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A review by dherzey
Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner
4.0
This is a confusing book at the start (I got the summary of the book which doesn't really say anything). I was lost and didn't know or understand what's up. It seems like everything is shrouded in a certain allusion and it didn't help that the timeline of the narrative skips between the past and present. But I was captivated. The world where Standish lives is painted simply by showing us what it is and how it is. It is a cruel, fascist regime very much like a world run-down by Nazis -- if they ever won. The only peace Standish could have is inside his mind, through dreams of a world freer than his reality.
I love how the story doesn't go around in details and actually make it work. The main character's voice is honest and frank, tells you exactly what he sees, plainly tells you how it is. Standish Treadwell is dyslexic and a dreamer but probably braver and smarter than what people tells him to be. The ending seems like a crazy, very Standish idea, an ideal plan that is more probable to fail than work. Furthermore, this novel didn't really limit itself in showing how a world could be brutal even through the eyes of one of its most innocent witnesses. Yet I am captivated in every bit of it and I like how even at the end, there is always this dream, this hope of something better and golden that cannot be erased on someone like Standish -- the idealists, the dreamers. It may be weak and delusional but there is strength in there too. There is a courage in daring to imagine better places despite reality forcing its way through them. Crushing, butchering and tainting colorless all imagination.
Indeed, an extraordinarily narrated tale which is both bleak and hopeful.
Some favorite passages:
I love how the story doesn't go around in details and actually make it work. The main character's voice is honest and frank, tells you exactly what he sees, plainly tells you how it is. Standish Treadwell is dyslexic and a dreamer but probably braver and smarter than what people tells him to be. The ending seems like a crazy, very Standish idea, an ideal plan that is more probable to fail than work. Furthermore, this novel didn't really limit itself in showing how a world could be brutal even through the eyes of one of its most innocent witnesses. Yet I am captivated in every bit of it and I like how even at the end, there is always this dream, this hope of something better and golden that cannot be erased on someone like Standish -- the idealists, the dreamers. It may be weak and delusional but there is strength in there too. There is a courage in daring to imagine better places despite reality forcing its way through them. Crushing, butchering and tainting colorless all imagination.
Indeed, an extraordinarily narrated tale which is both bleak and hopeful.
Some favorite passages:
"It had struck me then that the world was full of holes, holes which you could fall into, never to be seen again. I couldn't understand the difference between disappearance and death. Both seemed the same to me, both left holes. Holes in your heart. Holes in you life. It wasn't hard to see how many holes there were. You could tell when there was another one. The lights would switched off in the house, then it was either blown up or pulled down."
_____
"Numbers mattered to Gramps. Seven dead rats was something the king of rats would respect. Shoot one rat and all this relatives will come looking for you; shoot seven and they understand you mean business."
_____
"That summer, in the wilderness of crumbling bricks and mortar, white roses had appeared in those derelict suburbs. Gramps said that if man was mad enough to destroy itself, at least the rats and cockroaches would have front-row seats, be able to enjoy the sight of Mother Nature reclaiming the earth."