Author: Emily St. John Mandel

This is a post-apocalyptic book done differently and done well. The nature of speculative fiction is to wander into territory that the stratus of polite society chooses to ignore, but so much of it isn’t handled with care.

The atmosphere of this book is dark, eerie and slow moving with a gentle prose and compelling story intertwined with each other throughout.

In other words—it’s beautifully written.

St. John Mandel took the time to really explore the human condition directly after a complete societal collapse. Rather than the usual, “Society collapsed and everything went to hell!” motif, it veers toward a, “Oh, I guess this is what people would do.”

Hopefully we never have to live through an event where we find out for sure, but there are no guarantees in life.

Beneath the progression of what people are doing, and what they were doing up to the point of societal collapse, there is also an incredible depth of peering into the human condition. It speaks to the individual on who they are, how they are broken and where they look for redemption.

Perhaps I’m reading too far into it, but I see it as the struggle to find meaning within ourselves in a broken world. Of course, I’m projecting, but when an author can bring someone to that point, they’ve done more than just entertain a reader: they’ve opened the reader up to themselves.

Not sure where this recommendation came from originally, but very glad I picked it up.