I’ve had The Circle by Dave Eggers on my TBR stack for eons and I was interested to see how it has ‘aged’. It was published in 2013 – did Eggers intend it as satire? A cautionary tale? Who knows (although it’s no secret that Eggers isn’t a fan of the way technology and the Internet is infiltrating society), but it is horrifying how many of the ‘futuristic’ and seemingly unlikely technologies and scenarios that Eggers furnishes this future world with, actually now exist. Continue reading
Tag Archives: dystopian
#GermanLitMonth and #NOVNOV – The Bureau of Past Management by Iris Hanika
I accept that everyone is focused on next year’s reading challenges but I have one last bit of unfinished #GermanLitMonth and #NovNov business to attend to.
I’m going to get straight to why Iris Hanika’s The Bureau of Past Management is such an interesting book – it captures so much of the ‘guilt’ that I have observed in German people my age. A few qualifiers – firstly, people my age did not live through the Holocaust. Secondly, I use the word ‘guilt’ hesitantly because it is far more complex than that. It’s sadness, a need for atonement, it’s fear, it’s shame, feeling accountable, and a sense of needing to repair something that is not their ‘doing’.
Most of the nation’s living citizens were not yet born when the crime happened… All the same, the monstrosity of their forebears’ crime weighed heavily on them, and when they approached this monstrosity, they expected nothing but to unmask their forebears and find criminals. They proceeded without hindrance – it was a continuous loop. The crime was so large.
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
I was at the beginning-ish part of Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy – far enough in to have a handle on the main players and an idea of where McConaghy was taking me – so I absolutely did not expect a plot-twist, dropped in so delicately that had I been skim-reading, I would have missed it. Wow.
And then there was another one. I was anticipating a gripping read. Continue reading
Mania by Lionel Shriver
For years, Lionel Shriver has poked the ‘political-correctness-bear’. In her latest novel, Mania, she does more than poke it – she opens the cage and goes into battle.
Mania is set in a re-imagined present and future, where the Mental Parity Movement has taken hold. It’s a time of ‘intellectual egalitarianism’ – everyone is equally clever, and discrimination based on intelligence is ‘the last great civil rights fight’. As such, words such as ‘stupid’ and ‘dumb’ are illegal (children are expelled for saying the S-word and encouraged to report parents for using it). Continue reading
My Latest Listens
After Story by Larissa Behrendt Continue reading
My Latest Listens
The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller Continue reading
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
Can a book be historical and dystopian at the same time? Yes, it can. Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (trans. by Angela Rodel) is nothing short of mind-boggling, recreating twentieth century history, alongside an imagined future, where we have the capacity to choose which decade from the past we live in.
The premise of Time Shelter is relatively simple – an ‘enigmatic flâneur’ named Gaustine opens a ‘clinic for the past’ as a way of treating Alzheimer’s – each floor of the clinic reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time to a period that felt safe and familiar.
…for us the past is the past, and even when we step into it, we know that the exit to the present is open, we can come back with ease. For those who have lost their memories, this door has slammed shut once and for all. For them, the present is a foreign country, while the past is their homeland. The only thing we can do is create a space that is in sync with their internal time. Continue reading
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
I spent the first half of Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This thinking “What…?” (similar reading experience to Fun Camp by Gabe Durham). And at some point I updated my progress on Goodreads by noting that I didn’t think I was cool enough for this book… because what the hell was going on? And then SUDDENLY it shifts gear, and the first part of the book sits in stark contrast to the second.
Something in the back of her head hurt. It was her new class consciousness. Continue reading
The Mother Fault by Kate Mildenhall
Is there a sub-genre of dystopian fiction called ‘it-could-happen-within-a-decade-dsytopian-and-that’s-why-it’s-terrifying’? If so, it’s my favourite sub-genre. And we can file The Mother Fault by Kate Mildenhall there.
Without revealing too much of the story, it’s about a woman named Mim, whose husband Ben is missing. Everyone wants to find Ben, particularly The Department (the all-seeing government body who has fitted the entire population with a universal tracking chip in the palm of their hand to keep them ‘safe’). When Ben can’t be tracked, Mim is questioned; made to surrender her passport and those of their children, Essie and Sam; and is threatened with being taken into ‘care’ at the notorious BestLife (which is essentially a branded detention centre). Mim goes on a risky quest to find Ben. Continue reading
Sample Saturday – newish releases
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week, all three are recent releases that have crossed my radar. Continue reading