Edan Lepucki

What I liked most about 'There's No Place Like Home' was the focus on the way thirteen-year-old Vic's perception of her situation and her relationships changed over the course of the story. The story is set in a near future America where climate change has made large portions of the USA uninhabitable and where Vic's generation, born after the major changes hit, are, for reasons unknown, perpetually stuck in prepubescence. There are lots of intriguing details about climate change and its effects on daily life but I liked that while these details provided an essential context for the story, they weren't allowed to dominate it.

The heart of the story lay in Vic's reassessment of her relationship with her parents. Initially, Vic comes across as a Daddy's Girl. He has been her teacher and her friend and was the person that she most loved and admired. Until, in the early pages of the story, he kills himself.

Vic needs to understand why he did this. She needs to grieve. She needs to rebuild her relationship with her mother. Most of all, she needs to find a way to earn enough money to get herself and her mother out of the financial hole her father's death has left them in.

As the story progresses, Vic comes to realise how poorly her father had been coping with the reality of the world that she has grown up in.

He was an educated man who was constantly mourning the loss of the world as it used to be, forecasting the inevitable doom of the human race and disparaging the unprincipled things that people were doing to survive.

It takes Vic a while to see that this worldview was a sign of weakness rather than wisdom. Vic looks at her world as it is, acknowledges the discomforts and the personal challenges but still sees beauty in the world and has a desire to go on living.

By the end of the story, Vic has accepted three things: by committing suicide, the power of her father's voice in her head has been nullified; her mother is and always has been, the stronger parent and Vic's future, such as it is, is hers to build.

'There's No Place Like Home' took me a little over an hour to listen to but, in that time, I got to see a plausible near-future and got to meet the women who were finding a way to cope with it. To me, that felt like time well spent.… (más)

I'm Exhausted, Grossed Out, and Confused

CW: Covid, Animal Abuse (Neglect and fears of death)

I don't even know where to start with this. I nearly DNF'd early on as the protagonist's initial interaction and thoughts about the antagonist caused Lynx/ Axe Africa and Kraft Cheese to emit from my tablet. This is my biggest confusion about the story -- both main characters are awful and truly unpleasant to spend any time with (beyond human empathy for health and pandemic stuff). The protagonist has a John Green/ one of his characters energy with a really creepy and kinda pathetic vibe (I get that he's been through a lot, but the Nice Guy creep baby boy energy is palpable) and the antagonist is pretty much manic pixie dream-come-nightmare girl. It's either brilliant or awful characterisation, but I can't tell. Regardless, peering into this window into their lives left me knackered and uncomfortable, so good job? Maybe?

Stories don't always have to have a political or philosophical perspective, but writing about Covid during the height of the pandemic about people flaunting the rules and an immuno-compromised person seemingly being portrayed as hysterical for being concerned doesn't feel great. Honestly, as someone whose partner and herself are both immuno-compromised and forced to maintain a certain level of eternal lockdown, this also hits different.

I have seen other reviews complain about threads not tied off and this is something I consistently see with short stories. Sometimes I agree, but more often than not and I this case the unanswered questions and ambiguity the reader is left with are the same as the protagonist. They are the narrator and sometimes it's effective to have the reader not know more than the narrator and/ or protagonist. In this case, without really spoilering anything, there is a level of mystery, confusion, and simple lack of information about a character that makes not knowing their actions. Actions, which can be plausibly denied by mundane means.

This was an unpleasant story and I don't know if I hated it or simply didn't enjoy it, so I can't recommend it. The quality of the prose and performance were both great nonetheless.… (más)

Have you ever listened to a piece of music and found that, even though it was well-written and well-performed it never slid past your critical thought process to get your feet tapping or your emotions surging? 'People In Hell Want Ice Water' was the textual analogue of that for me.

The story is immediately accessible. It's told as a first-person account given by a character who never filters any of his thoughts. It's set in the hills above LA while the COVID-19 Stay At Home Order was in place and does a good job of evoking the emotional stress associated with the restrictions.

I found I believed completely in Colin and understood and accepted how he saw Martha.

I read the story to the end, carried along by the quality of the prose and because I couldn't see where the story was going. Unfortunately, the destination it arrived at had no meaning for me beyond 'So? Why should I care?'

I didn't like Colin or Martha. I would have hated to have been in quarantine with either of them. He was weak, whiney and self-pitying. She seemed shallow and transactional in her relationships. She used wine and drugs and sex to escape from reality or perhaps to substitute for it. I had no sympathy for either of them. Together, they were toxic. Which didn't make them tragic or even interesting. At least not to me.

I know that my dislike of Colin and Martha is a tribute to Edan Lepucki's skill but it did nothing for my enjoyment of the story.… (más)