What do you think?
Rate this book
The Year of the Fruit Cake
Humankind is in danger. The Year of the Fruitcake tells of the Earth-based life of a mostly-mindwiped alien anthropologist inhabiting a human perimenopausal body instead of her own more rational body with its capacity to change gender. This alien has definitely shaken a great intergalactic empire by sitting in cafés with her new best friends. Chocolate may or may not have played a part. Will humanity survive? Polack describes her novel as, “Bleak. It’s political. It’s angry. It’s also sarcastic, cynical and funny.”
Winner of the 2020 Australian Ditmar Award for Best Novel. Finalist in 2020 Aurealis Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Winner of the 2020 Australian Ditmar Award for Best Novel. Finalist in 2020 Aurealis Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel.
332 pages, Paperback
First published June 10, 2019
11 people are currently reading
166 people want to read
About the author
Gillian Polack
53 books79 followersGillian is a writer and historian, currently living in Canberra, Australia. She intends to count the books in her library soon, when they stop falling on her and otherwise intimidating her.
She was given the 2020 A Bertram Chandler Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction.
She was given the 2020 A Bertram Chandler Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 4, 2019
‘Don’t stop me now!’
Meet Diana, Antoinette, Janet, Trina and Leanne. Five middle-aged women. The fate of humankind could be in their hands. How on earth can that be?
Read on. You will find, Gentle Reader, that an alien anthropologist is amongst this group of women. She is inhabiting a perimenopausal human body (for good scientific reason) and is tasked with the seemingly impossible: making sense of Earth’s reality and advising whether Earth should continue. Hmm.
Good, sound research involves both chocolate (mentioned 120 times) and coffee (only mentioned 20 times). It also involves the reader understanding why (and how) aliens are judging humankind. Gulp.
‘My problem with writing about humans is that, in order to write about one, I virtually have to become one.’
And I’m not going to ruin your journey through Ms Polack’s book by divulging any more of the story. It’s clever, it’s cynical, it’s funny and full of irony (and references to chocolate).
‘It is easy to know everything when one lacks experience.’
Good novels, like fruitcake itself, are compounds. And, like fruitcake, it’s not always possible to distinguish each of the ingredients. For me, there are some unlikely ingredients, but the more I read the more likely they became. I never thought I’d enjoy a novel about a perimenopausal mostly mindwiped alien, but I did. Mostly.
‘This is the way the world ends. Whether it’s the world of humans or the world of an individual human, it will end. With numbers.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Meet Diana, Antoinette, Janet, Trina and Leanne. Five middle-aged women. The fate of humankind could be in their hands. How on earth can that be?
Read on. You will find, Gentle Reader, that an alien anthropologist is amongst this group of women. She is inhabiting a perimenopausal human body (for good scientific reason) and is tasked with the seemingly impossible: making sense of Earth’s reality and advising whether Earth should continue. Hmm.
Good, sound research involves both chocolate (mentioned 120 times) and coffee (only mentioned 20 times). It also involves the reader understanding why (and how) aliens are judging humankind. Gulp.
‘My problem with writing about humans is that, in order to write about one, I virtually have to become one.’
And I’m not going to ruin your journey through Ms Polack’s book by divulging any more of the story. It’s clever, it’s cynical, it’s funny and full of irony (and references to chocolate).
‘It is easy to know everything when one lacks experience.’
Good novels, like fruitcake itself, are compounds. And, like fruitcake, it’s not always possible to distinguish each of the ingredients. For me, there are some unlikely ingredients, but the more I read the more likely they became. I never thought I’d enjoy a novel about a perimenopausal mostly mindwiped alien, but I did. Mostly.
‘This is the way the world ends. Whether it’s the world of humans or the world of an individual human, it will end. With numbers.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
October 7, 2019
A challenging piece of feminist science fiction. There are shifting perspectives, unreliable narrators and a plot that hinges on a society of extraterrestrial aliens who use the Earth for entertainment purposes, but ultimately plan to destroy it, and the friendship circle of a group of aging women. Does it all work? I did find the mid-novel pacing a bit slow for my tastes, but I found the characters engaging and I loved seeing what Polack does with them. Well worth the read if you’re looking for a more complicated feminist science fiction novel that is beautifully written and well worth the effort.
February 25, 2020
A blistering account of a demographic usually invisible to fiction as they seek comfort from the barrage of slights and condescension, our outright abuse that they are expected to endure in every day life.
