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thehannahwilkinson 's review for:
Afterland
by Lauren Beukes
Throw it on the fire. That’s the review.
I jest, I jest… but honestly this book made me kinda hate reading and for that, I hate it. I struggled so much to finish this that I almost DNF’d it, it’s only because of my insanely stubborn streak that I persevered, so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.
I had SUCH high hopes for this, it’s dystopia, featuring a mother and son (who shared my littlest’s name, Miles), and I loved the adaptation of The Shining Girls so I thought I couldn’t go wrong with this. The premise sounded so interesting, in a dystopian 2023 a virus has all but wiped out the male species, those lucky few with the xy chromosomes who HAVE survived are precious. Precious to the scientists who are searching for a cure and precious to the women left behind. Cole and her son (surviving so far) are trying to escape the U.S. and get back to their native South Africa. It’s at its heart a story of survival, and the lengths a mother will go to to protect her son. So far so good. I wanted it to be great. It could have been great.
BUT, the author seemed to have spent the 6 years between this book and her previous one writing down jokes and portmanteaus she thought up, and, rather than figure out whether they brought anything to the story, just shoe-horned them in wherever. They were often not funny, kind of cringey and felt like inside jokes that I didn’t really want to be a part of.
THEN (and maybe this is because I am a mother of teenage sons) there was a reeeeaaaalllyy weird thread that ran through the book about Miles discovering his body and his sexuality, in quite a graphic way at times. He’s eleven. Now, I’m in no way a prude, I support sex- education and open conversations about those topics, in an appropriate time and place and I do think that young adult books are an amazing way to encourage those open conversations. This, to my knowledge is not a young adult book, so the whole thing just felt a little bit grubby and uncomfortable.
So that’s that. In the end I hated the book so much that I didn’t care whether or not Cole survived.
I jest, I jest… but honestly this book made me kinda hate reading and for that, I hate it. I struggled so much to finish this that I almost DNF’d it, it’s only because of my insanely stubborn streak that I persevered, so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.
I had SUCH high hopes for this, it’s dystopia, featuring a mother and son (who shared my littlest’s name, Miles), and I loved the adaptation of The Shining Girls so I thought I couldn’t go wrong with this. The premise sounded so interesting, in a dystopian 2023 a virus has all but wiped out the male species, those lucky few with the xy chromosomes who HAVE survived are precious. Precious to the scientists who are searching for a cure and precious to the women left behind. Cole and her son (surviving so far) are trying to escape the U.S. and get back to their native South Africa. It’s at its heart a story of survival, and the lengths a mother will go to to protect her son. So far so good. I wanted it to be great. It could have been great.
BUT, the author seemed to have spent the 6 years between this book and her previous one writing down jokes and portmanteaus she thought up, and, rather than figure out whether they brought anything to the story, just shoe-horned them in wherever. They were often not funny, kind of cringey and felt like inside jokes that I didn’t really want to be a part of.
THEN (and maybe this is because I am a mother of teenage sons) there was a reeeeaaaalllyy weird thread that ran through the book about Miles discovering his body and his sexuality, in quite a graphic way at times. He’s eleven. Now, I’m in no way a prude, I support sex- education and open conversations about those topics, in an appropriate time and place and I do think that young adult books are an amazing way to encourage those open conversations. This, to my knowledge is not a young adult book, so the whole thing just felt a little bit grubby and uncomfortable.
So that’s that. In the end I hated the book so much that I didn’t care whether or not Cole survived.