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A review by steveatwaywords
The Future by Catherine Leroux
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
The most critical comments on Leroux's The Future say that it is a difficult read, not opening itself easily to reader immersion. They are not wrong. It is extraordinarily difficult to place one's self into a world of alternate history where familiar landmarks are completely rewritten, where the future itself has erased much that we know, and where narrative slides between unreliable narrators, many of them near-feral children. So is this therefore not worth its time? If you are seeking a novel of rollicking, page-turning adventure, then yes, move along.
But careful readers find themselves looking for something familiar, then, to latch on to and fortunately, this is not too difficult, after all. This is a novel dominated by the very old and the very young, of those first to feel the effects of societal misfortune. Leroux's dystopia is a planet easing itself into death: pollutions and toxins, climate change, and long-failing governance. The older generations are left behind in squalor, and the young abandon the adults altogether to live their own made-up mythologies. All struggle through inevitable deaths: drugs, harsh winters, disease, and even tourism as the remaining wealthy pay to gawk at them in a form of "ghetto tours."
In this landscape, what hope is there? Somehow, Leroux works her characters to find answers old and even older. The strongest characters on both sides of adulthood are the novel's resilient women, thwarted and dismayed, but powering daily through their choices with compassion and determination, aging into new understandings. The earth, too, is an elusive and omnipresent character, suffering deprivation and abuse, but--through near hallucinogenic moments--guiding and offering, magically revealing, spontaneously returning. Alongside each other in the narrative, these two forces do not leave us in despair.
The book is not without its structural flaws, and I would be the first to say the entire work could stand a single revision for coherence. While its publisher and book cover point rigorously to the alternative history, for instance (one of the main reasons I picked it up along with its local recommendation), and while Leroux spends a fair space with its historical moment, she establishes no narrative or thematic reason to place her setting here. The story she is telling needs no alternative history at all; more, it is one of the reasons many readers find this a difficult read as it so powerfully erases our world map, and it further gives us reason to abandon the potent warnings the dystopian genre offers.
There are seemingly dozens of characters (I stopped counting how many children's stories are here), and managing all of their subplots is too much for readers, especially when the writer herself seems to abandon the reasons for some of the tellings: one character who gets a solid narrative section of background and motivation dies inexplicably off-stage some chapters later. Most all of them are told in first-person (even the neighborhood dog gets a turn at point of view), but for what reason does each it is difficult to fathom.
And amidst this narrative disorientation, moments of faery-like nature magic appear. We would do well not to seek its explanation, something done by fantasy readers and literalists. Miracles are elusive, after all, are just sometimes recognized far after the event for what they are. And as one world creaks toward death, The Future seems to suggest that it will be all right, after all. One foot in each space; one love in each space.
But careful readers find themselves looking for something familiar, then, to latch on to and fortunately, this is not too difficult, after all. This is a novel dominated by the very old and the very young, of those first to feel the effects of societal misfortune. Leroux's dystopia is a planet easing itself into death: pollutions and toxins, climate change, and long-failing governance. The older generations are left behind in squalor, and the young abandon the adults altogether to live their own made-up mythologies. All struggle through inevitable deaths: drugs, harsh winters, disease, and even tourism as the remaining wealthy pay to gawk at them in a form of "ghetto tours."
In this landscape, what hope is there? Somehow, Leroux works her characters to find answers old and even older. The strongest characters on both sides of adulthood are the novel's resilient women, thwarted and dismayed, but powering daily through their choices with compassion and determination, aging into new understandings. The earth, too, is an elusive and omnipresent character, suffering deprivation and abuse, but--through near hallucinogenic moments--guiding and offering, magically revealing, spontaneously returning. Alongside each other in the narrative, these two forces do not leave us in despair.
The book is not without its structural flaws, and I would be the first to say the entire work could stand a single revision for coherence. While its publisher and book cover point rigorously to the alternative history, for instance (one of the main reasons I picked it up along with its local recommendation), and while Leroux spends a fair space with its historical moment, she establishes no narrative or thematic reason to place her setting here. The story she is telling needs no alternative history at all; more, it is one of the reasons many readers find this a difficult read as it so powerfully erases our world map, and it further gives us reason to abandon the potent warnings the dystopian genre offers.
There are seemingly dozens of characters (I stopped counting how many children's stories are here), and managing all of their subplots is too much for readers, especially when the writer herself seems to abandon the reasons for some of the tellings: one character who gets a solid narrative section of background and motivation dies inexplicably off-stage some chapters later. Most all of them are told in first-person (even the neighborhood dog gets a turn at point of view), but for what reason does each it is difficult to fathom.
And amidst this narrative disorientation, moments of faery-like nature magic appear. We would do well not to seek its explanation, something done by fantasy readers and literalists. Miracles are elusive, after all, are just sometimes recognized far after the event for what they are. And as one world creaks toward death, The Future seems to suggest that it will be all right, after all. One foot in each space; one love in each space.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief and Death
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Murder, Medical content, Mental illness, Addiction, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, and Confinement