Survival | Book Chatter

Burn
By Peter Heller
Knopf, 9780593801628, August 2024, 304 pp.

The Short of It:

A stark warning to a divided country.

The Rest of It:

I’ve read a few books by Heller and all of them have left me a little speechless. All powerful, all a bit unsettling but this one, wow, I gotta take a moment.

In Burn, Storey and Jess start their annual hunting trip as they always do, except as they hike through Maine, they come across some alarming things. Maine is in the throes of secession and as they come across each town, they see the horrible devastation of what’s left behind. Evidence of a burn, evidence of attack. None of it good. As they make their way across the country, they begin to wonder what has happened back at home. Are their families safe? Surely, help would have been sent.

They quickly realize that their goal is simply survival, and getting back home but the enemy is not clear cut. They can’t tell secessionists from the military and everyone is fighting for supplies. As the journey continues, food is scarce, and mechanisms for getting home are scarce too. Boats? Not in the greatest shape and too obvious on the water. By foot? Long. Too long. They witness horrible things. No one can be trusted. They are on their own.

Enter a lost little girl.

Still unsure if there is even anything to go back to, home seems like such an elusive thing but then here is this girl, only six years old, desperately wanting to be with her parents. Are they even alive? How has she survived so far? Worried about their own survival but unable to leave a child to fend for herself in this bombed-out world, they take her on and their mission changes.

This story is bleak. There is little hope and honestly, it felt a little exhausting to be on this journey with Storey and Jess. All of the “what ifs” kept going through my mind . What would happen today if something like this happened? Could it? I feel as if it absolutely can which made it even more difficult to read.

Heller’s writing here is a warning. A warning that a divided country cannot win. How do you feel about that? I read this alongside my 1984 (read-along) and man, it put me in a dark place. And I kid you not, as I was typing this out, I received a phone call from the UNITED STATES. Probably spam but chilling. Like, hello, your country is calling you!

Ahem, If you love Heller, you will also appreciate this book but it’s bleak. You should know that going in. Lots to consider here. Would make a good discussion book.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

House of Cotton
By Monica Brashears
Flatiron Books,9781250851932, April 2024, 304 pp.

The Short of It:

Raw and brutal.

The Rest of It:

One night, while working at her dead-end gas station job, Magnolia Brown encounters a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton. He offers to turn her luck around with a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home–where she will pose as clients’ dead loved ones. She accepts. ~ From the publisher

This story will hit you with a closed fist. The author holds nothing back. Magnolia’s struggle to live has her doing things that at first won’t shock you, but then as the story plays out, I found her desperation to survive shockingly sad. The people she encounters never have her best interests at heart. No. And deep down she knows it, but her walk to freedom is alarming at times. So much so that I almost put the book down more than once.

This was chosen for my book club so I felt the need to finish it and it left me in a strange place. On the one hand, the writing is peppered with beautiful moments but the story is dark, very dark. Death and decay hang out at every turn and it’s pretty explicit.

There are moments though, that reveal Magnolia’s true heart, like her relationship with a homeless man and the many memories of her grandma that are shared throughout the story. Life in a funeral home is rough and when you choose to play a dead loved one, things can get a little dangerous. Not so much the action of it, but what it does to your psyche. When you are so fully immersed in death, how do you separate life from death?

I will be honest here, House of Cotton was a FINALIST for the 2024 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award and NPR’s BEST BOOK OF 2023, but it’s explicit in detail and might be a lot for someone not used to reading something so raw and ragged.

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

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