Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The Round House, paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event. The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity. There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe. A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

A Novel

Future Home of the Living God

Naomi J.

Our bodies have always remembered who we were. And now they have decided to return.

I’ve seen very mixed reviews of this book, but I thought it was beautifully written - although horribly bleak. I advise to read this one when it won’t depress you too much! Not without its flaws, but the themes appealed to me. Echoes of a Handmaid’s Tale but with spiritual themes - on what life is, and whether human beings deserve it. (I’ve seen a lot of content warnings about body horror, but there actually isn’t much. The bleak setting and message was a lot more of an issue for me.) 

Kelsey Lynn

I'm torn on the rating of this book, and whether I want to stick to the 3 or go more toward a 4. As I read this book, I couldn't put it down, but every time I did and reflected on it, or discussed it with someone, I feel like I discussed it as if I didn't like it.
 I both liked it, and didn't like it at the same time. Louise Erdrich chose a format that can be rather forgiving to writing ability. Having not read any of her other books, it's really hard for me to determine what was poor writing and what was just the style. The story was part existential crisis, maybe anti abortion/pro life, and a whole lot of "Handmaid's tale, the prequel"
 First of all, The story follows a pretty common Dystopian set up, something is wrong with pregnancies, the world begins to fall apart. The main character is an existential adopted Native American, single pregnant woman on the eve of the fall of humanity and control of women, especially pregnant ones. The story is written in a diary format to her unborn child. I couldn't decide if I didn't like the flowery existential, philosophy book style of her writing, or if I just wouldn't be friends with our main character Cedar. The characters all felt like the same person, but this may have been because it's Cedar's description of them. The diary style can almost make an excuse for most of the weaker points of this book. 
 I found the book engaging, the philosophical writing grew on me. I loved the slow crumble of humanity, that it began with the fall being a whisper on the wind. However, this led to a bit of a rushed actual fall. The biggest part I struggled with, was the actual cause of the fall. I feel as if Louise Erdrich herself didn't have a plan, and just used "nobody knew or understood" as an excuse for this. The weird backwards evolution comes on so suddenly to cause the world to destabilize that it's just not... believable to me. As a Science Fiction nerd, I am great at suspending my disbelief. But I just couldn't with this. Suddenly, seemingly overnight based on information the author provides, we have lizard birds? Sabertooth tigers? Devolved Human babies? She makes it feel too sudden. She could have easily added in passages to imply this was a slower process. 
 It's really unfortunate she released this book now, after the huge success of the television version of the Handmaid's tale. I'm aware she began writing this in 2001, but the Handmaid's Tale came out in 1985. This book feels like she wanted to write a prequel to it. Realized she was too close and cobbled together some weak new cause for the pregnancy issues and destabilization of humanity. If this had come out prior to 2017 I think it would have had a better chance. Unfortunately, Handmaid's Tale is too fresh, it's on everyone's mind. People watched it, read it because they watched it, or reread it. It's too close and too relevant for this book to truly feel original. 
 The fall in babies successfully being birthed (or being human) leading to a weakened society, where religious organizations take charge and begin taking control of women's fertility, kidnapping them, taking their babies, forcing them to become pregnant. Super Handmaids tale, sorry. Adding a different format (the diary, which honestly isn't much differen't than the format of Atwood's book) and adding a poorly conceived but more unique reason, doesn't change that. Yes, we are conceivably at two different points in the story, Handmaid's is in the post control state, this book in the pre. But once again, the show gave us a glimpse at the pre, so... it just didn't feel original enough, special enough. But it was enjoyable to read, just left much to be desired. 

Best title though. Future Home of the Living God. Gorgeous.

Celeste Richardson

You can find this review and more at Novel Notions. 

Actual rating: 2.5 stars

I wanted to like this book way more than I actually did. There were elements that I really enjoyed, don’t get me wrong. The premise was great, and the writing was masterful. It just didn’t land, unfortunately. While I didn’t hate this book, neither was I able to love it. It wasn’t bad; it was merely forgettable.
“We are so brief. A one-day dandelion. A seedpod skittering across the ice. We are a feather falling from the wing of a bird. I don’t know why it is given to us to be so mortal and to feel so much. It is a cruel trick, and glorious.”
I loved the process of Cedar getting in touch with her Native American heritage through meeting her birth mother and that side of her family. The premise, that evolution suddenly begins regressing and women find themselves losing their reproductive rights, was an intriguing one. The lack of said rights reminded me of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Pregnant women are being taken off the streets to be observed and who knows what else. Other women are being forcibly drafted into womb service, being artificially inseminated by frozen eggs and sperm in order to prolong Homo sapiens’ reign over the earth before their evolutionary forefathers begin reappearing in infant form.

