Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
I loved this book. It’s moving, beautifully written, and deftly plotted. There’s a little magic realism and a little scientific nerdiness in a novel that’s both a dystopia and an homage to natural forces. It’s a book punctuated with hurricanes, but they’re all different, and they’re all vividly described.
There should be a category of novel called “hopeful dystopia”. The first book I remember reading like this was Golden Days by Carolyn See, and it made a deep impression on me. Many of N. K. Jemisin’s great short stories also fit into this category. I appreciate it when a writer doesn’t just leave us in the dark ages, but shows some future light peeking through.
So this novel takes us through the end of the world as we know it. It begins with Frida, a very pregnant woman, newly married to Kirby, an electrical lineman with two small sons, Lucas and Flip. She’s moved to his small town in Florida, and is coping with all the changes in her life, when a hurricane threatens. Frida just lost her mother in a hurricane in Puerto Rico, so she’s especially sensitive to the atmospheric changes. Kirby doesn’t want to evacuate, so he sandbags the house, boards up the windows, and goes back to his job restoring the community’s power. Not feeling well, Frida goes to lie down, telling the boys not to leave the house. But the older son, Lucas, angry about having a stepmother, decides to disobey, and his reluctant brother follows him as they go off to explore an abandoned trailer park.
Hurricane Wanda comes, gathers strength, and lands right at this small Florida town. The writing is very sure and immersive here, as the kids find themselves trying to run home through torrential winds. When he comes home and realizes they’re gone, Kirby goes out looking for them, not realizing that his wife is now in labor. Hoping that the kids are in the shed, she goes out to check, and then can barely make it back to the house. Meanwhile, the wind carries away the smaller child, and the older one reaches the house of Phyllis, a survivalist neighbor, who contacts Kirby. Kirby makes it to Phyllis’ house and takes Lucas home, only to find Frida dying after giving birth. Her final words are that the baby should be named Wanda.
Here, the novel moves forward ten years. Lucas, now age 22, works as a lineman next to his father, and he deals with constant guilt around the death of his brother and stepmother. He finally decides to apply to college in California, although it’s hard for him to go. Wanda, at age ten, doesn’t have many friends, since her schoolmates think she’s odd. At one point, she bikes to the Edge, a dangerous and forbidden area where the sea has swallowed a beachfront community. While she’s there, some bullies from her school appear, and she is almost drowned, but finds herself in a strange communion with the sea. She feels that the sea is telling her things.
Kirby reacts to her disobedience by arranging after-school care for her with Phyllis, the neighbor. Phyllis is a really wonderful character, one of my favorites in the book, a retired biology professor who has constructed her house so that she can live off the grid, and who spends her days going out into the forests and swamps and rivers, and taking measurements, so that she can see how the world is changing. Wanda, going along with her, learns a great deal about the natural world, and helps her with gardening, preserving, maintaining solar panels, and everything else that needs doing.
In the next big storm, a huge dam breaks, flooding the small town swiftly and completely. Kirby is swept away. After her father’s death, Wanda goes to live with Phyllis, even though her brother offers to take her to California. But Phyllis’ self-sufficient and reinforced house is one of the safest places in this new landscape.
As she grows, the civilization around her breaks down, and Florida is basically abandoned, with no more government services or businesses. The water takes over, between frequent hurricanes and a rising water table. Everyone moves north, although social structures everywhere are starting to disintegrate. There are no longer any streets, so Phyllis and Wanda travel everywhere by canoe. Phyllis has a good supply of provisions, and she grows vegetables on raised beds, and so they continue to eat. They find fresh springs for water.
When Phyllis and Wanda make a scavenging trip to an abandoned Walmart, they are followed home by Corey, the same boy who almost drowned Wanda when she was a child. He’s a young man now, and he and his father break into Phyllis’ house in the middle of the night. Wanda knows how to use a gun, and she shoots both men as they’re attacking Phyllis. Phyllis and Wanda decide that they are no longer safe there, and they pack up all the provisions they can, and burn the house (and the bodies) to the ground. Moving into a treehouse that Wanda has built, they live there for the rest of Phyllis’ life. In a beautifully and delicately written section of the book, she gradually loses her memory.
There’s another jump forward in time. Wanda is alone and has adapted to her new lifestyle in the swamp. Her ability to commune with the water helps her, but her survivalist skills are equally crucial. She sleeps during the day, when the sun is too hot for activity. Every day there are dangers, and she has to be very careful with her resources, including her own strength. She is used to hiding, and when, on a moonless night, she finds another person close by, she does all she can to evade the intruder. The other person introduces herself as Bird Dog, but she turns out to be Corey’s twin sister.
Staying invisible, Wanda tracks Bird Dog to her home, and finds she lives with a group of people. Wanda is afraid of strangers who will attack her for her resources, or just because she is strange, so she remains hidden for a long time. But gradually, she is able to let herself know Bird Dog. And then after another hurricane destroys Bird Dog’s group home, she takes all of them to her treehouse. This is the beginning of a new life for her, with Bird Dog as her partner. The novel ends with them as two old women, with a community slowly growing around them.
There should be a category of novel called “hopeful dystopia”. The first book I remember reading like this was Golden Days by Carolyn See, and it made a deep impression on me. Many of N. K. Jemisin’s great short stories also fit into this category. I appreciate it when a writer doesn’t just leave us in the dark ages, but shows some future light peeking through.
