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3.35 AVERAGE
3.35 AVERAGE
I actually quite liked parts of this book and would have rated it more if it wasn’t for how apparent it is that it was written by a straight white man. The ridiculous attention paid to women’s figures and especially their breasts is... absurd. And how their society apparently just regressed to gender roles? Why? Any basis gender roles has is generally tied to women (and others) because they have different needs due to pregnancy and breastfeeding (in a world reverting to no formula, no pumps or bottles, no vaccines, and rare medicines). But, if the fertility rate is low- and many young, childbearing women and children died during the Mexican flu- why why why would women NOT get involved in building a post-apocalypse world in terms of local government, certain bussinesses, etc.? Patriarchal bullshit, that’s why. I did enjoy the alternative relationship some main characters are a part of.
Did not like the peripheral use of women; this book is all about men. But otherwise was interesting. I don't know what his peak oil theories are so I read it just for a post-apoc and it was well put together.
The premise is a winner for me --- the modern world falls apart, how do we cope? However, the book felt very much like hard sci-fi (but from a social science rather than a natural science standpoint). The characters felt badly developed and the story arc secondary to exploring the scenario.
I loved the concept that Kunstler puts forth, a fictionalized telling of what it might be like after the long emergency, but the execution fell a little short. He presents several story threads centered on lawlessness, governance (democratic, religious, and plantation/fiefdom), cultism (though less Davidian and more Oneida), and loss of self and community. Each of those threads likely would make a fine novel on their own but here were tossed up more as a sketch for the central character to breeze through. That said, the universe Kunstler has created is compelling and it was eye opening to reflect on the necessary skills I lack in order to just make it through a given day in the post-oil world.
1. Boring story.
2. Flat characters.
3. There's an actual passage in the book about how, after the semi-apocalypse, women revert back to their natural roles as caretakers and breeders.
4. The author thinks that people who criticize him for point 3 "lack imagination" about gender roles (I read a blog post from him about it) ... jfc
5. Why did I read this?!? I can't even remember who recommended it, but this is why I have trust issues.
2. Flat characters.
3. There's an actual passage in the book about how, after the semi-apocalypse, women revert back to their natural roles as caretakers and breeders.
4. The author thinks that people who criticize him for point 3 "lack imagination" about gender roles (I read a blog post from him about it) ... jfc
5. Why did I read this?!? I can't even remember who recommended it, but this is why I have trust issues.
I love this genre but I did not love this book. I finished the entire book hoping for something to happen. There were loose endings to this book that leave the reader wondering (the mother bee, his son Daniel). Even if there were a sequel I wouldn't read it, because I never connected with the main character.
...eh.
I saw this advertised as a magical, thoughtful post-apocalyptic book, but what I got from it was clumsy writing, pointless adherence to gender roles, and a lot of narrative sloppiness. Nothing really happens, and even when major events do occur, there's no tension or urgency involved.
It feels very cozy-catastrophe, though the narrator keeps telling us how hard life is.
Not a bad book, just not a great one, either.
I saw this advertised as a magical, thoughtful post-apocalyptic book, but what I got from it was clumsy writing, pointless adherence to gender roles, and a lot of narrative sloppiness. Nothing really happens, and even when major events do occur, there's no tension or urgency involved.
It feels very cozy-catastrophe, though the narrator keeps telling us how hard life is.
Not a bad book, just not a great one, either.
This is one of my favorite books this year. It starts a little slow, but it gets better if you hang in there. Kunstler is most well known for his non-fiction books like The Long Emergency and Home From Nowhere. World Made By Hand is a novel about a future not so distant from our own, where the oil reserves have run dry and the world has reverted back to simpler times. While parts of it are unsettling I think there’s an undercurrent of hope throughout the novel.
Wow. Robin McKinley freely admits that The Blue Sword is her teenaged self's wish-fulfillment novel, and so it is, from horses to hair. World Made by Hand is wish fulfillment too, of a much less appealing sort.
Kunstler's protagonist revels in traditional sex roles. There's conflict straight out of the mythology of the Wild West. Regular folks know who Savonarola was. No women contribute to the leadership of the society but they're all fine cooks, even the ones with small breasts. At least one conflict with a female character is left hanging because neither Robert, the protagonist, nor Kunstler, the author, could figure out the decent thing to do. The one female character anyone reveres is one Robert is frightened by. I found her frightening too, because she's a meaningless insert without followup, just a bogey for Kunstler's ilk to be spooked by. A fertility figure? a Delphic one? mere sloppy plotting?
Robert witnesses the physical abuse and injury of a companion, stoically, because that's manly, except the stoicism is rather more a pathological lack of affect, considering he is next up for similar torment. Except the torturer spares him injury, inflicting instead only humiliation. This mercy is out of character for the torturer but he does incongruously spare the protagonist -- which is, no doubt, all we should be concerned with.
I thought Kunstler's McDonaldization of Society had a few good points but was overwrought, and this fiction of the same premises is overwrought with fewer good points. I admit to selecting it in pleasurable anticipation of a hate-read, which colored my reading. Robert's presence leads at least two characters* to suicide. I sympathize.
* Kunstler made his point with the first suicide, but since that was only a female character he needed a male character to do essentially the same thing so the reader could be sure it was important and not just hysteria. In Kunstler's world, "girls" are discrete from the set of humanity called "kids": "[A character] ended up in [prison] himself at age nineteen for stabbing to death another teenage boy one summer night at the quarry outside town where kids gathered to drink and hook up with girls" (~39).
