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A review by lpm100
The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer
5.0
5.0 out of 5 stars African Dystopian Fiction. (A parent's review.)
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2018
Verified Purchase
Here is another installment in the list of books that I am reading in order to build a library for my sons so that they can have a good selection when they are of age whose contents I have already checked.
This book reminds me of a lot of many others that I've read.
1. The House of the Scorpion
2. The Giver (Giver Quartet)
3. 1984 (Signet Classics)
It is/ these are dystopian, but the thing that makes it different to so many other dystopian books is that the background/ setting is Africa. (It's pretty novel when you think about it. Africa is such an ignored place that if a person wanted to write almost anything centered there, then they're going into a field that is pretty wide open.)
Farmer has written dystopian fiction before, but her other book ( The House of the Scorpion ) centered in the Americas and this one centers in Africa.
There are a lot of themes that can be discussed with a child of moderate intelligence.
a. Oversheltered children.
b. Children having the best brought out of them.
c. There are good people in all races. (The She Elephant was the queen of a land of swamp people, but she was nice in her own way. The mother of the Praise Singer was a not so good white person but the Praise Singer himself was a good person.)
d. Environmental degradation
e. Energy scarcity. (There was an "energy crisis of the 21st century" mentioned in the book.)
f. Technology and its misuses.
g. Wealth gaps within a country. (The differences here were just astounding.)
There are a lot of interesting themes that are a bit uncomfortable, and doubly so because these bad things are associated with black people. (My kids are half black.)
a. Military junta governments (The father is a general and his children don't live in the same poverty as the vlei people.)
b. African strongmen (Some aspects of the "soft power" of The General are highlighted.)
c. African state-sponsored corruption (Gondwanna in the book is a stand-in for Sudan, and the author tells us as much in the notes to the book. It's like she is saying that if Sudan wasn't the corrupt agent, then there would just be another state that was doing the same thing.)
d. Tribal warfare/ Tribalism. (People are from "The English tribe" or "The Portuguese Tribe.")
e. The General Immutability of African Culture. (Things that we see today and so the author seems to be trying to tell us that things *will be* that way into the future)
The prose is clean (and the author goes a long way to not have any profanity in the text.) She has a wonderful imagination-- although I think she did a bit better in "House of Scorpions."
Verdict: Worth the time. Worth the price. Strongly recommended. (But if you are to only read one Nancy Farmer book, then "House of the Scorpion" would be even better.)
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2018
Verified Purchase
Here is another installment in the list of books that I am reading in order to build a library for my sons so that they can have a good selection when they are of age whose contents I have already checked.
This book reminds me of a lot of many others that I've read.
1. The House of the Scorpion
2. The Giver (Giver Quartet)
3. 1984 (Signet Classics)
It is/ these are dystopian, but the thing that makes it different to so many other dystopian books is that the background/ setting is Africa. (It's pretty novel when you think about it. Africa is such an ignored place that if a person wanted to write almost anything centered there, then they're going into a field that is pretty wide open.)
Farmer has written dystopian fiction before, but her other book ( The House of the Scorpion ) centered in the Americas and this one centers in Africa.
There are a lot of themes that can be discussed with a child of moderate intelligence.
a. Oversheltered children.
b. Children having the best brought out of them.
c. There are good people in all races. (The She Elephant was the queen of a land of swamp people, but she was nice in her own way. The mother of the Praise Singer was a not so good white person but the Praise Singer himself was a good person.)
d. Environmental degradation
e. Energy scarcity. (There was an "energy crisis of the 21st century" mentioned in the book.)
f. Technology and its misuses.
g. Wealth gaps within a country. (The differences here were just astounding.)
There are a lot of interesting themes that are a bit uncomfortable, and doubly so because these bad things are associated with black people. (My kids are half black.)
a. Military junta governments (The father is a general and his children don't live in the same poverty as the vlei people.)
b. African strongmen (Some aspects of the "soft power" of The General are highlighted.)
c. African state-sponsored corruption (Gondwanna in the book is a stand-in for Sudan, and the author tells us as much in the notes to the book. It's like she is saying that if Sudan wasn't the corrupt agent, then there would just be another state that was doing the same thing.)
d. Tribal warfare/ Tribalism. (People are from "The English tribe" or "The Portuguese Tribe.")
e. The General Immutability of African Culture. (Things that we see today and so the author seems to be trying to tell us that things *will be* that way into the future)
The prose is clean (and the author goes a long way to not have any profanity in the text.) She has a wonderful imagination-- although I think she did a bit better in "House of Scorpions."
Verdict: Worth the time. Worth the price. Strongly recommended. (But if you are to only read one Nancy Farmer book, then "House of the Scorpion" would be even better.)