The Future

by Catherine Leroux, Susan Ouriou (Translator), Karie Richards (Narrator)

A woman seeking justice in an imagined Detroit discovers resilience and resistance where she least expects they will be found. Looking for answers, and her missing granddaughters, Gloria moves into the house where her daughter was murdered. A stranger in a Fort-Detroit neighborhood coping with the ongoing effects of racial and economic injustice, she finds herself surrounded by poverty, pollution, violence—as well as the resilience of the residents, in whose stubborn generosity and carefully tended gardens she finds hope. When a strange intuition sends her into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. Set in an alternate history in which the French never surrendered the city of Detroit, where children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves, where rivers poison and heal and young and old alike protect with their lives the people and places they love, Catherine Leroux’s The Future is a richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Dystopia, Book Club, Science Fiction, Magical Realism, Speculative Fiction

10 pages, Audiobook

First published September 15, 2020

About the author

Catherine Leroux est née en 1979 non loin de Montréal, où elle vit aujourd’hui avec un chat et quelques humains. Elle a été caissière, téléphoniste, barmaid, commis de bibliothèque. Elle a enseigné, fait la grève, vendu du chocolat, étudié la philosophie et nourri des moutons puis elle est devenue journaliste avant, de publier La marche en forêt. Finaliste au Prix des libraires du Québec, ce roman d’une grande humanité a charmé le public et la critique. Le mur mitoyen est son second roman.

Reviews

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Canada Reads Short List #3

I’m setting this one aside. I tried to get into this book but it’s just not for me. I’m not into dystopian fiction and I really dislike fantasy, but I was still looking forward to it.

The first section revolves around Gloria, a grandmother who is searching for her two granddaughters that disappeared after their mother’s murder. It was slow, but I enjoyed this section and was interested to see where it would go. The second section takes place in the woods where kids who have learned to survive are living on their own (many comparisons drawn to Lord of the Flies). There’s a ton of characters in this section, it’s written in silly child-like language, and they all have whacky names like ‘Lego’, ‘Tick-Tock’, ‘Pretty’ and ‘Bleach’. This is where it lost me.

This may be an unpopular take, but I don’t like adult fiction narrated by young children. I wish the whole story took place from Gloria’s perspective. There was a revelation about Gloria’s granddaughters that was really interesting, and I wanted more of that story.

There’s commentary in here about community, sustainability, and colonization, but it ultimately wasn’t strong enough to bring these themes home.

I read a lot of books and rarely DNF, but I feel a huge relief at putting this one down and moving on. I’m looking forward to hearing this one debated as I’m curious to find out what others love about it.

[Allison ༻hikes the bookwoods༺ · Rating 3 out of 5]

If it wasn’t for Canada Reads, I’m not sure I would have stuck with this book. The first section (all Gloria) bored me to tears. Once we got to the kids with their Lost Boys’ vibes, I was a bit more engaged, but overall this one fell pretty flat for me. I had no idea what was happening half the time and I wasn’t invested enough to care. It’s well written and I could probably glean more from a re-read (hence the three stars), but I just wasn’t that into it.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for Canada Reads 2024

Gloria, a grandmother, arrives in an alternate history of Detroit in search of her missing granddaughters. What she discovers is that she has arrived in a city where strange and magical things happen. There is pollution, poverty, racism and the children rule over their own kingdom in the trees.
The Ravine Society is introduced in Part 2 when a multitude of new characters are brought into the story.
I was fine up until that point.
All in all it is a story of survival, community, protection and persistence in the face of an uncertain future.
It felt like a dark fairytale!

[Darryl Suite · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oof, this is the first miss of the year for me, and it breaks my heart. This is this year’s Canada Reads winner. And she’s a Quebec writer, so I was rooting hard for this one. I’m crushed.

Going into this, I knew it was considered a polarizing read. And truth be told, I’m more attracted to those types of books. I’m open to the challenge. But yeah, it didn’t exactly work for me.

