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Like Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower this is an intensely believable dystopia with anxiety-inducing on-the-run survivalism.
There were a few off points. I wish Dimaline didn't include the rivalry between the protagonist and a later character or at least had Frenchie apologise and own up to lashing out in such stereotypical jealousy/possessiveness before Rose lets him off the hook. Can we imagine any future population without macho posturing or could we finally model better ways to tackle insecurity?
It's an absolute page-turner though, and it made me cry. It's hopeful and it's invigorating in centring First Nations and Métis peoples.
Reading about an ant painstakingly tracing each character on a gravestone signals the early slog. The flatness of the first two parts cannot be pinned entirely on the alternate translator either. The details are dull and offensive. Women squeal and fuss, and when they're overeducated they calcify. The ones with speaking parts admit that the protagonist is better at their work than they are, or are dismissed as small with no air of authority, or remain nameless and/or are dispatched by violence, or are pure fantasy, insistently innocent and childlike. Colonisers are labelled art-preservingly advanced and the colonised backwards. If you can wade through the carrying over of misogyny and non-Trisolaran imperialism in Liu's vision, there are some rewards in part three (the teardrop and the cosmic fight for resources are thrilling), still diluted by legitimising a character's manipulation by threat of suicide, a despair orgy, and rumination-attempts on the power of love.
The first third was easily engrossing. It was refreshing to learn about the history of Ikuno and about the Korean diaspora in Japan. The formula of family sagas is difficult to escape though. The older generations stoically live through readable hardship, while the younger generation is spoiled and ungrateful. I was actually expecting the youngest generation here to end up in America and to experience new discriminations and ones that are inescapable being unable to pass amongst the reigning racial supremacists. But the United States is maintained as a distant promised land. The novel holds the ideology too of work and wealth as virtue with no compunctions for example about swindling an old lady out of her home—and I nearly resented having to read through a banker bro poker game. Why are all the protagonists of the younger generation men? Both the narrator and the characters examine the structures of racism but none confront the misogyny, and the women who are granted long lives surrounded by devoted family members accept their lot as one to suffer—confines that are vocalised eight times across 470 pages.
Incidentally, if Phoebe and her disapproval of aspects of Japan were to be written more roundedly, the most salient affliction of living in Japan as a woman and expat is the omnipresence of pickup artist bullshittery and anti-feminist pageantry.
The threads of credibility snap by the car crash, with too many thumbs on the scale of writing a flawed protagonist. The parents are also loaded with a lifetime of grave miscalculations including ultimately ghosting on their son, wilfully choking in the mire of not communicating. The story is engaging when it's about the experiences of second generation Asian Americans, about suicide, guilt, self-doubt, and the magnifications and distortions of being a teenager. But Kelly Loy Gilbert juggles too much, mixes in crime and mystery, and tiptoes around queer sexuality. In the lone paragraph not fumbling with half-expressed desire, she has Mr. X describe Danny's identity as ‘funny'. Also, having your flossing habits faulted is listed as an example of a beleaguered life that might contribute to exacting impossible standards from your children?
A peripheral impression from this vital autobiography is of Clemantine's sister Claire not seeing her as a full person in their experiences together, and how most adults don't treat children with recognition, of having the universal capacity for pain and insecurity and dreams, and as equally building memories and more vulnerably developing selfhood.
3.5 The parts that are memoir are effortlessly readable. Franchesca is open and self-deprecating about the lifelong process of learning. The activist content is as titled, mostly introductory. There are some odd moments, regarding possible obsessions. Overall, it's relatable, light-hearted, and revealingly bold.
Kerala and nearly all of the characters expand into three dimensions in a story that weaves between past and present and addresses class and patriarchal structures, colonialism, family dysfunction, and the beats of a butterfly's wing. It's cluttered however with poetic turns of phrase that founder and repeat and grow overshadowly wearisome.
3.5 I liked the big picture of the story and the identities of the characters—women of colour, neuroatypical, queer, non-maternal. The pacing was lurching, however, with some episodes feeling out of place, others unfinished, while others still went on too long, like with the multiple flashbacks of misogynist role play. It's a world that replicates our same oppressions without authorial resolve, character actions are erratic, and there's just a general jumble through to a hurried conclusion. My interest ended well before then, with the successful detective work, but that was also the book's strength, as a satisfying sci-fi mystery.
