This was a weird one. And I mean that both as a complement and also a little in the what the heck did I read/why are the characters doing that!? I liked it. I stopped my evening one night so I could power through to the kind of inevitable end of the book. But it was a weird ride.
Set in a time period called “The Great Unwinding” the story starts out in an America that is … well it is a dystopia. Not a Mad Max level of dystopia but it’s not good. Air quality is bad, food is not readily available, and the threat of nuclear annihilation is hanging over everyone’s heads. Life is pretty harsh – unless you’re one of the lucky ones who get to live in a “Company Town” which is what it sounds like. Corporations own towns and make sure the employees there are well-treated. And the crown jewel of Company Towns is Plymouth Valley, owned by a company called ‘BetterWorld.’
The story follows a family called the Farmer-Bowens, Russell the father worked for the EPA, but lost his job in part of a government-wide downsizing, while Linda (our point of view character) is a pediatrician working in a clinic and doing her best for her patients in a world that seems to be inching towards total destruction. Rounding out the family are the twins, Josie and Zach. So when Russell lands a potential job working for BetteWorld, which would mean relocating to Plymouth Valley, the Farmer-Bowens jump at the chance to go.
The people in Plymouth Valley are odd and not very chill with outsiders and the “culture” is built around a thing the residents call “Hollow.” Plus everyone in town needs to take care of a caladrius, a genetically engineered bird that as a species has a serious attitude problem, and the people of Plymouth Valley seem to find this completely normal. As are the “shrines” that they have in their homes where they leave offerings.
What exactly “Hollow” is is slowly unravelled over the course of the book, and what it has to do with the caladrius (which I kept envisioning as Canadian Geese since those are the meanest birds I know) and the shrines, and the maze-like bomb shelter the town is built over … But since we are firmly in Linda’s POV we only know what she knows, and its a long slow unravel.
(One of the more delightful aspects of the book for me was that interspersed with the narrative were excerpts from welcome materials the Farmer-Bowens would have received. These are delightfully unhinged and ominous without spelling out what is happening.)
New ground is not exactly being broken here when it comes to what is going on, but I believe the Farmer-Bowens would buy into the weird, or at least at first. Their life before Plymouth Valley was not tottally horrific but the writing was very much on the wall. The world was on a downward slide and this was an out. So I can understand why they would make the choice to overlook all the odd.
As a reader though sometimes I found the way other characters were speaking or acting to be so very strange and it did sometimes throw me out of the novel. I feel like the intent was to show what a bubble world this was, and how insular and how weird traditions had taken root. Still, sometimes it just didn’t quite work for me.
The end was – the end. I had a sense of where it was going, and as the story picked up speed I was like “oh, oh, I see.” Didn’t mean I didn’t like the end – I quite enjoyed it. Well. Mostly. One part just – it made me laugh in a “oh shit that’s the thing?” kind of way, a bit of disbelief a bit of this makes narrative sense but I’m not quite buying it way.
Overall this book was my kind of beach read, I want something at the beach that is relatively fast-paced, and entertains me, and I like to beach read thrillers. So this worked perfectly for that!