Evolution has stopped, says a talk-show host. In fact it may be going backward! If it is true that every particle that I can see and not see, and all that is living and perhaps unliving too, is trimming its sails and coming about and heading back to port, what does that mean? … Perhaps all of creation from the coddling moth to the elephant was just a grandly detailed thought that God was engrossed in elaborating upon, when suddenly God fell asleep. We are an idea then. Maybe God has decided that we are not an idea worth thinking anymore.
And later:We agree that this whole development is a bitter triumph for secularism. Creationism bites the dust, big time … If evolution has reversed we will never know why, any more than we can know why it began.
Small events epitomise these changes. At one point Cedar thinks she sees a sabre-toothed tiger in a tree, in another she spots a winged lizard creature that might be an archaeopteryx. But this is not a science fiction novel, interested in the science behind this, and these physical changes to the world are barely explored. Like many of the recent literary dystopias, Erdrich’s novel is more focussed on the agency of women and the centrality of procreation and pregnancy in the way they are treated by society. For recent examples you do not have to go any further than Margaret Atwood’s currently resurgent The Handmaid’s Tale and PD James’s Children of Men. In both of those cases, widespread infertility has detrimentally impacted on society and particularly on women. It is enough to know that in Erdrich’s world pregnant women are being rounded up and brought to detention centres to have their babies. While this is a reaction to the global crisis, it is never really clear what happens to the babies and what the point of all of this is. It is almost as if this aspect of the new regime is not relevant. What is relevant is the way in which women, particularly pregnant women, are treated. In one scene Cedar witnesses a pregnant woman being arrested in a mall parking lot while her family tries to intervene. In another she hears of officers sent to hunt down pregnant women. Interestingly, it is not only ‘the authorities’ picking up pregnant women but also, at another point, a group of religious extremists. On a completely different level, putting the dystopia aside, this is a novel about pregnancy itself. Cedar narrates the novel as diary entries to her unborn child. A fair amount of the narrative is dedicated to her recounting the progression of her foetus:Little hominid, you are twenty-one weeks old. Five months. I have already felt you move. Your bones are hardening, your brain is hooked up to stereo – your ears. So you can hear me, you can hear my voice.
And in protecting herself and her unborn child, she does things that she would never have imagined. While living with the guilt of those actions, the reason for them helps her to carry on. Another recent dystopian novel with this feel is Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From. In that book also, the crisis itself is left fairly vague. A baby is born at the beginning of a disaster but the narrative is as much concerned with the newborn’s development over the following year or two as with how her mother is responding to the world around her. It is perhaps a little reductionist to categorise types of dystopian novels. While Future Home of the Living God may be described as ‘literary’, it takes many of its cues from the more mainstream genre pool of dystopian fiction. There are shady government agents; there is a jail break, a run for the Canadian border. And, despite being a little light on detail, Future Home of the Living God successfully joins a long tradition of novels that explore current issues through a cracked, extreme reflection of our own world. Louise Erdrich Future Home of the Living God Hachette 2017 PB $29.99 Robert Goodman is an institutionalised public servant and obsessive reader, who won a science fiction short-story competition very early in his career but has found reviewing a better outlet for his skills. He was a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards for eight years and reviews for a number of other publications including Aurealis and the Australian Public Sector News – see his website: www.pilebythebed.com You can buy this book from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here. To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here.Tags: dystopian fiction, Louise | Erdrich, Margaret | Atwood, Megan | Hunter, PD James, SFF
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