On the surface, these comforts are genteel. Coffee and flowers and conversation and lots and lots of chocolate. But there is rage underpinning this story. Nobody will escape their final judgment.
On the surface, these comforts are genteel. Coffee and flowers and conversation and lots and lots of chocolate. But there is rage underpinning this story. Nobody will escape their final judgment.
October 30, 2021
Theoretically, I am squarely in the middle of the demographic this book is aimed at: a 60-year-old, female science fiction fan. So I picked it up with great anticipation. I made lots of highlights, some of passages that resonated for me, like this one:
"That was the moment of wonder. Not the joys and terrors of life. Not even meeting an alien. Having a great time out, as if they were entitled to joy. Normal stuff wins, hands down, always."
I also highlighted many more sections that wallowed in the worst aspects of being female, including menopause, mansplaining and loneliness. A lot of it felt like ranting. I hope the author felt better after writing it, but I can't say I felt better after reading it. There were several such points where I was about to put the book aside without finishing it.
What kept me going was some curiosity as to the situation of the protagonist, wondering what was really going on behind all the memory wipes, gender confusion, and the need to judge humanity. A lot of it was repetitive and overly complex--and I usually like complicated novels. I did finish, but like the rest of the book, the end was pretty much of a downer.
Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns, but a little more of the positive part of growing old to balance out the negatives, would have made this novel more palatable.
"That was the moment of wonder. Not the joys and terrors of life. Not even meeting an alien. Having a great time out, as if they were entitled to joy. Normal stuff wins, hands down, always."
I also highlighted many more sections that wallowed in the worst aspects of being female, including menopause, mansplaining and loneliness. A lot of it felt like ranting. I hope the author felt better after writing it, but I can't say I felt better after reading it. There were several such points where I was about to put the book aside without finishing it.
What kept me going was some curiosity as to the situation of the protagonist, wondering what was really going on behind all the memory wipes, gender confusion, and the need to judge humanity. A lot of it was repetitive and overly complex--and I usually like complicated novels. I did finish, but like the rest of the book, the end was pretty much of a downer.
Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns, but a little more of the positive part of growing old to balance out the negatives, would have made this novel more palatable.
August 27, 2019
A copy of this book was received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
“Am I a judge who will decide the fate of humanity?
“Am I a bloody anthropologist observing everything and getting involved despite themselves?
“Am I a time-traveller, documenting the dead?
“Do I represent collectors, come to identify and steal the best humankind can offer?
“Do I represent a race of invaders, with the goal of destroying humanity and taking its place?
“Or am I simply barking mad....”
This is a challenging book, both to read and to process. Comprised of an observer's reports on human society, an academic's analysis of those reports and a heartbreaking personal record, it provides a confronting and indeed alienating experience. At its heart lies five women living in Canberra, Australia, in the year 2016. Being of a certain age, they are largely ignored by their spouses, disrespected by their children, disregarded at work and frankly just about everywhere else. Their regular meetings to vent, indulging in such small pleasures as hot chocolate and a walk in the park, are somehow also a record of interplanetary catastrophe.
Polack's usual mosaic style of narrative—present in such works as The Time of the Ghosts and Ms Cellophane—is here stripped back to rigid bones. To extract the characters and events, and recognise where they fit in the evolving structure requires work, sustained concentration and patience. However, I feel this is a deliberate choice on the author's part, reflecting the confusion of a mind built on equations and fractals attempting to deal with stories. Very ordinary stories of ordinary lives.
Why should they be ordinary? The narration screams. Why should abuse, discrimination, failure and loss be so utterly par for the course? Would it not be better that this race is reduced to cosmic dust, than such suffering continue? Worse, that it should spread into a wider galactic society? But this society is far from perfect itself and, as the cracks begin appearing in the observer's carefully constructed human facade (with a Standard Childhood Package that hasn't been updated since the 1950s), it becomes clear that anyone's claim to objectivity is a lie.
It is all terribly ingenious and ingeniously terrible—what's going on here almost constitutes a new class of crime. A sense grows of a relentless cycle, a trap so perfect that noticing its existence is in itself an epic feat, leading only to bleak despair. I would be lying by omission if I didn't say I found parts of this book to be a slog and others extremely uncomfortable. But as the truth of the situation starts to filter through, as the observer's comprehension grows and the analyst's turns into horror, the cycling builds to a crescendo that resolves matters in a satisfying way and more, with a rare kind of heroism.
This is a map of terra familiar. Here be lizards.
