Synopsis: In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America’s Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the “recruiters” who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing “factories.”
Title: The Marrow Thieves
Author: Cherie Dimaline
Pages: 231
Genres/Shelves: Young Adult, LGBT
Published: September 2017 by Dancing Cat Books
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This is some deep, dark, damaging shit. Please read this book. I don’t care what your preferred genre is or what country you’re from or what your heritage is.
The future has gone to Hell. The environment is half-toxic. Most of the population is full of mental health issues, the main one being that they can no longer dream. But the Indigenous people still can, and in a world gone insane, they are now being hunted for their bone marrow, which has the ability to restore that.
The main character, Frenchie, takes us through the story, and his background is what launches us into everything. In such a short book (only 231 pages), Dimaline shares so many different characters’ stories and all of them just pack such a punch in a few pages. Miigs’ and Wab’s stories in particular just broke my heart.
I honestly couldn’t believe how such simplistic writing made me feel so much.
For the first 40 pages my expectations were really low. The characters seemed flat and the writing seemed flat. It also sounded like it was going to require a lot of willpower to suspend my disbelief, until it occurred to me that even though this exact scenario would probably never play out (losing the ability to dream and only one race of people retaining it), it is totally plausible that if there was something the rest of the population lost, they could absolutely turn on a race of people that we’ve already put through the ringer.
Some people will deny that, but I have (much to my shame) listened to conversations with acquaintances of friends and family that make me certain that the entitlement they feel over Indigenous lands could extend further than that if the world to were to go this insane. Unforgivable horrors are part of our history and present, who’s to say this couldn’t happen?
Why I thought this was going to be anything like Never Let Me Go, I can’t remember. They are nothing alike. Both are favourites, but to say this is anything like that is a gross comparison. I would like to retract that now that I’ve actually read this.
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