So this novel takes us through the end of the world as we know it. It begins with Frida, a very pregnant woman, newly married to Kirby, an electrical lineman with two small sons, Lucas and Flip. She’s moved to his small town in Florida, and is coping with all the changes in her life, when a hurricane threatens. Frida just lost her mother in a hurricane in Puerto Rico, so she’s especially sensitive to the atmospheric changes. Kirby doesn’t want to evacuate, so he sandbags the house, boards up the windows, and goes back to his job restoring the community’s power. Not feeling well, Frida goes to lie down, telling the boys not to leave the house. But the older son, Lucas, angry about having a stepmother, decides to disobey, and his reluctant brother follows him as they go off to explore an abandoned trailer park.
Hurricane Wanda comes, gathers strength, and lands right at this small Florida town. The writing is very sure and immersive here, as the kids find themselves trying to run home through torrential winds. When he comes home and realizes they’re gone, Kirby goes out looking for them, not realizing that his wife is now in labor. Hoping that the kids are in the shed, she goes out to check, and then can barely make it back to the house. Meanwhile, the wind carries away the smaller child, and the older one reaches the house of Phyllis, a survivalist neighbor, who contacts Kirby. Kirby makes it to Phyllis’ house and takes Lucas home, only to find Frida dying after giving birth. Her final words are that the baby should be named Wanda.
Here, the novel moves forward ten years. Lucas, now age 22, works as a lineman next to his father, and he deals with constant guilt around the death of his brother and stepmother. He finally decides to apply to college in California, although it’s hard for him to go. Wanda, at age ten, doesn’t have many friends, since her schoolmates think she’s odd. At one point, she bikes to the Edge, a dangerous and forbidden area where the sea has swallowed a beachfront community. While she’s there, some bullies from her school appear, and she is almost drowned, but finds herself in a strange communion with the sea. She feels that the sea is telling her things.
Kirby reacts to her disobedience by arranging after-school care for her with Phyllis, the neighbor. Phyllis is a really wonderful character, one of my favorites in the book, a retired biology professor who has constructed her house so that she can live off the grid, and who spends her days going out into the forests and swamps and rivers, and taking measurements, so that she can see how the world is changing. Wanda, going along with her, learns a great deal about the natural world, and helps her with gardening, preserving, maintaining solar panels, and everything else that needs doing.
In the next big storm, a huge dam breaks, flooding the small town swiftly and completely. Kirby is swept away. After her father’s death, Wanda goes to live with Phyllis, even though her brother offers to take her to California. But Phyllis’ self-sufficient and reinforced house is one of the safest places in this new landscape.
As she grows, the civilization around her breaks down, and Florida is basically abandoned, with no more government services or businesses. The water takes over, between frequent hurricanes and a rising water table. Everyone moves north, although social structures everywhere are starting to disintegrate. There are no longer any streets, so Phyllis and Wanda travel everywhere by canoe. Phyllis has a good supply of provisions, and she grows vegetables on raised beds, and so they continue to eat. They find fresh springs for water.
When Phyllis and Wanda make a scavenging trip to an abandoned Walmart, they are followed home by Corey, the same boy who almost drowned Wanda when she was a child. He’s a young man now, and he and his father break into Phyllis’ house in the middle of the night. Wanda knows how to use a gun, and she shoots both men as they’re attacking Phyllis. Phyllis and Wanda decide that they are no longer safe there, and they pack up all the provisions they can, and burn the house (and the bodies) to the ground. Moving into a treehouse that Wanda has built, they live there for the rest of Phyllis’ life. In a beautifully and delicately written section of the book, she gradually loses her memory.
There’s another jump forward in time. Wanda is alone and has adapted to her new lifestyle in the swamp. Her ability to commune with the water helps her, but her survivalist skills are equally crucial. She sleeps during the day, when the sun is too hot for activity. Every day there are dangers, and she has to be very careful with her resources, including her own strength. She is used to hiding, and when, on a moonless night, she finds another person close by, she does all she can to evade the intruder. The other person introduces herself as Bird Dog, but she turns out to be Corey’s twin sister.
Staying invisible, Wanda tracks Bird Dog to her home, and finds she lives with a group of people. Wanda is afraid of strangers who will attack her for her resources, or just because she is strange, so she remains hidden for a long time. But gradually, she is able to let herself know Bird Dog. And then after another hurricane destroys Bird Dog’s group home, she takes all of them to her treehouse. This is the beginning of a new life for her, with Bird Dog as her partner. The novel ends with them as two old women, with a community slowly growing around them.
Heavy book. My recommendation is to read the first 25%-27%. I stayed up far too late wanting to know what happened. At moments I got Where the Crawdad Sings vibes as well. Imagine an entire state shutting down. I don't mean pandemic shut down, I mean being abandoned. This could happen and was a scary thought.
Absolutely loved. Such a great story and an interesting view.
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Gorgeous, heartbreaking...someone needs to make this into a film.
An interesting read that has elements of “Where the Crawdads Sing” and “The Sea of Tranquility” (no time travel, though). Feels like an exploration of nature, risk and survival, and what happens when the world starts to drown itself. I didn’t mind the slow pace and I cared about Wanda and her family and friends. But the author made a choice in the last 15 pages that I found befuddling and illogical, and for that the book loses a star. Otherwise, this piece of literary fiction, sad and hopeful in turns, is pretty good.
Prophetic, apocalyptic, or both? Climate change is here.
I started this one and then stopped - I'm not sure if it's a DNF or a finish-later book. For some reason, I thought this was uplifting? That seems to be my bad because it is not. And the author's style of using so many adjectives feels like it's trying to hard/10 year olds don't talk (or think) like that.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes