Novella: The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

The Only Harmless Great Thing is weird and wonderful, cruel and beautiful. Can you possibly believe that two awful chapters from history — the “radium girls” and an electrocuted elephant — would fit together in one story? Author Brooke Bolander pulls off this seemingly impossible task in a new novella that almost defies description — you just need to experience it.

The narration shifts between elephant and human characters, in language that’s often hauntingly strange and beautiful.

At night, when the moon shuffles off behind the mountain and the land darkens like wetted skin, they glow. There is a story behind this. No matter how far you march, O best beloved mooncalf, the past will always drag around your ankle, a snapped shackle time cannot pry loose.

The human parts of the story are heart-breaking and outrage-inducing… but so are the elephants’ sections. As I read, the story of the radium factory workers’ treatment left me feeling furious. The involvement of elephants in the radium story is startling but makes sense in this alternate world in which humans and elephants converse via sign language, and the elephant language (Proboscidian) is taught in universities.

Then came the Atomic Elephant Hypothesis.

The Only Harmless Great Thing is a quick but powerful read, unusual and a little crazy and definitely something that will stick in my mind for quite some time. It made me angry and sad, and also made me think. Highly recommended.

But chains can be snapped, O best beloved mooncalf. Sticks can be knocked out of a Man’s clever hands. And one chain snapping may cause all the rest to trumpet and stomp and shake the trees like a rain-wind coming down the mountain, washing the gully muddy with bright lightning tusks and thunderous song.

PS – The story of Topsy, the elephant electrocuted at Coney Island, is changed and reinvented here in this novella — but yes, there was a real Topsy, and she really was put to death in 1903 by being electrocuted in front of a crowd as part of a public spectacle. It’s a horrible story that seems too outrageous to be true, but sadly, it really happened. You can read more about Topsy’s awful fate here.

PPS – Reading this novella reminded me that I picked up a copy of the non-fiction book The Radium Girls (winner of the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award for history and biography), and really need to read it!

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The details:

Title: The Only Harmless Great Thing
Author: Brooke Bolander
Publisher: Tor
Publication date: January 23, 2018
Length: 96 pages
Genre: Alternate history
Source: Purchased

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19Dec2017

Take A Peek Book Review: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little peek at what the book’s about and what I thought.

Synopsis:

(via Goodreads)

The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.

Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.

There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe.

A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

My Thoughts:

While often disturbing, this book doesn’t flesh out its dystopian vision well enough to make a true impact. The concept of evolution running backwards isn’t really explored or explained. True, the story is told through the eyes of its main character, Cedar, and she can only tell what she herself knows — but that narrow viewpoint limits the reader’s ability to grasp the outside events and understand how the world could change so dramatically in so short a time. Within mere months, pregnant women are hunted, tracked, and imprisoned, forced into reproductive centers with no choice but to bear and then lose children.

Meanwhile, Cedar’s exploration of family, roots, and faith meander and lack coherence. The book is at its best during its most harrowing sections, when Cedar is on the run or in the midst of an elaborate escape plot. Her inner monologues and writings on religion take away from the building tension.

It’s a shame, because the big-picture concept could be intriguing if we had more information on why it’s happening, or really, a better view of what actually is happening. Instead, it’s a little bit Handmaid’s Tale but without the urgency or connection of that classic. Overall, I walked away disappointed by a book I’d been so eager to read.

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The details:

Title: Future Home of the Living God
Author: Louise Erdrich
Publisher: Harper
Publication date: November 14, 2017
Length: 267 pages
Genre: Speculative/science fiction
Source: Purchased

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16May2013

Flashback Friday: The Handmaid’s Tale

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight. If you’d like to join in, here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

Other than that, the sky’s the limit! Join me, please, and let us all know: what are the books you’ve read that you always rave about? What books from your past do you wish EVERYONE would read? Pick something from five years ago, or go all the way back to the Canterbury Tales if you want. It’s Flashback Friday time!

My picks for this week’s Flashback Friday:

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

(published 1985)

From Goodreads:

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now…

Back before “dystopian” was a fiction genre (as in the enthusiastic exclamation I came across recently: “I ♥ dystopians!!”), Margaret Atwood wrote this chilling look at a remade United States, in which religion is now law and women are subjugated into the Biblical roles that the men in charge deem appropriate. With no monetary, legal, or political power, Offred is stripped of everything she once had, including a name of her own, and forced into servitude as a vessel for producing offspring.

The Handmaid’s Tale is an unforgettable look at life in a totalitarian society, in which individual rights no longer exist — including the right to one’s own body and one’s own family. It’s a frightening cautionary tale as well as a powerful piece of speculative fiction, written in Margaret Atwood’s always spectacular literary voice.

My Wishlist Wednesday book this week was the author’s upcoming book, MaddAddam, due out in September of this year. Margaret Atwood’s fiction is always different, always beautifully written, and always powerful. What are your favorite Atwood novels? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Note from your friendly Bookshelf Fantasies host: To join the Flashback Friday fun, write a blog post about a book you love (please mention Bookshelf Fantasies as the Flashback Friday host!) and share your link below. Don’t have a blog post to share? Then share your favorite oldie-but-goodie in the comments section. Jump in!