The Meadows
(Sprache: Englisch)
A queer, YA Handmaid's Tale meets Never Let Me Go about a dystopian society ravaged by climate disaster and bent on relentless conformity. When Eleanor is accepted at the Meadows, a beautiful oasis with dark secrets, she must struggle to save herself and...
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A queer, YA Handmaid's Tale meets Never Let Me Go about a dystopian society ravaged by climate disaster and bent on relentless conformity. When Eleanor is accepted at the Meadows, a beautiful oasis with dark secrets, she must struggle to save herself and those she loves from a life of lies. A raw and timely masterwork of speculative fiction.Lese-Probe zu „The Meadows “
Chapter 1I glance up at the eye, a shining black bead atop an old telephone pole. I walk briskly through pelting droplets, head bent. A cascade of water skims off my hood.
I show my face again to the bead on the awning of a shopping center, and again to one on the bus shelter where people huddle like cattle.
Each eye, memorized.
Not to see them. For them to see me.
My face.
I ve become very familiar with it since I moved to the city. When I arrived a year ago, I found a book about the muscular system, fallen behind the desk bolted to the wall in my room. The apartment block where I live was a girls college dormitory once. The book must ve slipped back there, forgotten by some long-ago student when women could still attend universities.
I hid it beneath my mattress, memorized the meaty striations bisecting my face, the delicate fish fin between eyebrows, the birds nests encircling each eye. In front of the mirror hours of practice working each muscle like a marionette. Now I can make myself look like anything at all.
The face I show the cameras is my most faithful: placid, thoughtless, empty.
I arrive downtown well before my next adjudication. To pass the time, I sit in a café, scan my calendar. Colored squares fill the screen different adjudications around the city, documents of profiles and background information on each of my reformeds.
My eyes close for a moment, and my ears range the café plasticore plates sliding against each other, clink of utensils. A soundscape I never could have imagined where I grew up. In the Cove, only the shush of the ocean, carts on a rocky roadway, the scrape of a tiny knife slipping into the tight mouths of oysters, occasionally slipping into the pad of my thumb, a silent gush of red falling through my hands.
Seated nearby, a man some years older than me scrolls through the endless, bright feed on his screen. I watch his fingers fling past pictures. Palm trees forking the sky. A baby held in a man s arms like a loaf of
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bread. A woman sitting on artificially green grass in the high-necked, bulbous dress popular with young wives.
And then, an image unlike the others. A white building, rounded and hut-shaped, fashioned from opaque material. Against a backdrop of marshy jungle, the building glows. It makes a light all its own.
I stand from my chair. Water that had collected in the folds of my raincoat unfurls to the ground. I barely notice. My eyes, transfixed. That photo. A facility building. Not from the Meadows, but another, shrouded in overgrown foliage. Above the screen, the man suspends his fingers, engrossed in the image too.
Can t believe it s been well over a decade since I last saw the Glades, the photo is captioned.
The Glades, I speak, and the man with the screen whips his head around, eyes wide. He doesn t know me, doesn t know if he s been caught.
The Meadows, I say, placing a hand on my chest.
His shoulders dip, relaxing.
I haven t met many of us, I tell him, though of course it s not true. By now I ve met dozens. Hundreds.
The man scans the café for anyone who might overhear. Not that you d know, he mutters.
He s right. If we ve made it here, we re reformed. What happened in the facilities, what they did to us, are closely guarded secrets.
A gold band encircles his finger. For a moment, his eyes trail to my own wedding finger, bare. They haven t matched you yet? he asks.
I shake my head. They made me an adjudicator. My time s up in a year, though. An adjudicator s term is two years and already I m half-done. Then a ring will be my fate too.
You can t have been out long, he says.
I pull my shoulders back, trying to appear my full eig
And then, an image unlike the others. A white building, rounded and hut-shaped, fashioned from opaque material. Against a backdrop of marshy jungle, the building glows. It makes a light all its own.
I stand from my chair. Water that had collected in the folds of my raincoat unfurls to the ground. I barely notice. My eyes, transfixed. That photo. A facility building. Not from the Meadows, but another, shrouded in overgrown foliage. Above the screen, the man suspends his fingers, engrossed in the image too.
Can t believe it s been well over a decade since I last saw the Glades, the photo is captioned.
The Glades, I speak, and the man with the screen whips his head around, eyes wide. He doesn t know me, doesn t know if he s been caught.
The Meadows, I say, placing a hand on my chest.
His shoulders dip, relaxing.
I haven t met many of us, I tell him, though of course it s not true. By now I ve met dozens. Hundreds.
The man scans the café for anyone who might overhear. Not that you d know, he mutters.
He s right. If we ve made it here, we re reformed. What happened in the facilities, what they did to us, are closely guarded secrets.
A gold band encircles his finger. For a moment, his eyes trail to my own wedding finger, bare. They haven t matched you yet? he asks.