Evolutionary reversal to this extent is a unique take on the apocalypse. One of my favorite elements of this story was the role the U.S. Postal Service played. Strange, I know. But suddenly the postal service is the only reliable method of long distance communication, and in a way they are keeping the nation together. Protected by the National Guard, the postal service delivers letters and passes along news and, on occasion, helps smuggle pregnant women across the border.

The thing I loved most about Cedar Songmaker was honestly her name. I tried so hard to like her. She’s intelligent and religious, but not blindly so. But there was something about her personality and her choices that grated on me. So much anguish could’ve been avoided if she would have just STAYED INSIDE. I know that her parentage was supposed to be a plot twist, but too many hints had been dropped for it to come as a surprise. I didn’t actively dislike her, but I was never able to form a true connection with her character.

But my least favorite element of this book is something common among literary fiction: it was marred by an ambiguous ending. I understand the reasoning behind authors’ decisions to leave endings vague and open-ended, but I am always frustrated by such endings. While they’re possibly truer to real life, I read to escape. I want an ending, and am always left unsatisfied when I finish a last page without receiving any closure.

Future Home of the Living God has an interesting plot, and is told well. It just didn’t land for me.

A tale set in a world of reversing evolution and a growing police state follows pregnant thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, who investigates her biological family while awaiting the birth of a child who may emerge as a member of a primitive human species.

Fraser Simons

I DNF’d it at 37%. I just can’t get into it and found it incredibly meandering and boring. Not super into the genre though, so probably just wrong mood, wrong time, type situation.

Cindy Lieberman

A post-climate change novel that imagines a devolution of our species As told by a pregnant young woman.

Flavia Louise

I absolutely loved this concept but sadly didn't like the ending. :(

Alexis Aumagamanaia

I listened to the audiobook bc I'm a busy lady with a 1.5 hour commute to work twice a day and as much as I love Erdrich's soothing voice, I'm just...meh. I expected so much more from this book and it took me SO long to finish bc I just simply could not stay interested; could it be because I've never been a fan of journal entry type dialogue? Perhaps. I appreciated the representation I got from Cedar as a mixed Native woman myself and the fact that I saw my own elogi (auntie) in Sweetie and my Ulisi (grandmother) in Cedar's grandma, but other than that, I'm relatively unimpressed. I feel that I might have enjoyed this more had I read the actual book. 2.5/5 would recommend.

Kaitee Tredway

I liked this book, but I found very little in it “new”, especially having read Handmaid’s Tale earlier this year. I was neither under or over whelmed by the world presented or the challenges Cedar faced. The book was good, but I did not find it to be special.

Corrie White 

I'm conflicted with this one, as I usually am with books that I have problems with but that still move me deeply. 

I feel like I need to read this book again in order to fully unpack the nuances that Erdrich incorporated into the novel that I may have missed in a first read through. The writing style took a bit for me to get into, and the pacing unfortunately threw me off. While I loved part 1 and understanding Cedar more clearly and her curious relationships with the people around her, it was so heavily weighted to the beginning of the novel that I feel like critical points throughout the rest of the novel are overlooked. 

I know we are meant to be kept in the dark as much as we were as Cedar herself was, but my god am I left with so many questions surrounding the world building that it detracted a bit from the story for me. I wanted more. I wanted to understand more the decisions Cedar had made, but that we, as a reader, weren't really given an explanation for.

Despite all this, I did enjoy the book. I certainly understand in our current world climate, that women's rights and this move towards anti-intellectualism, set up an incredibly disturbing 'futuristic' plot that holds some truth. And while I understand many people discussing similarities between this novel and The Handmaid's Tale, I think these ideas still need to be discussed. It's unsettling that decades after Atwood's novel, plots about women's rights being taken away are still pertinent and real. My rating falls somewhere between a 3.5 and 3.75.

Annika

Lindy B

A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The Round House, paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event. The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Twenty-six-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity. There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe. A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

Future Home of the Living God A Novel

Reviews

Highlights