There's No Place Like Home by Edan Lepucki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This brilliant “short” reinforces all that science tells us is in our future as a result of climate change and human consumption. The tragically innately beautiful main character, Vic, acknowledges her fate as a perpetual teenager, locked in a body that will never fully develop as her mind outraces her physical being. She is a youngster forced to mature beyond her years as she faces a cruel, barren world where the wealthy eat regularly and can afford the most precious commodity—clean water. She dispassionately relates her lot in life without asking for reader sympathy, though this author brilliantly manages to elicit just that.
Vic throughout professes her love for her academic father, clearly a man self-absorbed to the point of abuse, and she seeks only to somehow find a justification for his untimely death. Though he has throughout Vic’s life been a well-spring of shared knowledge, he has additionally been the primary reason for their poverty, a fact not necessarily lost on this introspective teen. Her search for the ultimate truth, one that would bring others to their knees, again provides insight into her depth of character—life is what it is and nothing she can do will ever change that.
Perhaps the most emotional aspect of this read was that Vic acknowledges that she will not see adulthood, nor will any of those born into her generation, yet she faces that mortality with a pragmatic eye that will leave the reader longing to show her a kinder, gentler existence.
From a mother quite obviously doing the best she can to survive and provide, to a “boss” that shows Vic an aspect of humanity that appears to be lacking in this new world, the characters elicit visceral responses that are both profoundly sobering and deeply disturbing.
Don’t go into this looking for a plot that is particularly engaging. Instead, look at this as a dire warning that couldn’t be more timely.
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