![]() This is a haunting work in the spirit of The Handmaid’s Tale-but Melamed more than holds her own. While it may be difficult at first to differentiate among her many characters, by the end they each become clear. Melamed is a masterful writer, and she establishes a hauntingly vivid atmosphere. Suffice it to say the apparently placid surface of their world begins to roil. Vanessa, whose father is a wanderer, devours the books he brings back from his travels. To put off puberty, Janey starves herself. In their own way, the girls begin to resist their society. The customs and rules of her island become clear only gradually, so the truth of that world seems to blossom, horribly, in the reader’s mind. In her debut novel, Melamed, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, has written a terrifying work of speculative fiction. Children run riot during the summers, but, once they reach puberty, girls undergo a summer of “fruition” before they are married and begin breeding. In this world, women and girls live tightly proscribed lives. The only ones to leave the island are the “wanderers,” who travel to the mainland-the “wastelands”-to bring back supplies. The girls and their families are all descended from 10 “ancestors” who founded the island society. ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s not clear what year it is or when, exactly, the island was colonized. Vanessa, Amanda, Caitlin, and Janey live on an island, at an indefinite distance from the U.S. A band of young girls grows to undermine the world they were born into. ![]()
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