"Future Home of the Living God" by Louise Erdrich (BR)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Here is the buddy read (part one) of the Inclusive Book Bingo for December!

Of course you do not need to be part of BINGO to be part of this read! Please use chapter titles and spoiler tags so we can all follow along :)

[Kaa]

I read this a couple weeks ago for an IRL book group, so I'm interested to see what others in this group think!

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

I only just started (5% in) but I really like the voice of the main character. I love how she talks about how (view spoiler)[being Native American made her feel special all through out school, and then when she finds out her birth name was Mary Potts she felt disappointed. (hide spoiler)] For some reason it just made the character come alive to me.

I can say I don’t think I’m going to like the format. I really need chapter breaks in my books. Progress always feels to slow otherwise.

[Rachel]

I have this from the library now but want to get further in my last TBR books for the year.

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

I’m still on part 1, 25% in. Some parts I really love but I feel like the plot doesn’t make sense in the context we’re given. Or maybe I just haven’t bought in yet.

(view spoiler)[
Like- stockpiling cigarettes and booze, the power going out, people withdrawing all their money...

Even if it is the end of humans, if evolution is reversing... it’s not like preparing for a massive meteor strike or nuclear explosions... you’re not trying to survive an actual apocalypse... you’re not going underground for an indefinite period of time so you can resurface some time later...what is the point of doing all that other stuff?

Where are you going to go to escape de-volution? (hide spoiler)]

[Rachel]

Read a quick section - got 12 % in so this book has that going for it ; seems like it will be a quick read.

So many folks voted for it but this thread is dead!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

It's early still! I have 2 books ahead of this one

[Gabi]

Rachel wrote: "Read a quick section - got 12 % in so this book has that going for it ; seems like it will be a quick read.

So many folks voted for it but this thread is dead!"

When I saw Travis' rating I decided to skip this one ^^'

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Yeah...I'm going to try it! But I am fairly wary of this one.

[Kaa]

For what it's worth, this was a book that I found a bit of a challenge to read (the lack of chapter breaks was definitely a pain in the ass) but I'm glad I read it. It was weird and heavy, but that suited my mood at the end of November. Caveat: I read most of it in just a couple sittings, which was for me the best way to read it. I think I would have had trouble feeling motivated to pick it up again if I'd had to come back to it too often.

[Rachel]

Sarah wrote: "I only just started (5% in) but I really like the voice of the main character. I love how she talks about how [spoilers removed] For some reason it just made the character come alive to me.

I can ..."

I agree with you on both points. The own voices aspect is going to be the best part for me I suspect.

[Rachel]

talked to my mother who has already read this (view spoiler)[ and she said it was ok but definitely felt derivative. Not as bad as Red clocks apparently tho (hide spoiler)]

[Rachel]

also at .. Aug. 15: (view spoiler)[ Anyone find it a bit weird that she uses 'sexy' to describe her mom more than once? (hide spoiler)]

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

Rachel wrote: "also at .. Aug. 15: [spoilers removed]"

Yup. I haven’t actually read The Handmaid’s Tale, but I know a lot of the reviews commented that it was very derivative.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Man it's so weird. @25% (August 15)

(view spoiler)[ I went from totally here for the meeting of family, the "Children of Men" sort of feel...and then the anti-vaxxer lawyers, sex while your adult child is a guest in your own living room, and love letter to giving birth to a messiah feels really...self indulgent. It's excluding me pretty completely and suddenly. (hide spoiler)]

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

Allison wrote: "Man it's so weird. @25% (August 15)

[spoilers removed]"

Right? (view spoiler)[ I was surprised when I finished and looked back at my first comment because I literally asked myself: What happened to that Cedar in the first part of the book? The Cedar I actually liked? (hide spoiler)]

[Rachel]

finished it last night (too late)

the thoughts i put right into a review: (view spoiler)[I thought the Native aspects were done well/interesting. Some other parts were good - snapshots of good prose showing interesting moments of a new world.

I couldn’t argue that it’s a bit derivative though. And an unsatisfying ending for sure (hide spoiler)]

[Rachel]

basically i liked the Native parts - a little window into realities of modern life/dreams etc.

