Foe

Foe by Iain Reid

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This wasn't quite a 5. I figure it's worth 4.5 and I rounded up.

This book is on the nomination list for the Evergreen awards. Last year I read all the nominees and when I was done, concluded that if a book has been nominated for this award then I'm not going to like it. I had no intention of reading Foe but the head librarian at the library I attend persuaded me to give it a try and she was correct. It is worth reading with a few caveats.

If you like fast paced book then this isn't for you. One reviewer I saw noted that this would have made a pretty good short story. I wouldn't go quite that far but it was pretty slow moving particularly at the beginning. I noticed a number of reviewers commented that they'd figured out the 'surprise' ending my the midpoint so the ending wasn't a surprise at all. I figured it out as well but I considered the eventual ending as one of a set of possibilities. Yes, it was the most obvious and yes, the author did choose to go in that direction but he could have taken a different direction so I didn't lose interest as I progressed.

There were a few things that were, presumably symbolic but if that was the case they went right over my head. One was a barn fire and the other was the rhinoceros beetle. Two characters seemed to have a fascination for it but why and what it was supposed to represent I have no idea.

This book combines a psychological examination of the marriage relationship within a sci-fi genre. I'm not sure there was much to the psychology of the thing. People do drift apart over time. I found the science more interesting although little was made of it in the book. The time is the not-to-distant future and humans can be replicated, combined with AI technology and used as doppelgangers to replace one another during a time of absence. It is suggested that the body could be fabricated using a 3-D printer but I don't think it would be possible to create something organic and apparently alive in the near future. The AI was more interesting because it is possible to create fabricated memories and technically it would appear easy with a computer but the entity so created has to believe and act on these memories and I'm not sure how that would work.

One thing I particularly liked was a fairly unsubtle hint suggesting the company behind the project OuterMore is based on Google.

The two main characters are named Junior and Henrietta but the latter is always shortened to Hen. They live in a rural area that is quite secluded. It appears being isolated is somehow important to the story but that is never made clear. It's suggested that almost the entire human population has migrated to cities leaving the rural area to be farmed by huge conglomerates but why the author bothered with this detail when he doesn't follow up isn't clear. Perhaps he wants to set the stage for a sequel.

With names like Junior and Hen these individuals are portrayed as bland in the extreme. Yet supposedly Junior has been selected to participate in a critical project that will pave the way for human migration into space. Why he was selected for that or anything else is left to the reader's imagination.

Although the pace is painfully slow at times, the author manages successfully to create an eerie feeling of unreality throughout the book and I felt that was done very well. Even if you suspect you know where he's going, the feeling of unreality and the possibility you might be wrong holds your interest. I think this book is worth reading if only for the many hints as to what the author sees making up our future - a future younger readers will still be alive to see.



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