“Am I a judge who will decide the fate of humanity?
“Am I a bloody anthropologist observing everything and getting involved despite themselves?
“Am I a time-traveller, documenting the dead?
“Do I represent collectors, come to identify and steal the best humankind can offer?
“Do I represent a race of invaders, with the goal of destroying humanity and taking its place?
“Or am I simply barking mad....”
This is a challenging book, both to read and to process. Comprised of an observer's reports on human society, an academic's analysis of those reports and a heartbreaking personal record, it provides a confronting and indeed alienating experience. At its heart lies five women living in Canberra, Australia, in the year 2016. Being of a certain age, they are largely ignored by their spouses, disrespected by their children, disregarded at work and frankly just about everywhere else. Their regular meetings to vent, indulging in such small pleasures as hot chocolate and a walk in the park, are somehow also a record of interplanetary catastrophe.
Polack's usual mosaic style of narrative—present in such works as The Time of the Ghosts and Ms Cellophane—is here stripped back to rigid bones. To extract the characters and events, and recognise where they fit in the evolving structure requires work, sustained concentration and patience. However, I feel this is a deliberate choice on the author's part, reflecting the confusion of a mind built on equations and fractals attempting to deal with stories. Very ordinary stories of ordinary lives.
Why should they be ordinary? The narration screams. Why should abuse, discrimination, failure and loss be so utterly par for the course? Would it not be better that this race is reduced to cosmic dust, than such suffering continue? Worse, that it should spread into a wider galactic society? But this society is far from perfect itself and, as the cracks begin appearing in the observer's carefully constructed human facade (with a Standard Childhood Package that hasn't been updated since the 1950s), it becomes clear that anyone's claim to objectivity is a lie.
It is all terribly ingenious and ingeniously terrible—what's going on here almost constitutes a new class of crime. A sense grows of a relentless cycle, a trap so perfect that noticing its existence is in itself an epic feat, leading only to bleak despair. I would be lying by omission if I didn't say I found parts of this book to be a slog and others extremely uncomfortable. But as the truth of the situation starts to filter through, as the observer's comprehension grows and the analyst's turns into horror, the cycling builds to a crescendo that resolves matters in a satisfying way and more, with a rare kind of heroism.
This is a map of terra familiar. Here be lizards.
September 30, 2019
This book is so real and so alien. Written in a way that kept me captivated and slowly savouring until the last page. To see recognisable parts of everyday life in a science fiction book is particularly amazing! And to have an alien mindset so clearly portrayed is wonderful, not many authors get that. I really want to give spoilers but I'm going to resist! It has been years since I've read a book as different and engaging as this.
June 22, 2019
An alien is trapped in the body ion a menopausal woman while investigating the worthiness of the human race and considering whether to cleanse Planet Earth for amore intelligent species.
A literary, witty, original novel packed with philosophical musings and reflections of what it means to be human.
A literary, witty, original novel packed with philosophical musings and reflections of what it means to be human.
August 31, 2023
I know I don’t have a death stare in my real body (at least I think I know) but they should have given me one for my human suit. It would be very helpful for days like this. Experiencing statistics personally is an utterly vile thing. [p. 101]
The premise is simple: humanity is being Judged. The narrators are less simple: an alien technician and an alien anthropologist, both disguised as menopausal human women. The eponymous fruitcake is explained thus: '“Armageddon” is too long and ugly. “Collapse of all we hold dear” is too depressing and too long and not quite right. “Damn humans” is accurate, but doesn’t really describe an event in English, which is a strangely limited language. I might call it “fruitcake”.' [p. 33]. The result: a novel about female friendship, ageing, predestiny, corruption, amnesia and chocolate, set in Canberra in 2016.
The Year of the Fruit Cake: or Aliens with Irony a difficult novel to review without spoilers, especially since I'm not completely sure that I've understood the various identities correctly. I do understand that both the alien narrators, of different species, are accustomed to bodies that transition between multiple genders. ("We’ve all been slotted into female bodies... within a small range of ages that cover perimenopause... This is what is considered closest to our natural state back home... None of us are males because males transform even less than females, and none of us can live without our transformations." [p. 122]) One (or both) of the narrators is partly impervious to the 'mindwipe' which should suppress their original memories and selves, and enable them to live completely immersed in human society. One (or both) is suspicious of the gaps in their memories of Earth-life, which may have been cobbled together from a variety of sources including 'Meet Me in St Louis'. One (or both) has fallen in love as a human. One (or both) appreciates the importance of good chocolate. Both narrators understand that humanity is to be Judged for making Earth uninhabitable. But who is the Judge?
