The Rending and the Nest
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- 18,99 €
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- 18,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A chilling yet redemptive post-apocalyptic debut that examines community, motherhood, faith, and the importance of telling one's own story.
When 95 percent of the earth's population disappears for no apparent reason, Mira does what she can to create some semblance of a life: She cobbles together a haphazard community named Zion, scavenges the Piles for supplies they might need, and avoids loving anyone she can't afford to lose. She has everything under control. Almost.
Four years after the Rending, Mira's best friend, Lana, announces her pregnancy, the first since everything changed and a new source of hope for Mira. But when Lana gives birth to an inanimate object--and other women of Zion follow suit--the thin veil of normalcy Mira has thrown over her new life begins to fray. As the Zionites wrestle with the presence of these Babies, a confident outsider named Michael appears, proselytizing about the world beyond Zion. He lures Lana away and when she doesn't return, Mira must decide how much she's willing to let go in order to save her friend, her home, and her own fraught pregnancy.
Like California by Edan Lepucki and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, The Rending and the Nest uses a fantastical, post-apocalyptic landscape to ask decidedly human questions: How well do we know the people we love? What sustains us in the midst of suffering? How do we forgive the brokenness we find within others--and within ourselves?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Schwehn's bizarre novel blends seamless storytelling with the raw emotion of a world suddenly turned on its head. After an unexplained "Rending" causes 95 percent of the world's population to disappear, 20-year-old Mira is living in a Midwestern refugee settlement called Zion. A temperate climate, grey skies, and huge piles of objects that people scavenge for supplies replace the world they knew. Mira's friend Lana is the first pregnant resident, and when her baby is born a doll rather than a human, the community is disturbed. More pregnant women give birth to more objects (birds, chopsticks), which provoke conflicted feelings of attachment and revulsion in them. It's only when Mira makes a place for the objects to rest, a Nest for each, that the mothers snap out of their attachments to the objects. At the end of their fifth year in Zion, a visitor named Michael arrives, bringing with him a mysterious confidence that hypnotizes many Zionites, especially Lana. The story culminates in a riveting rescue mission. Schwehn's novel is nerve-wracking in the most satisfying way, and the characters are vivid enough to elevate this story above the well-traveled terrain of postapocalyptic fiction.