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thisdarkmaterial 's review for:
Future Home of the Living God
by Louise Erdrich
An absolute slog to finish—I was skimming as quickly as I could by the end to just get it over with.
Sometimes, inadequate substitutes are referred to as "the poor man's ___". Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God isn't the poor man's Handmaid's Tale or Brave New World...it's the broke man's version of those novels. The unique opening premise—that evolution has halted or reversed, affecting all life on Earth including future human births—goes completely unexplored beyond a few, fleeting references to strange animals and painful labor. What instead transpires is an unresolved identity quest and a tonally dissonant mix of HT and Children of Men. There exists a wide gulf between an author's refusal to hold her reader's hand and the use of ambiguity to cover up an under-developed narrative; Ms. Erdrich remains firmly entrenched on the losing side of that divide. Only the initial premise recommends this book, and given her failure to develop it beyond a fledgling idea, I can't even use that as an excuse to give Future Home a try. This was a great disappointment on all fronts.
Sometimes, inadequate substitutes are referred to as "the poor man's ___". Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God isn't the poor man's Handmaid's Tale or Brave New World...it's the broke man's version of those novels. The unique opening premise—that evolution has halted or reversed, affecting all life on Earth including future human births—goes completely unexplored beyond a few, fleeting references to strange animals and painful labor. What instead transpires is an unresolved identity quest and a tonally dissonant mix of HT and Children of Men. There exists a wide gulf between an author's refusal to hold her reader's hand and the use of ambiguity to cover up an under-developed narrative; Ms. Erdrich remains firmly entrenched on the losing side of that divide. Only the initial premise recommends this book, and given her failure to develop it beyond a fledgling idea, I can't even use that as an excuse to give Future Home a try. This was a great disappointment on all fronts.