The Marrow Thieves

The Marrow Thieves - Cherie Dimaline

How do you write about the apocalypse when your people have already experienced it? You draw deeply from the past. Filled with historical parallels and rife with metaphors this book broke my heart to pieces in a beautiful way. Dimaline asks questions worth addressing, especially here and now. How do you survive in a poisoned world? How does your culture persist when it is being devoured? How do you live when you are a consumable?

 

Tapping into the teen survival adventure story vein this book also had the qualities of a zombie apocalypse story. How people are dragged away by the whistling recruiters, the scrounging, the running through the woods, the need for self sufficiency even as found family becomes a lifeline, the constant fear of those mindless creatures coming to consume you in the night. It had all the hallmarks of a truly humanistic zombie tale, except the monsters weren't undead.

 

Episodic yet cohesive we get the stories of these characters lives even as we follow them ever North toward hope. I could go into a deep literary analysis, put my degree to good use, but honestly I don't want to. I thought this book was beautifully written and conceived. Best read as an allegory than straight sci-fi this is the sort of take on annihilation only an indigenous author could manage so masterfully. I was intrigued, horrified, and moved.