This novel is often very funny, sometimes quite depressing, but ultimately hopeful. The group of five women -- Diana, Trina, Antoinette, Janet and Leanne -- are at the core of the novel, and their consideration and love for one another is a good balance to the disrespect they encounter, the sense of being invisible, the helplessness, the rage. They treat one another with care: there's enough harshness in the world. And these five women hold the key to humanity's fate: which pleases me a great deal, as does The Year of the Fruit Cake overall.
My problem with writing about humans is that, in order to write about one, I virtually have to become one. [p. 25]
October 26, 2023
The Year of the Fruit Cake is a very odd mixture of older women eating chocolate while not knowing that one of them is an alien who doesn’t know for much of the novel that her purpose is more than just to observe, and who, in the end, for want of a better term, causes Fruitcake.
Wanting to discover what Fruitcake was one of the main reasons I kept reading. Enjoying listening to a group of women reveal their lives was another. And wondering what the alien was up to was another.
It took a while for me to figure out which one of the women was the alien.
The novel is written in very short sections of three types. First there are the women meeting mainly to eat or drink chocolate. Then there are secret notes written by one of the women about what she has observed. And the third type of section, which at times cuts into the first type of section, had someone looking back at the events and trying to sort out how the Fruitcake happened.
The plotting was very intricate, and I am sure I missed things, but I enjoyed getting to know this diverse group of friends and wondering what the future held for them. The novel had some genuine laugh out loud moments.
The ending came in a rush, as the reader, well this reader anyway, waited for a foreshadowed decision to be made, but how the final decision was made just suddenly happened.
Gillian Polack is Australian, and the novel was set in Australia, but its location was of no consequence.
The novel won the Aurelias award for best science-fiction novel, showing a bit of courage from the judges to give an award to a very different novel.
If you want a challenging read, with engaging characters of a type that rarely appear in science fiction, I recommend The Year of the Fruit Cake.
Wanting to discover what Fruitcake was one of the main reasons I kept reading. Enjoying listening to a group of women reveal their lives was another. And wondering what the alien was up to was another.
It took a while for me to figure out which one of the women was the alien.
The novel is written in very short sections of three types. First there are the women meeting mainly to eat or drink chocolate. Then there are secret notes written by one of the women about what she has observed. And the third type of section, which at times cuts into the first type of section, had someone looking back at the events and trying to sort out how the Fruitcake happened.
The plotting was very intricate, and I am sure I missed things, but I enjoyed getting to know this diverse group of friends and wondering what the future held for them. The novel had some genuine laugh out loud moments.
The ending came in a rush, as the reader, well this reader anyway, waited for a foreshadowed decision to be made, but how the final decision was made just suddenly happened.
Gillian Polack is Australian, and the novel was set in Australia, but its location was of no consequence.
The novel won the Aurelias award for best science-fiction novel, showing a bit of courage from the judges to give an award to a very different novel.
If you want a challenging read, with engaging characters of a type that rarely appear in science fiction, I recommend The Year of the Fruit Cake.
July 5, 2023
tricky book to assess. the first half is slow, sort of muddled, and repetitious; second half is much stronger, the characters become memorable, the whole thing gathers momentum, and the neat ideas pile up and become integrated. i was grumpy about the first half, and that was too uneven to warrant a 4. but the ideas were compelling, so in the end that's where i landed with my rating. expect sf aliens on earth and in the background also in their own world with its differing perspective on Earth Problems, leading to elements of anthropology in sf, memory holes affecting the plot, and a compelling emphasis on feminism and gender roles. by the end i loved it, found it thought-provoking, and will follow the author.
July 3, 2021
It's thrilling & intimidating to read a novel so wondrous that every *chapter* has more ideas in it than most books. This was a finalist for several awards, including the Aurealis, and won the Ditmar. Good call, folks.
Highly recommended. But it may not be what you are expecting. Which is every reason to see if you are up to reading it. I suggest you take it in small bites.
Highly recommended. But it may not be what you are expecting. Which is every reason to see if you are up to reading it. I suggest you take it in small bites.
October 4, 2021
This book put me in mind of a lot of the feminist sf that came out in the late 20th century, particularly some of Josephine Saxton's work. It's not an easy read, and it takes a while to get used to how the story is delivered, but it's worth it.
Read
July 25, 2019Review forthcoming.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews