Author: Amy Casey

The Circle by Dave Eggers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Circle is an uncanny parable for our times, and it leaves a disturbing metallic taste as well as a sense of bewildered confusion. Eggers’ compulsively readable novel provides much food for thought, even while skimping on character substance. The main character, Mae, is endlessly naive and effortlessly manipulated, not to mention fairly soulless. Most of the characters are similarly empty, or act in erratic, senseless ways. I wonder if Eggers intended them to be so vacuous… maybe it’s a commentary on the type of people created by a society that is obsessively driven by views, likes, and comments. I’m glad I read this novel–despite its flaws in craft, it offers a dystopian vision that deserves consideration. What happens when we no longer put a value on our personal privacy, on our freedom from being plugged into faux-social participation at all hours, on our division between our personal and work lives? What happens when you distill human beings into just so much information that can be bought, sold, and harnessed? If you want to see these scary, scary things… read The Circle. But you can take comfort in the fact that real people with free will would never behave like the majority of these characters do. At least, I have to hope so.

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The Ship by Antonia Honeywell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I absolutely inhaled Antonia Honeywell’s The Ship, reading it in just two days. All its strength comes from its disturbing premise, which did fascinate and disturb me. The enclosed society of this ark-like ship has promises that are unnervingly simple and sweet–the reader tears along with the main character through the first half, working furiously to uncover the secrets of the cult. Ultimately though, once the mysteries are solved, there’s not a ton of substance to give the book any lasting power beyond the turning of the final page. It’s less of a story, and more of a ride. A cool ride! But a temporary thrill. The characters, especially our heroine, are simple at best and off-putting at worst. I wish Lalla would have been pushed way further in her capacity to understand, manipulate, and resist her surroundings–she was so inert as to be frustrating. However, the ending was right, and that counts for something.

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Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jeff Vandermeer’s Borne astounds. It’s bizarre, unsettling, gentle, insane, violent, and intimate all at once. The best survival stories help us question which shreds of humanity are the most vital to hold on to, and remind us of how staggeringly important the simplest things can be, especially when they fall out of reach. Borne does all this and more, wheeling us through Vandermeer’s lushly painted, poisoned dystopian landscape, introducing us eye to eye to a newly-sentient organism learning to understand itself, the war-torn scavenger who becomes his mother, and the harrowed, hollow dealer/lover/mad scientist who fortifies their home. Did I mention that the city is ruled over by a merciless, genetically engineered, three-stories-tall grizzly bear deity that can fly? It sounds absolutely mental, doesn’t it? I’m here to assure you that it is, in the very best of ways. If you’re willing to give it a go, Borne will hold your heart just on the edge of breaking, page by page, until its fantastic final note.

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