[Rachel]

Allison wrote: "Man it's so weird. @25% (August 15)

[spoilers removed]"

this just occurred to me but:; (view spoiler)[ maybe the portrayal of her 'adoptive' family is some sort of statement about liberal whites? Should I have been offended? I just didn't relate period, instead. (hide spoiler)]

[Rachel]

Allison how about when you get to the end we can all talk about it lol

[Kaa]

Allison wrote: "Man it's so weird. @25% (August 15)

[spoilers removed]"

(view spoiler)[I definitely thought this was commentary on certain liberal whites. I know far too many people just like her parents, which I found both very uncomfortable and really compelling. I hated her adoptive parents as people, but for me their portrayal was an important part of the larger thread about control of Native women's reproduction and the removal of Native children from their tribes and communities. (hide spoiler)]

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

lol ok, at 50% now!

[Rachel]

I guess I SHOULD have been offended since I'm white middle upper class and also could list 25 horrible things in any non organic meats esp hot dogs lol. so gross. Good thing I;m so liberal that crap like this doesn't bother me. Don't get me started on round-up lol.

[Rachel]

Allison wrote: "lol ok, at 50% now!"

best thing about this book was its such a quick read ;)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I have thoughts on that, Kaa!

(view spoiler)[If it was focusing on the control aspect, I'd find it creepy and sad. So far it doesn't quite feel like I know what this story is about. There's so many moving parts that all seem to be separate talking points rather than a cohesive whole that I'm not sure which is the main thrust. Is it how the white privileged liberal fucks things up? It doesn't quite feel like that to me because we have a lot of religion, big brother-ism, and commentary on the native population, too that vie for attention. Maybe it focuses in the later half. But right now I'm just feeling like she's swinging for everyone not Catholic and/or those of us who fear having kids in a time like this.

If it was about the racist practices against native people (and believe me, I am here for that to get dragged) I'd want it to feel a lot less...anti-woman. The rhetoric about being the goddess figure (mother, whore, innocent, crone, etc), the long lapses of talking to her baby feel less like a request that we all join hands and find strength in the roles we accept and a lot more like judgment to people who do not preserve the sanctity of nuclear family and natural birth to me. Buuut I will admit to a lot of baggage in this department and really want to hear more about how this ties into being a native person. (hide spoiler)]

[Rachel]

Poop. Just left the laptop...can’t click...rrrr

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I don't get offended at people who've been hurt and are now lashing out. We all need to release steam sometimes. If something hurts me, it's often not for me, or I'm doing something wrong that I need to address so I don't hurt others further. What I don't like is "my way is the only way" type rhetoric. There aren't ever things that have one solution. This feels like it's suggesting to me there's a "right way" to be a mom and it's not the moms we've met. I don't like that.

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

You guys are clearly getting much more out of this then I did.

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

Also : the hot dog scene made me want to cry.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Sarah wrote: "Also : the hot dog scene made me want to cry."

I thought it was sweet, yeah. :)

[Kaa]

@Allison: I didn't feel as though the author was ever saying 'this is the only way', which definitely affects my perspective on everything else. I will have more thoughts when I get back to my laptop - I thought this was both one of the most rewarding parts of the book and the most frustrating.

[Rachel]

Some of the pregnancy parts rang quite true fit me so that’s a strength I guess.
Maybe her point is there NO right way to be a mom and someone will always think you’re doing something wrong?

That one seems to be actually true in our current society...(grumble)

[Anna]

Sarah wrote: "the hot dog scene made me want to cry."

I have no idea what you're talking about (haven't read this), but that made me giggle :D

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Rachel wrote: "Some of the pregnancy parts rang quite true fit me so that’s a strength I guess.
Maybe her point is there NO right way to be a mom and someone will always think you’re doing something wrong?

Tha..."

So true Rachel. <3

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Okay, Kaa, now I see it more!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Finished!

(view spoiler)[

Okay, so Mother definitely felt like a stand in for white culture (particularly as it permeates healthcare and mom-groups). Everything else felt like sort of spur of the moment pot shots. I lacked the sense of unity for an allegory or even strong metaphor for things like oppression, the loneliness and grandeur of motherhood etc.

Her adoptive parents really become dumpster fires, don't they? What do you think they were there for in this story? And what did the devolution thing add to this story, do you think? (hide spoiler)]

[Kaa]

It's funny, because I can't say I really enjoyed the book either, so I get the low ratings, but somehow it still worked for me. I found the ending really fitting. Dunno. It's not one I'll be out recommending, for sure!