What works? The prose sings; it is absolutely incredible (I was feasting). And the premise was such a unique take on the dystopian genre. This had the potential to be a powerful and engrossing journey.

It started off strong with the first section revolving around Gloria’s tortured search for her missing granddaughters and the mystery of what happened to her murdered daughter.

But then the second section switches gears by following a ragtag group of wayward children living in the wild, reminiscent of LORD OF THE FLIES. The kids have their own made-up language and it’s difficult to keep track of all of them (there are so many of them with nicknames more increasingly outlandish as we go). It was all so overwhelming and distracting and muddled and kinda tedious. In all fairness, I feel like the language in this section would sing in Québécois French, the original text of the novel. That language has a musicality to it that perhaps the English translation was missing. Don’t get me wrong: I do not think it’s the translator’s fault. Sometimes that’s just the way it goes. Perhaps I should’ve tackled the original. That’s on me.

My interest definitely waned during the second section and the momentum was lost. And once that happened, it made it a laborious experience to continue.

A revelation at the end should’ve hit me like a sledgehammer, but it only left behind a muted murmur because I was a bit checked out by that point.

Leroux wrote the book she wanted and I commend her for it, but unfortunately it wasn’t one that spoke to me. Despite this, I am desperate to tackle another Leroux novel because the prose really snagged me.

[Nadirah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Future" by Catherine Leroux (tr: Susan Oriou) is set in an alternative history where France never surrendered the city of Detroit. It focuses on Gloria, an elderly woman who has come to the Fort-Detroit neighborhood after her daughter passed away in unusual circumstances. Determined to find out what happened to her daughter and missing granddaughters, Gloria's presence is not always welcomed in the neighborhood, but soon she befriends the people from the neighborhood's community. With the information she gained from them, Gloria soon discovers the reason behind her daughter's death and her granddaughters' disappearance which sets her on a separate journey to Parc Rouge, where abandoned & orphaned children have co-opted the space to become theirs.

This novella is an interesting read made doubly enjoyable due to its beautiful writing & translation. It straddles the line of speculative & dystopian fiction and reminded me a lot of Lord of the Flies in some ways (though the children are less murderous than they are adaptable in their survival efforts).

In a world where an entire neighborhood has been abandoned due to racial & economic injustice in real life (see: Puerto Rico [1, 2, 3]; New Orleans [1, 2]; Flint, Michigan [1, 2]), it's not hard to imagine how things can break down in such a way that makes the dystopian outlook in "The Future" looks like a distant possibility that shows what could happen if things are not addressed sooner rather than later. Despite the bleak message, however, there is also hope in the overarching narrative. "The Future" shows that human resilience remains a constant when the going gets tough. It also reveals the importance of community and connection that harkens back to the older days of agriculture-based society before massive industrialization and capitalism forced a change of mindset to a more individualistic 'me, me, me' culture and outlook.

There is also an undercurrent of magical realism portrayed in here which adds to the symbolism of the narrative when it comes to the children's POV. This departure from Gloria's POV will seem a bit disconnected from the overall story initially, but I thought it presented a great counterpoint to how children view the world and society before their advent into adolescence, wherein they slowly lose their optimistic naivety.

All in all, all of the above themes merged together beautifully in "The Future", and it's one of those reads that will stay with me; the longer I stepped away, the more it made me think about different aspects & perspectives of the issues presented within. A recommended read for fans of translated literature who are also in the mood for some speculative/dystopian fiction.

Thank you to the publisher & Edelweiss for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) For such a monolithic title, this has a limited stage: a few derelict districts of the ailing city we know as Detroit, Michigan – but in Leroux’s alternate version, it remained part of French Canada, with lingering Indigenous influence, and so is known as Fort Détroit. No doubt she was inspired by the many vacant properties that characterized Detroit in the 2010s; there’s even a ruins tour bus. In her Fort Détroit, a handful of determined adults cling on in their own homes, but the streets and parks have been abandoned to animals and to a gang of half-feral children who have developed their own nicknames (Adidas, Lego, Wolfpup), social hierarchy and vernacular. Worlds meet when Gloria determines to find her granddaughters Cassandra and Mathilda, who ran away after their addict mother Judith’s suspicious death. At the same time, her neighbour Eunice wants to find out who ran her father down in the street.

