchy, but not so staccato-like as to disrupt the narrative and turn it into a series of vignettes.
I am reminded of the ‘frog being boiled alive’ analogy: Once you are in the velvet grip of this book, Beukes ratchets up the suspense until the tension is almost unbearable. The alternating viewpoints between Billie and Cole as they engage in a desperate cat-and-mouse road trip across a post-apocalyptic America is seamless and riveting.
The level of detail in the book points to a mindboggling amount of research by Beukes. In her afterword she mentions that she travelled many of the same roads as her motley group of characters.
Yes, there is a rather cheeky Interlude towards the middle that gives us the lowdown on this particular prostate-targeting virus that has wiped out the bulk of the male population worldwide, but it comes at a crucial turning pointing of the narrative that effectively bookends the two parts of the book: Before and After.
As with the best kind of apocalyptic fiction, Beukes is far more interested in the reconfiguration of society that takes place in the wake of her fictional pandemic, and the new forms of social organisation, interaction, and of course deviancy and pathology that results.
Here the Sisters of All Sorrows, juxtaposed with the Barbarella sex club, are perfect examples. In a perfect example of how fucked-up society can become, and the cognitive dissonance that defines so much of our world today (rich/poor, haves/have nots, East/West, white/black, etc.), Barbarella is by far the more welcoming and humane institution than the shelter-with-a-prayer-and-mortification offered by the psycho Sisters.
Miles having American cousins allows for “a big family get-together every few years across the hemispheres” affords Beukes the strategic opportunity to let the reader see America through Cole’s South African filter. There are a lot of comparisons between similar landscapes, for example, and the differences between cities. South African colloquialisms (which will probably seem like neologisms to American readers) pepper the text, making for a weird dissonance that is as comforting as it is disquieting.
And few writers can do disquiet or creepy-existential-dread-erupting-into-appalling-violence quite like Beukes. Which means that reading this book during South Africa’s lockdown due to a global pandemic makes for a truly surreal reading experience.
There are many instances where the book seems spookily prescient – the shortage of sanitiser, rigorous hand-washing becoming a ritual of daily life, the worry that a cure will never be found – that it seems ripped from the headlines of today’s newspapers.
Given the amount of time that Beukes spent on this book, the last thing she must have anticipated was writing a version of a reality that was about to become so frighteningly and alarmingly clear. I am reminded of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet and Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe books, both writers who also tapped into the zeitgeist with a lightning rod.
In the wake of the success of the television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, there seems to have been a spate of novels focusing on female dystopias, such as Sleeping Beauties by Stephen and Owen King, The Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich and The Power by Naomi Alderman, to name but a few.
Beukes breathes fresh life into the sub-genre by taking a rather unique spin on her dystopia as a tabula rasa for a potential brave(r) new world. She was asked during the Facebook launch as to what is the purpose of reading such a difficult and upsetting book during the current crisis? Surely an escapist beach read is best to forget our current troubles.
Beukes replied that the book allows the reader to project their own version of Afterland onto current events. In other words, we are at a unique fulcrum of history, where the decisions we take post-crisis will shape our future for generations to come. We are all like Cole and Mila, driving headlong into an unknown future, armed only with our hope and belief in our enduring humanity.
Beukes has carved a niche for herself as one of the most innovative speculative-genre writers at work today, on the same level as Clive Barker and Stephen King. I deliberately use the term ‘speculative’, as opposed to the more restrictive ‘horror’ or ‘SF’, because she is one of those writers who effortlessly transcends (and transforms) genre, while adding a uniquely South African twist.
We have been waiting a long time for Beukes to finish her next book. In a ‘live’ Facebook launch for Afterland, with the actual event cancelled due to the ongoing lockdown in South Africa, Beukes admitted that while it took her five years to finish Afterland, she was busy with a range of other projects during this time, from comics to a book of essays and short stories.
She said that the first three chapters were the most difficult to write, as she struggled to slip into the skin of her characters. Eventually she came to the inevitable realisation that her ‘bad guy’ would have to be a woman, and thereafter everything clicked into place.
Beukes added that she ended up cutting about 50 000 words of back story, which must have been a brutal editing process. But the rigorous discipline and commitment to her story that this implies is abundantly evident in the final product.
There is not a single superfluous or misplaced word in this nearly 350-page book. Despite its length, it does not feel overlong at all. Neither are there any lulls or those kinds of ‘filler’ patches that so many ‘big books’ seem to have these days. The chapters are short and punchy, but not so staccato-like as to disrupt the narrative and turn it into a series of vignettes.
