Showing posts with label architect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architect. Show all posts

Monday, April 8, 2024

Camp Zero

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling (2023) 320 pages

I listened to the audiobook on Libby. There are three narrators because there are three main parts of the story. This science fiction story is a subgenre called cli-fi, which means it is science fiction in the near future dealing with climate disaster. The globe is warming, the southern part of the U.S. is having record heat waves and wildfires (sound familiar?). Those that survive are pushing north into the previously frozen tundra of Canada. If you ever wanted to spend more time with the Jezebels in The Handmaid's Tale, this story might be for you. The main part of the plot follows Rose and other young women, all named after flowers, who work as "Blooms" in a far North mining/construction camp. Then there is a privileged college grad who takes a teaching job at the camp. His rosy outlook is quickly brought down by the harsh conditions at the arctic location. Third, we meet the women soldiers working at a military meteorological research station in another camp up north. Things get desperate and gruesome at times, since there is no escape for many of the characters. I didn't love the way the three plots are tied together in the end, but the journey leading up to those last chapters was pretty entertaining.
 

Friday, June 26, 2020

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (2012) 330 pages

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is an often humorous, sometimes heart-wrenching story of a girl's love for her mother. Told primarily through a collection of emails, faxes, letters, and other documents, the story's gaps are filled in by the insights of 15-year-old Bee. Bee's mother, Bernadette, was an architect who'd gained a following for her eco-buildings before the idea was popularized. By the time Bee was born prematurely, in need of several surgeries, Bernadette had suffered multiple miscarriages and had a bizarre experience that she allowed to end her architecture career. Now Bernadette is resigned to a life avoiding cooking, avoiding fixing up their decrepit house, avoiding "gnats," (a term she gives to neighbors and parents of children from Bee's school who bother her), avoiding most everything. Meanwhile, Bernadette's husband, Elgin, is an upper-echelon computer guru who is revered for his abilities (and for a TED Talk he had given), and known for his eccentricities. On the eve of a family trip to Antarctica to celebrate Bee's stellar grades, a lot of craziness ensues, with the result that Bernadette disappears. Will Bee ever find out what happened to her mother?