Despite their fierce independence and acts of protest, the novel’s children still rely on the adult world. Ecosystems are awry and the river is toxic, but Gloria’s friend Solomon, a former jazz pianist, still manages to grow crops. He overlooks the children’s thefts from his greenhouse and eventually offers to help them grow their own food supply, and other adults volunteer to prepare a proper winter shelter to replace their shantytown. Puberty threatens their society, too: we learn that Fiji, the leader, has been binding her breasts to hide her age.

I expected to be reminded strongly of Station Eleven, and while there were elements that were reminiscent of Emily St John Mandel’s work, Leroux’s is a more consciously literary approach. The present-tense omniscient narration occupies many perspectives, including that of a dog, and the descriptions and musings are more lyrical than literal. Where another author would site high drama – sixtysomething Gloria’s night quest, a few children rafting down the river – Leroux moves on swiftly to other character interactions. What did bring Mandel to mind was the importance of art during societal collapse: the children spin nursery rhyme mash-ups and fairytales, Stutt rescues a makeshift library and insists on Huckleberry Finn going along on the river journey, and Solomon plays the piano again after decades.

The opening mysteries of death and disappearance are resolved before the end, but don’t seem to have been the point. The Future is more subtle and slippery than many dystopian novels I’ve read in that there’s not really a warning, or a message here. Instead, there’s an intriguing situation that opens out and alters slightly, but avoids resolution. It’s all about atmosphere and language – I was especially impressed by Ouriou’s rendering of Leroux’s made-up dialect via folksy slang (“She figgers she’s growed-up”). I loved the details and one-on-one moments more than the momentous scenes. On the whole, I found the story elegant but somewhat frustrating. You might be drawn to it if you enjoyed To Paradise or the MaddAddam books.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am torn. The author has a wonderful ability to use language, especially metaphors and similes. They are fresh and appropriate. However, I feel that sometimes there are just too many of them, layered on top of each other.

I enjoyed the writing a lot for the most part, but found that it got a little over the top at times. Now, bear in mind that this has been translated from french so that may have affected some phrasing.

The characters persevere, the kids make do with what they have, the adults live by planting their own food. It's certainly full of clear messages about our society, our treatment of each other and the planet. There is a lot of great content. But for me it's tinged with some confusion while reading as well as the technical details mentioned above.

[Florence Darveau · Rating 4 out of 5]

L’avenir est un roman que je qualifierais de contemplatif. On y parle beaucoup de la nature qui reprend ses droits sur une ville abandonnée et le personnage principal vit tout en lenteur, au rythme des journées. Même si celle-ci mène une enquête sur la disparition de deux enfants, on sent bien cette espèce de lassitude qui semble l’envahir face à tout ce qui l’entoure. Le contraste n’en est que plus grand lorsque nous rencontrons la bande d’enfants au langage coloré qui vivent cruellement sans parents ni quelconques adultes. La force de ce roman réside justement dans ce langage libéré de toute contrainte, dans le portrait de ces enfants sauvages aux noms évocateurs, seuls, mais débrouillards.
Un livre idéal pour celleux qui aiment se laisser aller dans des lectures enveloppantes aux allures de Sa Majesté des mouches, saupoudré d’un peu d’éclats de magie ici et là.

[Tracey]

DNF at 25%. I don’t know if there’s anything wrong with this book other than the fact that my attention keeps drifting and I never feel like reading it. 🤷‍♀️ Since it’s a Canada Reads title and 64 people are waiting for it at the library, it feels like the responsible thing to return it rather than keep slogging. If Heather O’Neill really sells me on it on the show then I’ll give it another shot someday.

