The Returners
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
London teenager Will Hodge is miserable. His mother is dead, his father's political leanings have grown radical, and his friends barely talk to him. To top it off, he's having nightmares about things like concentration camps. Then Will notices he's being followed by a group of people who claim to know him from another time in history. It turns out they are Returners, reincarnated people who carry with them the memory of atrocities they have witnessed in the past. Will realizes that he, too, is a Returner. But something about his memories is different, and with dawning horror, Will suspects that he wasn't just a witness to the events, he was instrumental in making them happen. Set in the near future, with the world on the verge of a new wave of ethnic cleansing, Will must choose to confront the cruelty he's known in his past lives, or be doomed to repeat it...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sins of the past threaten to repeat themselves in the future, as Malley (The Declaration) offers a thought-provoking exploration of mankind's capacity for good and evil. In 2016 London, a fierce nationalistic sentiment encourages discrimination and violence against foreigners and immigrants. Meanwhile, teenager Will Hodges struggles with bouts of rage, his father's mercurial mood swings, his mother's suicide years earlier, unreliable memories, horrifying nightmares, and the sensation that he is being stalked. Soon it's explained that, like his stalkers, he is a Returner, destined to witness and remember historical atrocities while being reincarnated ( We experience the worst that humanity is capable of, another Returner explains to Will, we absorb the pain, contain the horrors ). When Will further learns that his role in past brutalities may not have been passive or unwilling, he rebels against his fate. It's an intensely philosophical study of free will versus predestination and the relationship between past, present, and future, though it suffers somewhat from Will's halting, present-tense narration. The concept is fascinating, and there are enough harrowing moments to hold readers' attention. Ages 12 up.