@Allison: Yeah, I think it's a thread that gets more obvious as the book goes along. (view spoiler)[And I do agree with you that none of the threads in the book are very connected - the theme of race in particular drifted along under the surface for most of the book, surfacing occasionally. I read much of the book with the historical context of ICWA, Native adoption into white families, removal of children into residential schools and foster care, and sterilization of Native women, close to the forefront of my mind, but it was never clear to me how many of the parallels were intentional and how much I was reading into the narrative. But the mention of ICWA in a couple places felt intentional, especially as it related to her adoptive parents. (Which, also, that reveal about her dad was what solidified the parent narrative as being about race and exploitation/abuse, in my view.) (hide spoiler)]

Regarding parenting: (view spoiler)[one thing that a friend of mine pointed out is that it's not actually Cedar's birth parents who are most present as parental figures in the book, which is part of the reason that I don't feel as though the story actually ends up reinforcing the idea of nuclear, by-birth families. Although neither of them are perfect parents, her adopted mom and her birth mom's partner are the ones who really nurture Cedar and provide her the most support through the book. (hide spoiler)]

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

Kaa wrote: "It's funny, because I can't say I really enjoyed the book either, so I get the low ratings, but somehow it still worked for me. I found the ending really fitting. Dunno. It's not one I'll be out re..."

It’s funny because I actually do get why some people would like this (enjoyable or not) and if it wasn’t for the ending I think I would have given it a higher rating. (view spoiler)[ For me personally, I am NOT a fan of any ambiguous ending. I’ve read exactly one author who wrote an ambiguous ending I liked (thank you Jeff VanderMeer) and literally no others. I know sometimes there is a bigger purpose to a book then just telling a story, but I feel like story should always come first. I’m reading fiction primarily for entertainment. If it also teaches me something or opens my mind wonderful- if not- that’s what non-fiction and google are for. Perhaps that’s narrow minded of me, but it mattered what happened to Cedar to me and that the author didn’t give her the justice of a real ending just made me mad and felt like a waste of my time. Stephen King it and blame it on aliens or something I don’t know.

Lastly the title: I know this ties in to the whole Catholic thing but does anyone feel like the title itself is promising something that wasn’t quite delivered?

Then there was the whole brief moment of seeing the boyfriend again (whose name I can’t even remember now) that felt totally out of place and bizarre. And the fact that the father Glen is never seen from or heard from again outside those opening chapters... (hide spoiler)]

Sorry. I’ll stop ranting now.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Kaa, I'm right there with you! I was running through all that in my mind, too, trying to fit pieces in. (view spoiler)[ I got some of it in the sort of fetishization of her other-ness, in her looking for ways she belonged, but the cultural elements seemed to be more or less tied to explorations of res politics. The rest of the cultural bits felt more about being of two cultures more generally, or of the adopted child struggle than specific issues about indigenous people being exploited by white folks. I kept looking for it! I expected so much about doctors who didn't treat her pain as real, or that changed her conditions because she was nonwhite, or or or...and if it was commentary on that line it was too subtle for me, someone who looks up and reads pleadings on the ongoing land grabs against the various nations in the US. Perhaps you have more context you could feed into it, but I'm not blind to it and it feels like we're doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I'd like to have my viewpoint broadened though, do you have some examples that really stuck out to you?

The lack of actual adoption...I can see that? But again with Sweetie being a minor at the time the waters are soooo muddy. Her dad is a serial adulterer, possibly a pedophile, so abuse of white against native people gets kind of swept up in the general squick factor for me, and isn't driven home (had he done this to other girls on the res? Was he working as an environmental lawyer for the tribe at the time?

That felt a lot more like "white liberals can also be shitty people," which, fair. That gets nailed a lot and is a theme but without the qualifier (against native people, or white liberals can also be shitty even when it's against their own interests) it feels just kinda angry. And I won't begrudge that, it's something real to be angry about, but it's hard for me as a reader to engage with anger that isn't pointed at something. It feels too personal for me as outsider to join in.