[Caroline Gauvin-Dubé · Rating 5 out of 5]

On ne peut être que chamboulée, émerveillée par l’univers, les personnages étranges, beaux, magiques de ce roman. Quelle grande raconteuse, que cette Catherine Leroux!

[Karine Mon coin lecture · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quelle écriture. Lire Catherine Leroux est l'un des petits plaisirs de la vie. On savoure!

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

In an alternate future, Fort Détroit was never surrendered by the French. Gloria comes to the city after her daughter dies and her two teen granddaughters disappear. As she tries to work out what happened to her family, she becomes integrated into the community built by the local adults, who grow their own food and provide medical care and emotional support to each other. But a parallel community has been constructed by the children living in the wild forest of Parc Rouge and on the banks of the river Rouge. The children’s world is harsh – any betrayal of information to adults is punished by exile, and members of the group are automatically banished after reaching puberty. But it’s also a world marked by co-operation, caring and ingenuity, as the kids sabotage machines set to pull down Détroit landmarks, and organise raids on local greenhouses for fruit.

Catherine Leroux’s The Future, translated from L’avenir, its French original, by Susan Ouriou, is beautifully hallucinatory, but also has some very real-world things to say about how we care for each other across generations. Interestingly, Leroux has stated that one of the major reasons she set this book in an alternate, Francophone Détroit is because ‘I wanted to be able to write dialogue that felt closer to the dialects and the French that I hear around me. And if I’m writing about English characters, but I’m writing their dialogue into French, then it can’t really take that shape’. This rings true to me: alternate Détroit didn’t feel like it played a major role in the story, apart from the occasional awkward history-dump, but the language is gorgeously colloquial, so props to Ouriou for preserving that in the English translation. I loved how Leroux moves seamlessly between her characters’ heads, and I think she’s also managed to write the only dog point-of-view that I didn’t find hopelessly sentimental.

I’m always drawn to stories where children create their own worlds, but they tend either to assume feral chaos (Lord of the Flies), calculated horror (‘Children of the Corn’) or make the kids sad victims of circumstance who just need an adult to take charge. Leroux’s take is so much more nuanced. At first, we think these children’s communities are a short-lived thing born of trauma and displacement, but it turns out they have a much longer history in the Parc Rouge. The kids have their own way of understanding their changing environment, which, as with the indigenous Peruvian community in Natasha Pulley’s The Bedlam Stacks, is not ‘scientific’, but is none the less logical. There’s a touch of magical realism in The Future, but it’s possible that this is also just the children’s way of interpreting the strange things that are happening around them. I loved that the adults end up offering help to the children without taking away their autonomy, and that the focus is on a wider network of family relationships, including grandmother-granddaughters, rather than on the nuclear family unit.

I had a few issues with The Future: the first section, which focuses solely on the adults, is very slow, as the children are really the motor of the story, and this delayed introduction also meant that it took me a long while to tell many of the child characters apart. But these are minor quibbles. This is a thoughtful and wonderfully atmospheric book, and I’m so glad to see it on the Carol Shields longlist.

Thanks so much to Nicole Magas at Zgstories for sourcing a free e-ARC from the publisher for me.

[Mara Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Life jumps off each page of this beautifully written book. Life in all its joy, fear, horror, regret, hope, kindness and cruelty.

The fantasy city of Fort Détroit, francophone since Champlain explored North America, provides an apocolyptic setting that is both fictional and informed by the real geography and challenges of Detroit. I've lived there and loved that very real city, so I share that with insight and care.

The gorgeous magical realism, a hallmark of much Quebecois fiction, infuses the book with grace even as children live in the woods in a child-led society not unlike Lord of the Flies. Nearby, adults live in abandoned homes, trying to make sense of the chaos even as they are also off-kilter. Connections are tenuous, advanced, rejected, longed for.

