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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Mount Angel Public Library | HEGLAND | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
This deeply felt story of two sisters struggling to survive amid the collapse of technology and society is at once a classic tale of mythic proportions--and a modern myth with a timely message. "Beautifully written and often profoundly moving".--"San Francisco Chronicle". Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hegland's powerfully imagined first novel will make readers thankful for telephones and CD players while it underscores the vulnerability of lives dependent on technology. The tale is set in the near future: electricity has failed, mail delivery has stopped and looting and violence have destroyed civil order. In Northern California, 32 miles from the closest town, two orphaned teenage sisters ration a dwindling supply of tea bags and infested cornmeal. They remember their mother's warnings about the nearby forest, but as the crisis deepens, bears and wild pigs start to seem less dangerous than humans. From the first page, the sense of crisis and the lucid, honest voice of the 17-year-old narrator pull the reader in, and the fight for survival adds an urgent edge to her coming-of-age story. Flashbacks smartly create a portrait of the lost family: an iconoclastic father, artistic mother and two independent daughters. The plot draws readers along at the same time that the details and vivid writing encourage rereading. Eating a hot dog starts with "the pillowy give of the bun," and the winter rains are "great silver needles stitching the dull sky to the sodden earth." If sometimes the lyricism goes a little too far, this is still a truly admirable addition to a genre defined by the very high standards of George Orwell's 1984 and Russell Hoban's Ridley Walker. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Brisk, feminist, contemplative first novel about the end of contemporary civilization and the survival of two sisters. Hegland is vague about civilization's downfall. She places a wife, a husband, and their two daughters, Eva and Nell, on 50 acres of second-growth redwood forest in northern California--the idea seeming to be that since the location is remote to begin with, news of the outside world would filter in slowly. There's a war somewhere, and ever more virulent strains of viruses rage through the population; then, suddenly, there's no more food available in stores, no more gasoline, no more television. The mother dies; the father pushes his dreamy daughters to learn such humble skills as gardening and canning. In the best scene, the father's chain saw kicks back and cuts him, and his daughters are helpless, unable to do more than watch as he bleeds to death. They bury him where he lies. Slowly, because the alternative is starvation, Nell learns the wisdom of the forest: killing a wild sow with a rifle she barely knows how to fire, using herbs for medicines and tea, gathering acorns to pound into flour. A boy comes to take Nell away, but she cannot leave Eva; though sisters by birth, Hegland turns the girls into lovers--and ideologically pure lovers, at that. Mystically, they both produce milk to nurse Eva's son, the product of a rape by a passing thug. Fearful of more such violence, the sisters burn down their father's house and take up housekeeping in a mammoth redwood stump. They've learned nature's lessons and, purified, are prepared for humankind's great destiny: to live in the woods like animals. A little apocalypse goes a long way. Beautifully written, however, and Hegland's knowledge of organic gardening, fruit drying, etc., is impeccably authentic.
Booklist Review
Hegland's mesmerizing first novel is set in the near-future, when a distant war has brought about the collapse of industrialized America and, in particular, left two teen sisters secluded in the Northern California forest and facing the challenges of survival with diminishing supplies, growing fear of predatory outsiders, no electricity, and no telephone. Older sister Eva yearns for a ballet career and dances the daylight away to the tick of a hand-wound metronome, while 17-year-old Nell, the narrator, concentrates on reading through the Encyclopedia Britannica so she can realize her dream of going to Harvard. They slowly realize that rescue is not forthcoming and learn to survive by foraging for berries and nuts, brewing medicinal teas in Native American fashion, and gardening. Nell even manages to shoot a wild boar so that Eva, anemic during a pregnancy resulting from rape by an interloper, may be nourished. Hegland's sweet and sadly elegiac tale is an engrossing coming-of-age adventure. (Reviewed July 1996)0934971501Whitney Scott
Library Journal Review
Originally published by a small house and championed by booksellers and readers alike, this debut novel (LJ 6/15/96) tells of two sisters who struggle to make do in an apocalyptic future. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.