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Family Solstice by Kate Maruyama is a challenging book about inequality, privilege, sacrifice, and the relative comforts and horrors of benefitting from systemic injustice...with some cosmic horror thrown in. It's hard to give a synopsis of this short volume without spoiling it. Every Solstice one member of Shae's family must go into the basement of the family home to fight...something. I enjoyed this book. I was really intrigued by trying to figure out what was going on throughout the book. This is a very challenging book on many levels. I think most of us can probably identify with one or more characters in this story as we recognize the ways in which our world is unjust and how we personally, directly or indirectly, intersect with that inequality and what we do or do not do about it. Although fantastical and horrific, this book raises serious questions about how society may be engineered to benefit some rather than all, and how it always has been. What sacrifices are we willing to make to either perpetuate or dismantle systemic inequality? Is it even possible to overcome injustice? That's a lot of very deep questions for such a short book to tackle. While I would maintain that Maruyama does not provide us with clear cut answers, her ability to make me think, even to the point of discomfort, about these questions is commendable. While I would have liked to have known more about...what was in the basement...I nevertheless admire this book for how much it packed into such a short page count. 4.5 stars.
