What Becomes Us

by Micah Perks

A modern-day pioneer in search of a new life, pregnant Evie leaves her abusive husband and lands in a close-knit community divided by local colonial history―a story that goes deep to the roots of the American conscience. Following a near fatal accident, Evie, a mild-mannered, pregnant school teacher, abandons her controlling husband and flees Santa Cruz, California for the wilds of western New York. She rents a farm house on a dead end road in a seemingly ideal, multi-cultural community. When she begins teaching at the local high school, she becomes obsessed with an assigned book, The Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson. This early American classic is the first book written by a woman in the Americas and details Rowlandson's harrowing captivity during King Philip's War in the seventeenth century. As Mary Rowlandson's insatiable hunger begins to fill Evie's dreams, Evie wonders if she may actually be haunted. At the same time, Evie becomes obsessed with her neighbor, a married Chilean immigrant. As she grows more pregnant, her desires/hunger grows out of control, and threaten to destroy her adopted community.

Genres: Fiction

246 pages, Paperback

First published October 4, 2016

About the author

Micah Perks grew up in a log cabin on a commune in the Adirondack wilderness. She is the author of a novel, We Are Gathered Here, a memoir, Pagan Time, a long personal essay, Alone in the Woods: Cheryl Strayed, My Daughter and Me and her new novel, What Becomes Us. Her short stories and essays have won five Pushcart Prize nominations, and three of them are available separately on audible: Ghost Deer, There Once Was A Man Who Longed For A Child, and King of Chains. Excerpts of her new novel, What Becomes Us, won an NEA and The New Guard Machigonne 2014 Fiction Prize. She received her BA and MFA from Cornell University. She lives in Santa Cruz with her family where she co-directs the creative writing program at University of California, Santa Cruz. More info and work at micahperks.com

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

#WomensHistoryMonth draws to a close, and I'm getting in a few novels that are better thought of in women's stories terms...WHAT BECOMES US gets the business today.

4 stars to Outpost19 for another unforgettable tale about a woman taking control of her own life. #ReadingIsResistance to accepting, even in fiction, the idea of the helpless little fembot who needs Rescuing. Micah Perks gets big bonus points for inventing a new narrative trope: third person unborn.

Seriously. Go read it.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Micah Perks’s second novel is set in roughly 2002 and written from the perspective of twins conceived during their parents’ Colorado ski trip. Fleeing their father Steve’s abuse, their mother, Evie Rosen, packs her things and takes up a long-term substitute teaching role in a New York state high school. She loves her farmhouse rental and soon becomes fascinated with The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, which provides a metaphorical framework. The most striking aspect of the novel is doubtless the twins’ first-person plural narration. They frequently reflect on their cramped conditions: “We long for a little more room. We can no longer tumble serenely.” It’s an unfortunate coincidence of timing that the release of Perks’s novel has been overshadowed by Ian McEwan’s Nutshell, which is also told from the point of view of a fetus. Admittedly, What Becomes Us is very strange, but it is nonetheless deserving of attention.

See my full review at Nudge.

(Micah Perks reflects on the Ian McEwan kerfuffle in this essay for The Rumpus. I’m the “journalist”!)

[Abbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

here’s what I will say: I kept expecting it not to hold up, but it did…. it was charming! some of the character crafting was a little characatured but it didn’t necessarily bug me? I also really appreciate/am also just generally pretty amused and entertained by books that wrap historical narratives and truths so inherently with the core of the authors own newly invented fictional story… it’s nearly an art form! I also thought a book claiming to be narrated by in utero twins could ebb pro-lifey, or again just overall corny or sus, but again, it didn’t bother me and that didn’t seem to be the message! The storyline honestly did captivate me and it felt easy to get through

[wade · Rating 3 out of 5]

A convoluted novel told through the eyes of twin unborn babies. Their mother has fled the west coast and their father to get a new start in small town New England. She gets a job as a history teacher at a local school. She establishes a relationship with a married man who she meets. The plot is so garbled that it is hard to describe. There is a local book about a woman kidnaped in colonial times by a local native tribe. This appears to be the only history he teaches in her class. There are too many characters both adults and kids and becomes a mish mask to me.

