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The New World
By Chris Adrian; Eli Horowitz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Hardcover, 9780374221812, May 2015, 224pp.

The Short of It:

A strange, surreal story about love and marriage.

The Rest of It:

From Indiebound:

The New World” is the story of a marriage. Dr. Jane Cotton is a pediatric surgeon; her husband, Jim, is a humanist chaplain. They are about to celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary when Jim suddenly collapses and dies. When Jane arrives at the hospital, she is horrified to find that her husband’s head has been removed from his body. Only then does she discover that he secretly enrolled with a shadowy cryogenics company called Polaris.

Goodness.

What did I just read?

I’ve been wanting to read this book for months now. On Twitter, Care mentioned the iTunes app that was created for the book which of course made me decide on the spot to read it with her. I did not purchase the app myself. Instead, I read the Kindle book but it was one of the strangest reading experiences I’ve had and I’ve read Murakami!

Things happen. Jim’s revitalized self in the future spends a great deal of time hanging on to memories from the past. Mostly, of his wife, Jane. Even though Jane was not a perfect wife. Jane, spends her time trying to sabotage Polaris in order to set Jim’s mind free.

What makes this book such a trip is you never really know what is happening and when it happening. Is it a dream? Or a memory or thought planted by Polaris? Is it happening in the future… the past or the present? With Jim, this is easier to ascertain since there is a moment when he is in fact, without his head.

This is a very short book but full, and I mean full of beautiful passages but reading this book made me feel as if I was trying to read it while OD’ing on Benadryl. It has a sleepy feel to it. Dreamy, I guess. I felt sedated the entire time I was reading which is really strange because Jane’s part of the story is kind of frantic and urgent but somehow, I hung with Jim in his headless limbo.

I’m not even going to try to pick apart what I read in order to understand it. All you need to know is that it’s about marriage, the love between two people and maybe how the guilt of certain actions can shape a person.

Would I recommend it? Yes, if you are looking for something completely different (and short) I recommend it but know going in that it’s a bit of a mind trip.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Gold Fame Citrus
By Claire Vaye Watkins
Riverhead Books, Hardcover, 9781594634239, September 2015, 352pp.

The Short of It:

Gold Fame Citrus is about a dry, brittle world and the desperate people clinging to hope within it.

The Rest of It:

Southern California’s landscape is drastically changed by drought. Water rationing, scavenging for food and supplies and rogue bands of people called Mojavs roam the earth in search of water and a better life.

Luz and Ray, holed up in an abandoned Beverly Hills mansion make an excursion trip to the bottom of the hill and encounter a child by the name of Ig. The people that Ig is with, don’t appear to be her parents and the signs of neglect are hard for them to ignore. They decide to take the child and raise her as their own. This is a rash decision given their lack of supplies and the fact that neither of them have experience caring for a toddler but they venture out of the hills, thinking that if they can get far enough away, their lives will take a turn for the better.

This is a tough book to read. The subject matter is bleak and depressing. Watkins does a stellar job of describing the landscape but since I am a resident of Southern California, the drought we’ve been living with these last few years has really taken its toll and this book magnifies that times twenty. As I said, this is a depressing story.

Everyone in this book is just so dirty and filthy and desperate. At one point, drugs enter the picture in the form of something they call root and it lends a surreal feel to what is already a bad situation.

None of this sounds good, does it? But somehow, it is good. I’ll admit, it does get a little cult-y when it all turns into one hippie love fest but I seriously could not stop reading.

I had planned to pitch this book to my book club but feared that the subject matter would be too much. I think I was correct in thinking that but there is plenty to discuss with a group should you decide to read it.

Oh, and in case you are wondering about the title, the title is fully explained in the book but it has to do with what people come to California for… gold, fame and citrus.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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