Leroux has so much insight and compassion for each of her characters. It feels as if she has lived each of the ages and trials of which she writes, not an easy feat.

The book is suffused with struggles of society and individual relations. How we seek, at all ages, to make sense of it all; find resolution; make peace; support one another; offer our gifts and our forgiveness. She explores how we come to clarity -- sometimes in a dream; sometimes with a seance; sometimes as a flash of insight; sometimes not at all.

Mainly, I loved her style. Even when the subject matter was dark, the language was beautiful. As she focused specifically on the two daughters at the end of the book, the colour of the language exploded off the page for me and I found myself gasping at the beauty of her writing.

I admit to finding myself lost in the sheer quantity of characters. I decided at times to try to figure them out and, at other times, to just let them go. Lego or Adidas? Not sure. But Whale and Bleach, Solomon and glorious Gloria were as clear as friends.

Huge kudos to the brilliant translator, Susan Ouriou, who enabled me to fully enjoy this in English, saving me from a clunky understanding in French.

Honestly -- Canada Reads isn't perfect, but they picked a perfect book in this one! And in Denison Avenue by Christina Wong. Another must-read.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars
The Future written by Catherine Leroux and translated from the French by Susan Ouriou was shortlisted for 2024 Canada Reads Award.

In an alternative history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism - and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, and at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance. When a strange intuition sends her into the woods of Pare Rouge, where the city's orphaned and abandoned children are rumoured to have created their own society, she can't imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love - together.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une uchronie post-apocalyptique tissée dans une langue riche et imagée. Pour amateurs-trices de zeugmes et de Peter Pan.

[MissBecka Gee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not enjoy this.
It had a lot of potential, that cover alone drew me in.
In an alternate reality where the francophones held Detroit, children all Peter Pan wild like, and a bit of the dystopian funtimes.
All sounds awesome right?
Except the execution was not there for it.
I was so bored that I actually fell asleep several times while trying to read this.
In the middle of the day, after a great night's sleep and with no ailments to make me sleepy.
That has never happened to me before.

[Brigitte Messier-Legendre · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 étoiles. Un roman étrange, atmosphérique et très bien écrit! J’ai eu de la difficulté à entrer dans l’histoire, puisqu’on est un peu laissé à soi-même pour comprendre ce monde spéculatif d’un Détroit demeuré franco suite à la Conquête, qui se retrouve en complète décrépitude. Des bribes d’informations se dévoilent petit à petit, mais il faut accepter d’être un peu perdu pendant un bon moment. Les personnages (très (trop?) nombreux) se sont finalement révélés très attachants (surtout les vieux), et j’ai passé un bon moment!

[Melinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea that the book was set in a Detroit that wasn’t ceded by the French intrigued me but in the end it was only a device to write the story in French. There was a big loss in not having that have more impact. We got a Detroit very similar to what we already have but French. Yet if France hadn’t ceded Detroit then it might not have ceded Ontario. If Detroit was French it might not have had the Black renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the great migration occurred. That might have meant the automobile industry didn’t come to Michigan. I couldn’t keep that out of my mind as I read it. When you change something as impactful as the colonial power in the timeline then you have to be conscious that everything else will be different. It was a missed opportunity.

At a book event author explained that she tried to create a unique Detroit French dialect and did a ton of research to do it. That gives me a lot more context. In the translation from French to English the translator tried to preserve that change by having unusual anglicisms and syntax. That may be why people here struggled with the flow. I did. I appreciate the craft of the book but it could have been so much more.

[Daniel Grenier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je me suis laissé bercer par la beauté de l'écriture de Leroux, au point parfois, je l'avoue, d'en perdre des petits bouts de l'histoire.

[Kate]

I’m not sure how I feel about this book, but I will say I spent the majority of the time thinking, “what is this book trying to do” and I had a sense of relief when I finished it.

