The Only Harmless Great Thing

I'll be honest, I thought this book was very confusing. I really wanted to enjoy it and it just wasn't the book for me.

I have complicated feelings about this story. I think it's a very powerful reimagining of historical events. It started off very vague and hard to understand, especially because many voices are speaking throughout. But once you knew who was talking it started really coming together. 

It's a really sad series of events and I like the fact that they show how this affected the presence, with the Topsy t-shirt and the plans for nuclear waste sites. Plans for showing the future people where the nuclear waste is have always fascinated me and this is definitely an interesting way to imagine it. 

This was an incredible, heartfelt alternate history story that took two separate historical events - the Radium Girls of the early 20th century, and the elephant that was sentences to the electric chair - and winds them together in a way that makes complete sense and is at the same time completely fantastic.

I want more of this story. There's this entire other world that Bolander is only able to hint at here, and I'm completely fascinated by it.

I knew I'd love The Only Harmless Great Thing before I bought it because I have knelt before Brooke Bolander's prose many times before and cooled my hot head beneath its flowing language. What I didn't know is that I'd want to hug her heroes and interlace my fingers with theirs as they raised their fists (or what have you) to strike at things miles wider than themselves. Things that very much deserve to be struck. Yesterday, I peeled open the electric cover, read this book around work and around life, and resented the hell out of every interuption that came my way.

Coming to a new Bolander piece, the mind has to wade in slowly. It has to pause sentence by half-sentence to translate a work of English-as-we-wish-it-would-be into the English we use over countertops and through car windows. As she overthrows clich??d phrases again and again, she reminds us how large life truly is and how we fail as thinkers to make the connections that would open up worlds to us.

Should we thank our publishers above who know enough to deliver her verbal delicacies to us like events on some secret holiday schedule of need? Or should we curse our culture because life in general isn't written like this? (Just imagine an existence of Bolander-scribed street signs and vacuum cleaner directions! sigh) We should do both. Be thankful for what work of hers we get, and shout at life for always leaving us wanting more.

3.5 out of 5 stars

The Only Harmless Great Thing tells a heartbreaking tale of victimization, injustice, and the bonds shared by all living things. Based loosely on true events, author Brooke Bolander uses killer prose to weave a dark alternate history that demands to be read in one sitting.

This was a novella that I appreciated more than I enjoyed. It features heavy themes and an interwoven narrative that is sometimes difficult to decipher. I suspect that rereading this thin tome would reveal even more layers of meaning than may have been apparent on my first read-through.

See this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

This little novella is a burning shot of righteous anger and it's absolutely glorious.