This novel has been on my radar for months because the concept is so unique: What would happen if buildings in New York City suddenly started moving around? Residents wake up one morning to find that has happened, and it continues to happen every morning afterward. They might wake up with a view of a skyscraper one day, a view of a river the next. How would you react if you never knew where your home or business might end up?
That’s the question that Denise S. Robbins explores. Of course there are the logistics of disrupted power grids and other utilities, as well as people who are lost and don’t know where their home went if they weren’t there when it was Unmapped. Robbins does tackle this, looking at how emergency management and governmental agencies would respond. She also looks at how individuals react. Some of these people start out nameless and may even remain nameless, presumably because there are so many others whom they could represent. However, there are two characters who get the most page time, Esme and Arjun, both of whom work for the New York Emergency Management Department and have their own personal reactions to the Unmapping.
Esme and Arjun are both moderately compelling characters, though not necessarily deeply layered. It was still engaging to follow them around. In an interesting storytelling approach, the author’s disjointed narrative mirrors what the characters and residents are going through, helping readers understand in some way what it might be like. I loved seeing how everything was unfolding, how people were coping with events. Threads get dropped and picked up again later, keeping readers interested.
A couple of these threads are related to Gleamwood City, a small Wisconsin town where an Unmapping first happened. This part of the novel didn’t work as well for me. While I appreciated that Robbins didn’t go in the direction with this that I had feared she would, the payoff of that storyline didn’t resonate with me. My other qualms with the book are fairly minor, and it was such a captivating read that my enjoyment eclipsed those issues. This is Robbins’s debut novel, and it seems like she’s going to be an author to keep an eye on.
I received this e-ARC from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.