What I did see was a lot about how people want to impose their own ideas on birth, family, the role of the mother etc. onto others and how toxic that is. Unfortunately some of that also felt like it was done in turn by the narrator. The whole thing about incarnation and such when she's going through the different phases of the anima and how they connect you to the word of God started to anger me for my friends who are infertile or who have considered their morals and their faith and find that both require them not to bear children right now. The garbage that her "adoptive" family turned out to be, Phil marrying her to legitimize them and the baby, I just got a lot of bad vibes about what pregnancy and motherhood were supposed to be. (hide spoiler)]

Argh, sorry for the essay! I have feelings!

Sarah, I agree, the story felt like it was being juggled and the juggler just kept dropping balls, but had a really great stage name.

I did feel this book lied to me. The title and premise are not at all what this book is about to me. Except the Catholic element.

[Rachel]

Kaa wrote: "It's funny, because I can't say I really enjoyed the book either, so I get the low ratings, but somehow it still worked for me. I found the ending really fitting. Dunno. It's not one I'll be out re..."

Oh I hadn't thought about it but you're right they have the biggest...on screen time I guess?

[Rachel]

Sarah wrote: "Kaa wrote: "It's funny, because I can't say I really enjoyed the book either, so I get the low ratings, but somehow it still worked for me. I found the ending really fitting. Dunno. It's not one I'..."

ALL of those are good points to me. For me the most telling thing is: I actually don't mind ambigous endings: like Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach: didn'tbother me...

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

Rachel wrote: "Sarah wrote: "Kaa wrote: "It's funny, because I can't say I really enjoyed the book either, so I get the low ratings, but somehow it still worked for me. I found the ending really fitting. Dunno. I..."

Oh dear, is that one ambiguous too? Off the TBR it goes. IIRC that one had lukewarm reception by this group too.

Has anyone read Annihilation? (Vague spoilers ahead) (view spoiler)[ That one worked for me because the WHOLE book was bizarre and left you with more questions then answers. It felt like the ambiguous ending served an actual purpose rather than to make me crazy. It sort of made the book an extension of Area X itself. (hide spoiler)]

Otherwise this is just something I’ve never appreciated. I’m just wired to need to know I guess.

[Kaa]

Fair enough, Allison! I really agree that the story does require the reader to do a lot of the heavy lifting, so I may be completely reading what I wanted to see into the story, (view spoiler)[ especially because the author didn't explicitly draw links to the things Native people have experienced. For me, it was more the bigger narrative of Cedar's life where I saw parallels - in terms of the abuse/imbalance of power between her birth parents, being taken away from her tribe/community, being confined against her will, having her own baby taken away. Like, even though her mother might have been a minor, I wondered if there could have been someone else in that community who would have wanted to adopt her.

And I guess I didn't think it was so much as, "white liberals can also be shitty" as "white dominated society is shitty and dangerous." And maybe the devolution thing fits into that somewhere? (Although that thought just occurred to me and honestly that part of it still mostly confuses me.)

I don't think I got the same feelings about pregnancy and motherhood from the book as you did, but I get why that would be so infuriating. (hide spoiler)]

[Kaa]

Sarah wrote: "Has anyone read Annihilation?"

(view spoiler)[Hah, Annihilation didn't really work for me but this one did. I just didn't understand Annihilation at all, but the grim, ambiguous ending seemed like it fit with the themes of the story in Living Home. (hide spoiler)]

[Kaa]

(But also, Allison, thinking again about how much work this book asked the reader to do made me knock it down another star. Because while I think it's reasonable to ask the reader to put in some effort, this book did not meet you half way. And "liked it" is probably more accurate than "really liked it".)

[Sarah, The Unsettled]

Kaa wrote: "Sarah wrote: "Has anyone read Annihilation?"

[spoilers removed]"

LOL - well to each his/her own I guess!

[Rachel]

Re:Lucky Leach: now there going to be a sequel so no need to take it off the TBR just yet!!

[Rachel]

Also now that Allison pointed out the ah, twist towards the end I some hadn’t noticed....I’m starting to rethink things....

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I found myself nodding along, Kaa, thank you for explaining! I guess I see that again more generally but it would make sense of course if the author had a more specific focus in mind.

And yeah, like I said I come with a lot of baggage about parenting and religion so I'll bet that's me projecting as much as anything else!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

OH NO!

Oh my gosh friends! I love spirited debate with you. You're all so great at conveying the things you feel and see, and have such broad life experiences that my responses are meant to elicit more information and share my own views! I don't want to make you dislike things you like! I'll reel it in, I'm sorry!