The Future

The Future / Catherine Leroux
trans. from the French by Susan Ouriou
Windsor, ON : Biblioasis, c2023.
309 p.

The Future, which I read about a month ago, has just won this year's Canada Reads competition. I didn't think it would -- translations aren't always the most popular choices for things like Canada Reads. But it did, and I'm happy with that result. 

It's a dystopia of sorts; more of an exaggerated and hyperextended vision of the decline of civilization. This one's set in an alternate Detroit which was never surrendered to the Americans, and boasts a French community. Which also houses a wild band of ragged, self-governing children. I felt like this was a mix between Lord of the Flies and Peter Pan's Lost Boys, with a bit of Station Eleven mixed in for good measure. And perhaps tinges of Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring as well. 

There are many, many characters to follow. We start with Gloria, who moves into the house where her daughter was recently murdered, looking for answers, and for her two missing granddaughters. She builds a friendship with the woman next door, and once Gloria encounters the band of children in the deep woods of a local park, they both try to build a tentative connection with the children. Gloria is sure that there is a link to her granddaughters somewhere among these children (and as it turns out she is right). 

There are houses that regenerate from ruins, community gardens built by a stubborn old gardener and his cohort of associates, wild children in various conclaves, poisoned rivers, hit and run tourism, and many more peculiar and unsettling elements to the story. It's a ride. You just have to let yourself sink in and follow the story as it goes. I'm not sure that there is a strong conclusion but there is a sense of hope as some of these children see a new future in cooperation with the adults who work to care for them. The world here is rather vaguely proposed so it's uncertain to me what will come after the end of the book, but there is a strong sense of communities helping themselves. 

I actually liked it much more than Leroux's first book which I read quite a while ago now, The Party Wall. I'm glad to have had the chance to try another book by this author. And I guess many Canadians will be reading it also, thanks to the Canada Reads effect. I hope it finds its audience!