[Alexandra Chubachi · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars feels a little harsh, but the last half of the book I was just hustling to read to get it over with. I had high hopes for the Canada Reads 2024 winner, and maybe those expectations skewed my experience.

There WERE some really lovely passages and moments of prose. But they were lost in how disconnected and confused I felt. I didn’t know why we were doing what we were doing or going where we were going, didn’t feel particularly engaged with any character. I typically am a fan of magical realism but couldn’t grasp the magic or intention of it here. Why it was set in a still French Detroit was unclear to me.

People make mention of things being lost in the translation from French but I’ve read lots of translated works and…this feels more of a story building issue.

Ah well.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not for me. I did find the paradox of the title really interesting: The Future advocates for a return to communal living in harmony with nature, which seems anti-future—or is it?

“Cassandra” by Taylor Swift was playing in my head through the entire final section.

[Mei · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The conviction, watching one's child, that one is witnessing a lifeform more alive than any other. A surplus of life concentrated, against all logic, in a tinier being. An observation accompanied by its opposite: The fear of that child dying. The very idea that such an exponential life could come to an end.”

Part dystopic novel, part Lord of the Flies, this beautifully written book captures life, death, rebirth/resurrection and the resilience of communities within marginalized neighbourhoods that have been forgotten/abandoned by the rest of society and those with power.

I thought the setting of Fort Detroit, a reimagined world where Detroit was never surrendered by the French, really interesting. I started the book believing it would be mainly about Gloria, a woman searching for her missing grandchildren following the murder of her daughter, but found there was so much more. While it took a while to get used to the writing style, especially in part 2, I found myself growing fond of the characters. The writing forced me to slow down as I needed to pay closer attention to fully understand what was happening but overall I enjoyed the experience. I even found myself feeling touched by the brief sections told from the dog’s perspective. I don’t think I fully understand The Future but I know that I liked it. I’m not sure who I’d recommend it to.

[Frédérique | Adapt&Cie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merveilleusement bien écrit et imagé plus qu’il ne le faut. Ce roman fait réfléchir, nous amène à remettre en perspective le confort de notre chez nous, de notre petite trame individuelle qu’est la vie.

[Kelly (miss_kellysbookishcorner) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Title: The Future
Author: Catherine Leroux
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 2.75
Pub Date: September 15, 2020

T H R E E • W O R D S

Lyrical • Imaginative • Meandering

📖 S Y N O P S I S

In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.

When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I'll admit I was a tad surprised when The Future ended up on the Canada Reads shortlist for 2024. Upon reading the synopsis, there were books on the longlist that I felt fit the theme of 'one book to carry us forward' more than this one did. All of this left me reflecting and intrigued on learning how the books/panelists are selected each year.

Divided into four main parts, this alternate history/dystopian story doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of what the future may look like. It started off strong with Gloria's perspective, yet as I moved onto the children's perspectives it started to lose me. Oftentimes I didn't really know what was happening, and I honestly didn't really care. On a personal level some of the content hit very close to home, and I had to set it aside multiple times in order to regroup. There were even times when I found the language highly insensitive and off-putting.

The writing is really what kept me reading. Catherine Leroux (and Susan Ouriou as translator) had wonderful control and use of language and metaphor, almost to the point of it being overwritten. One of the hesitations I had prior to picking it up was definitely this being a translated work (French to English). Somewhat surprisingly, it's very well done. The prose was absolutely captivating and believable.

