The Past Is Red

I love how Valente writes, her style and premises. This was an audible treat as listened and lounged, recovering. It reminded me a little of Discworld, fantastic world building and characterization of the people and their regions.

No idea what happened.

Tetley Abednego is a young girl stuck on a pile of garbage. The Earth has been flooded and the only things that remain are floating garbage islands. There are different parts of this island named after the type of stuff that is arranged on it.

The story is very strange but strangely wonderful. Tetley did something that angered everyone but she still has hope of a better life.

The world is very detailed and interesting.

I really loved getting to know Tetley (the voice of the narrator), and learning to understand the way she sees her world. And it really is her world in a way. In a world made out of cleverly arranged floating garbage on an unending ocean, a small town of sorts has been built up, and she loves this world. But it does not love her back.

Despite being the town's outlet for their rage, she maintains that she is the happiest person in the world. Everyone else is so busy wanting what they can never have, and dreaming that the world will go back to what it once was. She likes her little garbage world though, and wouldn't want the world any other way. That is, until she makes a new friend, and her cheery resolve becomes challenged.

I found this a very emotionally calming book in a weird way. It could be heartbreaking at times, but Tetley's resolve to see the whole world as it is and love it kept the story from feeling sad. The writing is poetic and fun (and peppered with profanity that no longer counts as profanity). It's post-apocalyptic insofar as there clearly has been an apocalypse, but really it celebrates life and perspective and the hunt for a shared humanity. One might even say this book is inspiring. Maybe.

I've decided the perfect beach reads are novellas because you can read them in one afternoon! This particular novella maybe isn't a great beach read. only because it's about climate change and the oceans rising . . . But that fits with my brand of not knowing what a “beach read” is.

Anyway, this was simultaneously a real warning about climate change and a hopeful look at the future.

4.5 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews

Summary
Tetley Abednego lives on the only solid surface around - Garbagetown, formed from a great patch of garbage in what used to be the Pacific, but is now just one big world ocean. She's a girl with principles and determination, and when she acts to save Garbagetown's resources from waste, she's willing to pay the price, with a smile on her face.

Review
My average book rating is just about 3.0, and I sometimes wonder how that is, when I feel I'm giving so many books 2 or 2.5 star ratings. The answer is books like this one.

I know little about Catherynne Valente; I liked one of her stories in an anthology once, and have read one or two others. Still, I've heard the name often enough that I was interested to pick up this novella. While it's technically in two parts, they read as an integrated whole.

Tetley Abednego, the protagonist of the book, has a fun, but unusual voice, and I feared I'd tire of it before the end of the book, but I never did (here, the book's short span may work in its favor). She's a relentless optimist in a truly trashy world, and – aside from a muddled sequence here or there – a delight to spend time with, even when very bad things are happening to and around her. The central romantic element of the story doesn't quite work, and the love interest's back story doesn't quite make sense, but the story as a whole does work and does make sense, largely due to Tetley's quirky personality.

Valente has envisioned a depressing world, but her protagonist is so upbeat that you tend to forget about it, in part because – as Valente points out in an afterword – this is the world Tetley knows and accepts. The fact that it's a world devastated by ‘fuckwits' (that's us) doesn't really bother her.

In short, this is a fun book. Read it. I've got some more of Valente's writing on my TBR shelf, and I'm looking forward to getting it down.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

My favorite book of the year so far!