I am reminded of the ‘frog being boiled alive’ analogy: Once you are in the velvet grip of this book, Beukes ratchets up the suspense until the tension is almost unbearable. The alternating viewpoints between Billie and Cole as they engage in a desperate cat-and-mouse road trip across a post-apocalyptic America is seamless and riveting.
The level of detail in the book points to a mindboggling amount of research by Beukes. In her afterword she mentions that she travelled many of the same roads as her motley group of characters.
Yes, there is a rather cheeky Interlude towards the middle that gives us the lowdown on this particular prostate-targeting virus that has wiped out the bulk of the male population worldwide, but it comes at a crucial turning pointing of the narrative that effectively bookends the two parts of the book: Before and After.
As with the best kind of apocalyptic fiction, Beukes is far more interested in the reconfiguration of society that takes place in the wake of her fictional pandemic, and the new forms of social organisation, interaction, and of course deviancy and pathology that results.
Here the Sisters of All Sorrows, juxtaposed with the Barbarella sex club, are perfect examples. In a perfect example of how fucked-up society can become, and the cognitive dissonance that defines so much of our world today (rich/poor, haves/have nots, East/West, white/black, etc.), Barbarella is by far the more welcoming and humane institution than the shelter-with-a-prayer-and-mortification offered by the psycho Sisters.
Miles having American cousins allows for “a big family get-together every few years across the hemispheres” affords Beukes the strategic opportunity to let the reader see America through Cole’s South African filter. There are a lot of comparisons between similar landscapes, for example, and the differences between cities. South African colloquialisms (which will probably seem like neologisms to American readers) pepper the text, making for a weird dissonance that is as comforting as it is disquieting.
And few writers can do disquiet or creepy-existential-dread-erupting-into-appalling-violence quite like Beukes. Which means that reading this book during South Africa’s lockdown due to a global pandemic makes for a truly surreal reading experience.
There are many instances where the book seems spookily prescient – the shortage of sanitiser, rigorous hand-washing becoming a ritual of daily life, the worry that a cure will never be found – that it seems ripped from the headlines of today’s newspapers.
Given the amount of time that Beukes spent on this book, the last thing she must have anticipated was writing a version of a reality that was about to become so frighteningly and alarmingly clear. I am reminded of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet and Dave Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe books, both writers who also tapped into the zeitgeist with a lightning rod.
In the wake of the success of the television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, there seems to have been a spate of novels focusing on female dystopias, such as Sleeping Beauties by Stephen and Owen King, The Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich and The Power by Naomi Alderman, to name but a few.
Beukes breathes fresh life into the sub-genre by taking a rather unique spin on her dystopia as a tabula rasa for a potential brave(r) new world. She was asked during the Facebook launch as to what is the purpose of reading such a difficult and upsetting book during the current crisis? Surely an escapist beach read is best to forget our current troubles.
Beukes replied that the book allows the reader to project their own version of Afterland onto current events. In other words, we are at a unique fulcrum of history, where the decisions we take post-crisis will shape our future for generations to come. We are all like Cole and Mila, driving headlong into an unknown future, armed only with our hope and belief in our enduring humanity.
I cannot lie: I love Lauren Beukes's writing. It's fresh and different and raw and honest and makes me pay attention. Her creations--places, people, beliefs, ideas--are always relevant. This novel is no different. When men all over the world die from a specific cancer targeting them, the few men and boys who survive are hunted, tested, claimed by governments and corporations. Cole's got a 12-year-old son, she's stuck in the US and needs to get to her home country of South Africa; and she's got a sister wants to sell her son for millions. Cole does what any mother would do: she puts her son in a dress and goes on the run, traveling across America and trying to escape the government, her sister, and other trouble along the way. It's a fast-paced, exhilarating ride that includes truly thoughtful discussions of death, gender and identity, personal choice and bodily autonomy, the nature of belief and religion, and coping with family. It's smart and fun and I loved it.
I have been on a kick lately of dystopian books about plagues. Hmmm! I think I need something more uplifting now, but they’ve all been great novels, including this one. Afterland reads a lot like a Margaret Atwood novel in the best way. I was intrigued by this author’s vision of the future after a plague wipes out most of the male population. It’s by turns funny, depressing, gory, and vulgar at times, and it kept me turning the pages. I am interested to read Lauren Beukes’ other books. She is extremely talented.
adventurous
dark
hopeful
tense
fast-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Fast-paced, thrilling, and thought-provoking. A terrific novel of a very different sort of plague.