The Future isn't something I'd have picked up outside of Canada Reads and it certainly wasn't easy to get through - there is just so much struggle and harshness. It was the last of the five contenders I read, and while they ultimately band together in order to survive (a real sense of community), the fact it isn't grounded in reality (rather an alternate history) really detracted from the idea of carrying forward. In my opinion, this will be eliminated early, yet I will be interested to see how the debates go, because I have a feeling Heather O'Neill will have some solid arguments as to why she thinks this is a book to carry us forward.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• Canada Reads devotees

⚠️ CW: mental illness, addiction, drug use, drug abuse, overdose, death, child death, death of parent, child abuse, poverty, violence, sexual assault, animal cruelty

[Jim Puskas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rarity: a dystopian novel that did not, as is usually the case, cause me to flee in a combination of horror and resentment. Perhaps positioning it within a fanciful “what-if” mode — rather than simply looking at an apocalyptic future — made it simultaneously closer to our familiar world and compellingly convincing of a near-future state. And exceptionally good writing helps a lot; Catherine Leroux’s prose is nearly faultless. She deeply explores the state of mind of people under great sociological stress, where there are no longer any accepted rules and they are left with no one to whom they can turn for comfort, guidance or hope. Attempting to decode the trauma her granddaughters must have faced, Gloria submerges herself in near-scalding bathwater:
”Her head is underwater still. Gloria keeps it there. Her throat cries out to open, urgent, her lungs insist on expanding, but she holds on to the little bit of air they still contain. Behind her eyelids, colors go from the black of a confined chamber to the blue of a vein, to the purple of a bruise, then to the red of an open wound.”
Similarly, pre-teen Fiji, burdened with her role as leader of the children’s encampment:
”Everything weighs on her today — the secrets, the fatigue, the pictures of missing children posted throughout the city, the poison in the river, Bleach, authority, and that damn woman who snuck into their camp. She feels like her body is made of fine glass and that mere air pressure could shatter it.”
There is no respite for her: ” In the eye of the cyclone, queens keep watch.”
The feral children exist in a very real and dangerous world that is nevertheless invaded by and colored by childish fantasies, games, role-playing. Leroux places her half-wild children squarely in a toxic wasteland — much of which still exists today around the mouth of Michigan’s Rouge River, oozing out its poisons into the Detroit River and thence into the waterway beside which so many of us live today. The past, the present and the future fade into one another in this novel.
The story foretells the final retrogression of a civilization driven to ever greater exploitation of the earth and its lifeforms, including humans — most starkly demonstrated by the military attempting to hunt down and capture the children as terrorists. They have learned that it’s only through their own determination to reject adult society and all of its rules that they may survive. The question remains: With the best will in the world, can they be “rescued” or “tamed”? Is there hope for “the future”?

[Coralie Bru · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je n'ai pas réussi à suivre cette histoire comme je l'aurais aimé, je suis restée très à distance de tous les personnages. C'est beau à de nombreux moments, les descriptions de la lumière en particulier donnent une vraie atmosphère crépusculaire, j'ai aussi beaucoup apprécié certains dialogues .mais malheureusement ces éclats de style et les descriptions poétiques ne m'ont pas suffi. Je rajoute : Ce qui semble être le motif du roman, avec les enfants, me paraît arriver très très tard... et il y a eu trop d'enfants d'un coup ! J'ai senti tout de suite que là encore j'allais échouer à m'intéresser. Bref je me suis sentie perdue et rétive malgré mon enthousiasme en le commençant .

[Yuyine · Rating 5 out of 5]

L’Avenir est un très beau roman dont la plume poétique nous emporte dans ce Détroit parallèle plein de drames mais aussi, entre les larmes, de beauté. C’est un récit de renaissance, un récit pour un futur plus doux. Lent, déstabilisant, il peut désarçonner mais son final de toute beauté mérite de poursuivre jusqu’au bout.

Critique complète sur yuyine.be!

[Molly · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is something very good here. I loved the story! And the world building was great. All of the sections about the “adult” characters, to standalone, I think I would have enjoyed this book a lot more. However, the chapters from the perspective of the children in the woods just didn’t connect with or interest me, personally. Given that was nearly half the book, I found myself “skimming” often.

[Marie Barr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really? This was Canada reads winner? Not sure who votes for these books, which I usually enjoy. This book was all over the place. I liked the first half, ten the second half was like it was thrown in a blender and pushed on high. 2 stars for Gloria’s perspective in the first half. Could hardly finish this book.