[Arlo Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a solid, imaginative work of fiction and I can say without doubt, that this author's style and approach has influenced my own storytelling craft.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I had some issues with this book, particularly characters that weren't as fleshed out as I would like, in the end, I can't give it less than 4 stars, if only because of the uniqueness of it. For one, it is narrated by the unborn twins being carried by the main character.
Evie is a school teacher in Santa Cruz, California until she decides to leave her creepy and controlling husband and go where she hopes he won't find her and the babies she is carrying. She ends up in western New York in a rural, tight-knit area where everyone knows everyone else and all of their business. She ends up in a cottage in a small neighborhood of people who are especially close, a man, his sister and her husband, and a few other families that are all friends and/or co-workers. Evie is the outsider but soon enough she is welcomed into the group. Some people are more friendly than others, most notably the married man next door.
Evie is given a job filling in for the recently departed high school history teacher, who was fired after teaching from a controversial book. When strange things start happening to Evie in her house, she thinks someone is breaking into her house and hiding things. Then she begins dreaming about the people in the controversial book as though she was the woman who wrote it. Though there is a lot of strangeness in this book, it's one of the things that make it so interesting.
Just as Evie begins to feel a part of this little community, welcome and appreciated, events occur to make some of her neighbors not like her much. Can she keep living there, where she is happy, or will she have to leave?
The author writes beautifully, making the entire book a pleasure to read.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing was 4 stars, the storyline 3.
This book is written in a poetic manner. It's beautifully written.
Also, it was very uniquely narrated by the twins that Evie is still carrying.

The story is a bit odd. Evie leaves her husband and runs far away. She finds a job at a small town school and a house that sounds like a dream home. At first everything seems perfect.

But her neighbors are very eccentric. She also happens to arrive in town when the previous teacher was fired after teaching a controversial book about Mary Rowlandson and Weetamoo.
I was not familiar with either of these historical figures before this book.

The people in town are all split on whether Evie should be teaching the book. Evie isn't sure herself, especially considering weird things start happening in Evie's house when she's researching Mary and Weetamoo. She even starts to have nightmares about actually being Mary.

On top of this, she is falling for a married man. The book jacket says he's married to "the bravest woman she knows". Is that really Evie's opinion of her? I think she's afraid of her some of the time and impressed by her the rest of the time. I think she's completely odd and not necessarily harmless.

This feels like the reverse of all the stories where a newcomer moves to town, finds it to be the perfect place to live and loves everyone and everything in the town. I've definitely read a lot of books like that.
I think it will remain to be seen whether Evie moving to this town was a good idea and whether it was beneficial to the town or herself.

[Michelle Arredondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a unique and engrossing read. What Becomes Us by Micah Perks kinda had me a bit blown away. I was not expecting anything of what I just read. Seriously!!

The main character of this tale...Evie...preggers, attempting to escape the confines of an abusive and controlling husband for the sake of the unborn baby that she is carrying. Living in California she makes it as far away as New York, in this very tight knit grounded community. She fits right in...makes a life for herself all while coming across some very unique and wonderful people of the community. All is well....and then things get complicated...and it's a wonderful freakin' journey to go through!!

I really enjoyed this book. The writing style is absolutely amazing. 280 ish pages, all poetic and wonderfully written. This is a book you can and will want to get through in one sitting if possible.


Thanks as always to the wonderful peeps at goodreads & Micah Perks for my opportunity to win this book free in exchange for an honest review to which I gladly and voluntarily gave.

[Lisa of Hopewell]

http://bookriot.com/2016/12/19/a-grea...

[Tia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anything Catherine Newman recommends, I read. She recommended this, so I read it. Micah Perk's writing reminded me a lot of Miranda July's writing because it was well-written and studded with morsels of wit and poignancy, amidst a sprinkling of bizarre happenings that I couldn't quite explain. The main character was one you wanted to root for. Her marriage was one you hated, her new relationship one you needed her to have. I got a kick out of River and the things he said. I was grateful he endeared himself to Ms. R.

[Dan White · Rating 5 out of 5]

In lesser hands, the narrators (no spoilers here) would feel like an empty gimmick. In the hands of Micah Perks, they are our engaging guides that lead us through this engaging, funny, sometimes frightening journey that toggles back and forth through time, using an historical memoir as a doorway into the past. Strange, unsettling, and highly original!

[Naomi Tannen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this one of the finest novels i have read. It was gripping from the very first page. Beautifully, skillfully written. A wonderful blend of a modern story as well as a historical one, narrated by twins in utero - I highly recommend it!

[Nicole Holthuis]

Not going to rate it because I gave myself permission to put it aside. I started it thinking it was one thing (in terms of voice, purpose, plot) then it seemed like something else, and then switched again. So gave up.