I shake my head. They made me an adjudicator. My time s up in a year, though. An adjudicator s term is two years and already I m half-done. Then a ring will be my fate too.
You can t have been out long, he says.
I pull my shoulders back, trying to appear my full eig
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Autoren-Porträt von Stephanie Oakes
Stephanie Oakes
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Stephanie Oakes
- Altersempfehlung: Ab 14 Jahre
- 2023, Internationale Ausgabe, 448 Seiten, Maße: 13,7 x 20,9 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Dial Books
- ISBN-10: 0593619633
- ISBN-13: 9780593619636
- Erscheinungsdatum: 04.09.2023
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
"This beautiful and important book is dystopian YA at its finest, and its themes of queer resilience and community will resonate for many years to come." BCCB (starred review)[One of] the best YA novels hitting shelves . . . More necessary and timely than ever. This story of state-run schools in a post-climate disaster world that teach select young women to be perfect wives and mothers to help repopulate society doesn t feel as alien or far away as it once might have. Timely and thoughtful. Paste Magazine
In the style of Kazuo Ishiguro, details [are] dabbled out in tiny, delicious morsels and flashbacks . . . The writing is painterly, yet tight; the book ties up every detail . . . A haunting dystopian amalgamation for the 21st century. Superlative, powerful, and timely. School Library Journal (starred review)
"Oakes employs evocative prose and worldbuilding shot through with equal parts melancholy and hope to craft an intelligent dystopian tale that proves a biting interpretation of contemporary issues surrounding conversion therapy, homophobia, misogyny, and racism." Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The Meadows is built with extraordinary parts stunning language, complex characters, and the most exquisite heart. It s a stop-you-in-your-tracks book, a reach-inside-and-grab-you book. I love its beating, beaming essence that we are all good, and deserving of love, just as we are. A story of pain, injustice, love, resistance, and hope, this glorious book will lodge inside you and make you feel everything. Helena Fox, award-winning author of How It Feels to Float and The Quiet and the Loud
Gripping . . . A YA Handmaid's Tale [that] toggles seamlessly between past and present. [For] readers who enjoy dystopian books with feminist themes and stories that highlight the power of queer community. Booklist
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Cogent and incisive in its remarks on our present world, [The Meadows is] timely and gripping, [with] tension at a constant simmer and a new revelation always around the corner. Kirkus Reviews
"I was utterly swept away from page one. Atmospheric and unsettling, The Meadows is a dystopia that belongs in every collection. This is an incisive examination of the quiet violence of conversion therapies and the revolutionary power of self-love." Natalie C. Parker, award-winning author of the Seafire series
"A profound story with fantastic writing that will be a great companion-read to classics like Margaret Atwood s The Handmaid's Tale. And once you have finished reading it, do go back and read The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly [by Stephanie Oakes], which also tackles a lot of important discussions about what it means to be a teen girl in our world." Teen Librarian Toolbox
The Meadows is a book that I cannot prise out of my head. This is one spilling over with emotions: anger, sadness, and a tiny kernel of hope. It is a quietly devastating book, [and] Eleanor is a protagonist like no other. She has a fierce passion and desire to be loved and accepted, but it is veiled beneath years of programming and a paranoia from a world determined to squash her. . . . The narrative structure of moving between then and now within the Meadows and outside allows [for] hints beyond this dystopian reality [to] the dangers of climate change. Oakes writing is incredibly captivating. Every page carries a keen sense of urgency and suspense . . . Sometimes a book just makes you ache. The Meadows is one of those books. The Nerd Daily
Cogent and incisive in its remarks on our present world, [The Meadows is] timely and gripping, [with] tension at a constant simmer and a new revelation always around the corner. Kirkus Reviews
"I was utterly swept away from page one. Atmospheric and unsettling, The Meadows is a dystopia that belongs in every collection. This is an incisive examination of the quiet violence of conversion therapies and the revolutionary power of self-love." Natalie C. Parker, award-winning author of the Seafire series
"A profound story with fantastic writing that will be a great companion-read to classics like Margaret Atwood s The Handmaid's Tale. And once you have finished reading it, do go back and read The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly [by Stephanie Oakes], which also tackles a lot of important discussions about what it means to be a teen girl in our world." Teen Librarian Toolbox
The Meadows is a book that I cannot prise out of my head. This is one spilling over with emotions: anger, sadness, and a tiny kernel of hope. It is a quietly devastating book, [and] Eleanor is a protagonist like no other. She has a fierce passion and desire to be loved and accepted, but it is veiled beneath years of programming and a paranoia from a world determined to squash her. . . . The narrative structure of moving between then and now within the Meadows and outside allows [for] hints beyond this dystopian reality [to] the dangers of climate change. Oakes writing is incredibly captivating. Every page carries a keen sense of urgency and suspense . . . Sometimes a book just makes you ache. The Meadows is one of those books. The Nerd Daily
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