can both thrive and go wrong as pressure to survive builds.
hunger against the lives of the others living in the building. When
Cynthia is wrongly accused of ordering an “A” ration, she
punished by the other girls. Eventually, she is forced to leave the
Apartments along with Ms. Glennoc, one of the former managers who has
tormented and abused her for years. Together, they encounter a world
of even more scarcity, but one filled with politics and intrigue.
Cynthia struggles to return to the Apartments and help the girls who
are still there.
greater needs of society to find any sustainable source of calories,
Ms. Tuttle makes one bad decision after another while she grapples
with a mother who is growing more and more impatient with her
mistakes.
accessible way. It combines the darkness and despair of The
Road and The Handmaid’s Tale, but has notes of
charm like Lauren Oliver’s Replica.
2019. Cody’s stories have appeared in Pilgrimage, Cirque, KYSO
Flash, Menda City Review, Swamp Biscuits & Tea, and others. He is
fiction winner of the 2016 Montana Book Festival Regional Emerging
Writers Contest. He served as editor of an anthology of short fiction
with twelve contributors titled Soul’s Road.
an intensive MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Cody grew
up listening to stories in his grandfather’s barber shop as he
shined shoes, stories told to him at bedsides and on front porches,
deep in his father’s favorite woods, and in the cabs of pickup
trucks on lonely dirt roads. Cody’s work explores those things both
small and wondrous that move the soul, whether they be deeply real or
strikingly surreal.
This is a world of Women and Girls. Cynthia and Imeld are two girls that live in the Apartments. Their world is ruled by calories and the girls constantly starve. They can request A, B, and C rations to eat. But the A rations get more girls sent to the Wet Room. Cynthia is falsely accused of eating an A ration and punished by the girls on the third floor.
This leads to Cynthia getting bloody revenge and punishment from Ms. Tuttle, the woman that runs the Apartments. Thing go from bad to worse when Ms. Tuttle is punished by the counsel and Cynthia and Ms. Glennoc, Ms. Tuttle’s assistant, are sent away to the Commons to live or die.
This is a new and brutal world. All men, animals, and plant life have dies many years earlier leaving only women left. There are not many options for food or any form of health care. The Girls were a solution to the problem but as the years have gone on other problems have arose from them.
This is an amazing and dark read. I had a hard time putting this book down and constantly thought about what I read and couldn’t wait to get back to the story. I felt for Cynthia the more I learned about this world and yet I wanted to bash her head in with her insistence to get back to Imeld. Ms. Tuttle and Me. Glennoc are pure evil but are born from this world.
I would have liked to learn more about the Clear but I also understood why we don’t know more. This book is an amazing read that brought the movie Soylent Green to my mind. I would love to read more about this world and what happens to Cynthia and Imeld. I can’t wait to read what Cody Luff comes up with next.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.
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