Kunstler's protagonist revels in traditional sex roles. There's conflict straight out of the mythology of the Wild West. Regular folks know who Savonarola was. No women contribute to the leadership of the society but they're all fine cooks, even the ones with small breasts. At least one conflict with a female character is left hanging because neither Robert, the protagonist, nor Kunstler, the author, could figure out the decent thing to do. The one female character anyone reveres is one Robert is frightened by. I found her frightening too, because she's a meaningless insert without followup, just a bogey for Kunstler's ilk to be spooked by. A fertility figure? a Delphic one? mere sloppy plotting?
Robert witnesses the physical abuse and injury of a companion, stoically, because that's manly, except the stoicism is rather more a pathological lack of affect, considering he is next up for similar torment. Except the torturer spares him injury, inflicting instead only humiliation. This mercy is out of character for the torturer but he does incongruously spare the protagonist -- which is, no doubt, all we should be concerned with.
I thought Kunstler's McDonaldization of Society had a few good points but was overwrought, and this fiction of the same premises is overwrought with fewer good points. I admit to selecting it in pleasurable anticipation of a hate-read, which colored my reading. Robert's presence leads at least two characters* to suicide. I sympathize.
* Kunstler made his point with the first suicide, but since that was only a female character he needed a male character to do essentially the same thing so the reader could be sure it was important and not just hysteria. In Kunstler's world, "girls" are discrete from the set of humanity called "kids": "[A character] ended up in [prison] himself at age nineteen for stabbing to death another teenage boy one summer night at the quarry outside town where kids gathered to drink and hook up with girls" (~39).
I expected another unimaginative, patriarchal, heavily Christian world riddled with self inserts, and I can't say I was surprised. Other people have commented on the unrealistic aspects of this book better than I ever could, but I will say this: what happens to me? I mean, do gay girls just disappear? We must, I guess, since we have no value to the men either as baby incubators or house servants. I get having no openly gay characters, since this is a heavily conservative town, but the author doesn't seem to be aware of the existence of non-straight people. It doesn't come up even as an insult.
Moving on to gender issues, this book is no different in this respect from The Long Emergency. Women basically only exist in this book to cook and clean. While the author points to an antagonist's misogyny as proof of his villainy, the main characters don't treat women any better. The main character is clearly just the author living out his wet dream of being a Man surrounded by helpless women desperate to take care of and sleep with him. I won't name the characters involved (spoilers), but by the end of the book there are at least three women who want to sleep with our unremarkable, untalented main character, all of whom could clearly do better.
The book's overt religiosity bothered me a lot, and this was for one main reason: where are the other religions? I get people becoming more religious in times of crisis. Heck, I'd probably do the same. But I wouldn't suddenly become Christian. I have my own religion, and my own gods, and my own belief system. Everyone seems to be (non-denominationally) Christian. Again, what happens to me? And this doesn't even touch on the fact that the main character is ethnically Jewish, but apparently cares so little about this that we only hear it from another character towards the end of the book. This, coming from a (presumably) white, Christian author, reeks of antisemitism.
This book has many, many, issues, and I'm not going to waste my time detailing them all. I'm not even going to touch on the racism, particularly "yeah, there used to be, like, one black guy here, but he's gone now lol idk". Here's a choice excerpt: "This can't turn into an Indian war kind of thing where one raid leads back and forth to another and another." (288) Finally, I know others liked the supernatural elements in this book, but I thought I was in for hard post-apocalyptic fiction, and I like to know I'm reading a fantasy novel by the time I get a hundred pages in. Two stars because I found myself enjoying a few parts and because I got a few decent world-building ideas for YCSH out of it. Not recommended unless you're into masochism.
Moving on to gender issues, this book is no different in this respect from The Long Emergency. Women basically only exist in this book to cook and clean. While the author points to an antagonist's misogyny as proof of his villainy, the main characters don't treat women any better. The main character is clearly just the author living out his wet dream of being a Man surrounded by helpless women desperate to take care of and sleep with him. I won't name the characters involved (spoilers), but by the end of the book there are at least three women who want to sleep with our unremarkable, untalented main character, all of whom could clearly do better.
The book's overt religiosity bothered me a lot, and this was for one main reason: where are the other religions? I get people becoming more religious in times of crisis. Heck, I'd probably do the same. But I wouldn't suddenly become Christian. I have my own religion, and my own gods, and my own belief system. Everyone seems to be (non-denominationally) Christian. Again, what happens to me? And this doesn't even touch on the fact that the main character is ethnically Jewish, but apparently cares so little about this that we only hear it from another character towards the end of the book. This, coming from a (presumably) white, Christian author, reeks of antisemitism.
This book has many, many, issues, and I'm not going to waste my time detailing them all. I'm not even going to touch on the racism, particularly "yeah, there used to be, like, one black guy here, but he's gone now lol idk". Here's a choice excerpt: "This can't turn into an Indian war kind of thing where one raid leads back and forth to another and another." (288) Finally, I know others liked the supernatural elements in this book, but I thought I was in for hard post-apocalyptic fiction, and I like to know I'm reading a fantasy novel by the time I get a hundred pages in. Two stars because I found myself enjoying a few parts and because I got a few decent world-building ideas for YCSH out of it. Not recommended unless you're into masochism.