The Natural Way of Things

A group of women is locked away in the desolate Australian Outback. It's their punishment for their femaleness and their sexuality. What starts like prison turns into a tale of survival. Some of them manage to rebuild their broken selves into new stronger versions, fed from animal instincts and feelings of revenge.

I like that the book stayed abstract, and focused more on characters than plot. Delving into the details of why and how, probably would have made it fall apart.

Full disclosure: I won this book in a giveaway from the publisher (thanks, Europa!)

For the first fifty or so pages, I really struggled to read this book. I thought, I've read this before. It was called A Handmaid's Tale. Except now we've crossed it with Holes. How delightful. Oh, wait, that already exists, and it's called Bitch Planet. And truth be told, I like all of those better than this. It's fine, I guess, but it's not great.

In the book's defense, it does an incredible job of showing, not telling. I can't remember the last time a book treated me this much like a grown up and expected me to figure things out on my own. It was really nice. More books should follow this example, and let their readers fill in the gaps. Honestly, that's why I gave this book the three stars. The author has talent.

But this whole idea has been done before, and done better. Not as aggressively Australian, true (if you don't believe me, the first line of the book is “So there were kookaburras here.”) and I'm not saying this book is bad. Particularly in the last section, Winter, the book really takes off and becomes something special. I'm just not sure it's worth the whole first half of the book to get there.