Recs and reviews
Finally weaning off my YA dystopia binge, because for all the rave that's going on about the YA market and its powers of innovation, pickings have been rather slim on that front ever since Scott Westerfeld's Uglies.
The two novels I read that dealt with biopolitics, sex and reproduction framed by teen preganancy, Wither and Bumped by Lauren DeStefano and Megan McCafferty, respectively, are shocking in their conservatism and reactionary treatment of women. Both develop "dystopic" scenarios of the future, where reproductive ability becomes a luxury good and thus women's, especially young womens' bodies become a commodity, but both wallow in the fantasy of the "bird in a golden cage"; i.e you are forced/coerced to have sex, get married, bear children but you get all the luxuries you ever wanted; you have your occasional doubts but you arrange yourself with the system, without discussing this in the narrative like a dog lazily rolling around in a puddle of dirty rainwater, excuse my bad metaphors, these novels don't merit better. Whither in particular sacrifices inner logic, coherency and plausibility of worldbuilding to finally lock its protagonist up in a villa, freedom can of course only be achieved by romantically falling in love with a serving boy (uuuh, class issues!). Bumped does marginally better on the worldbuilding front, but the world, which should be chilling (parents commodifying their daughters' body and bidding futures/options on their ovaries) comes across as hilarious because the writing is wooden, the characters are flat and the conclusion - true, heterosexual love or religious fundamentalism will ease your self-doubts - left a bad taste in my mouth.
Neal Shusterman's Unwind deserves to be mentioned because of its bad writing, unsympathetic characters and wacky worldbuilding; abortion is forbidden, but unwanted teenagers are allowed to be disassembled and their bodyparts sold by the age of 16, but it's more teenage idfic - like this is - than any of the others, so it did make me smile occasionally, author knows his audience.
I don't know why I picked up The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley, but I'm glad I did. Corinna Stonewall is a Folk Keeper, doesn't like people (a lot) but enough not to let them die. This is a sharp first person narrative where the brutal world we enter is not explained but perceived through Corinna's journal, which gives us access to gems like:
"The Folk consumed:
All the smoked meat.
A smallish bit of Corinna Stonewall.
But I am one of the lucky ones."
The Folk Keeper is engrossing in its bleakness and authorial discipline - to create such a detailed world and reveal so little takes skill. I highly recommend it.
Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go is the winner of the Guardian's Children Fiction Prize and tells the story of a telepathic planet where all men are hearing the Noise, ie each others' thoughts and are, well, quite mad. We follow Todd, the last boy of Prentisstown on his journey to become a man in the literal and figurative sense, and that includes: dealing with the lies of his fathers, start a civil war, murder, bonding with his dog, girls. I don't want to say too much about this one except that it's one of the best transliteration and treatment of telepathy I've seen in a work of fiction, and everybody who writes/likes telepaths should read it, asap. The rest should read it for worldbuilding and plot, if dystopias are your thing.
And that's it! I wanted to read another one or two today, but since we're going up to my partner's family's farm now I don't think I'll make it.
This entry was originally posted at http://lab.dreamwidth.org/48202.html. Feel free to comment in either of those places, but I mostly hang out on DW.
The two novels I read that dealt with biopolitics, sex and reproduction framed by teen preganancy, Wither and Bumped by Lauren DeStefano and Megan McCafferty, respectively, are shocking in their conservatism and reactionary treatment of women. Both develop "dystopic" scenarios of the future, where reproductive ability becomes a luxury good and thus women's, especially young womens' bodies become a commodity, but both wallow in the fantasy of the "bird in a golden cage"; i.e you are forced/coerced to have sex, get married, bear children but you get all the luxuries you ever wanted; you have your occasional doubts but you arrange yourself with the system, without discussing this in the narrative like a dog lazily rolling around in a puddle of dirty rainwater, excuse my bad metaphors, these novels don't merit better. Whither in particular sacrifices inner logic, coherency and plausibility of worldbuilding to finally lock its protagonist up in a villa, freedom can of course only be achieved by romantically falling in love with a serving boy (uuuh, class issues!). Bumped does marginally better on the worldbuilding front, but the world, which should be chilling (parents commodifying their daughters' body and bidding futures/options on their ovaries) comes across as hilarious because the writing is wooden, the characters are flat and the conclusion - true, heterosexual love or religious fundamentalism will ease your self-doubts - left a bad taste in my mouth.
Neal Shusterman's Unwind deserves to be mentioned because of its bad writing, unsympathetic characters and wacky worldbuilding; abortion is forbidden, but unwanted teenagers are allowed to be disassembled and their bodyparts sold by the age of 16, but it's more teenage idfic - like this is - than any of the others, so it did make me smile occasionally, author knows his audience.
I don't know why I picked up The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley, but I'm glad I did. Corinna Stonewall is a Folk Keeper, doesn't like people (a lot) but enough not to let them die. This is a sharp first person narrative where the brutal world we enter is not explained but perceived through Corinna's journal, which gives us access to gems like:
"The Folk consumed:
All the smoked meat.
A smallish bit of Corinna Stonewall.
But I am one of the lucky ones."
The Folk Keeper is engrossing in its bleakness and authorial discipline - to create such a detailed world and reveal so little takes skill. I highly recommend it.
Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go is the winner of the Guardian's Children Fiction Prize and tells the story of a telepathic planet where all men are hearing the Noise, ie each others' thoughts and are, well, quite mad. We follow Todd, the last boy of Prentisstown on his journey to become a man in the literal and figurative sense, and that includes: dealing with the lies of his fathers, start a civil war, murder, bonding with his dog, girls. I don't want to say too much about this one except that it's one of the best transliteration and treatment of telepathy I've seen in a work of fiction, and everybody who writes/likes telepaths should read it, asap. The rest should read it for worldbuilding and plot, if dystopias are your thing.
And that's it! I wanted to read another one or two today, but since we're going up to my partner's family's farm now I don't think I'll make it.
This entry was originally posted at http://lab.dreamwidth.org/48202.html. Feel free to comment in either of those places, but I mostly hang out on DW.