The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 20 July 2001
by Cynthia Kadohata
Francesca is an eighteen-year-old girl, on the verge of womanhood in a world plagued with violence, loss, and suffering. It is 2052, and the degenerating trends of urban life have reached a perilous juncture. Water and gasoline are rationed. The rich and poor are sharply divided and segregated. Los Angeles, and the whole country, has fallen into despair and decay. Commentators are calling the 21st century "the Dark Century". It is a bleak future, but all too realistic and compelling. (A future quite similar to that drawn by Octavia E. Butler.) Against this backdrop, Kadohata renders human relationships with passion. Indeed, she does not belabor the details of this future, it merely acts as the ground upon which her characters run. Francesca lives with her aunt, who has just lost her lover to the secretive arrests common among the authorities. She finds love after trials, and explores various sad and usually violent relationships. While the landscape of the near future is grim, heightening the darkness of the relationships, there really isn't anything particularly extreme about their violence. These stories could easily, tragically, have been told within present-day Los Angeles. Jewel is trapped in an abusive affair, people behind walls argue and brawl, the people on the street carry guns, random violence is rampant. Yet Francesca continues to hope. There are glittering moments of truth and courage. There is an ominous tension to the whole book, unreleived in its ambiguous but appropriately quiet ending. It is a peculiar and interesting book.
Also by Kadohata: [The Floating World]