Goodreads Monday is a great way to talk about a book from your TBR list. Originally started by Lauren’s Page Turners, most people do these weekly, (such as Confessions of a YA Reader who partakes in several fun blog themes) I prefer to do mine monthly and this month I chose something a little different from my norm.
Gis Jen’s “The Resisters” is a science fiction dystopian novel that weaves in baseball as a part of its theme. I’ve only recently heard about this book
while driving and listening to NPR’s Fresh Air on the radio. Maureen Corrigan gave a compelling review and synopsis of Jen’s book and I decided I’d like to give it a try. You can read her review here if you’d like, otherwise, here’s the blurb from the Goodreads website:
The Resisters by Gish Jen
An audacious marvel of a novel about baseball and a future America, from the always inventive and exciting author of The Love Wife and Who’s Irish
The time: a not-so-distant future. The place: AutoAmerica. The land: half under water. The Internet—the new face of government—is “Aunt Nettie”: a mix of artificial intelligence, surveillance technology, and pesky maxims. The people have been divided, and no one is happy. The angel-fair “Netted” still have jobs and literally occupy the high ground, while the mostly coppertoned “Surplus” live on swampland if they’re lucky, on the water if they’re not.
The story: To a Surplus couple—he was a professor, she’s still a lawyer—is born a Blasian girl with a golden arm. At two, Gwen is hurling her stuffed animals from the crib; by ten she can hit whatever target she likes with a baseball; her teens find her playing happily in an underground Surplus league. When AutoAmerica re-enters the Olympics—with a special eye on beating ChinRussia—Gwen attracts interest. Soon she’s at Net U, falling in love with her coach and considering “crossing over,” even as her mother is challenging the AutoAmerican Way with lawsuits that will prove very dangerous.
An astonishing story of an America that seems only too possible, and of a family struggling to maintain its humanity in circumstances that threaten their every value—even their very existence.
INGRID E FABER 