feral women and books I loved

[chase_acow]

. .

These are three books I've read in the last several years that have stuck with me. They're kinda feministy, smart science, feral women, burn down society type books, that have such a heavy . . . vibe(?) that it sticks with you for a little bit. None of them are easy to read - they include a lot of content warnings, but by the end I have such a hope in my chest that it feels like it might burst. I'd tag them dark/horror, magical realism, and introspective.

I might also add Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer because the biologist/Ghost Bird is very much the main character I want to go on a journey with.

Anyway, here are the book summaries, and if you have any recommendations for this sort of book, I would love to have them! If you have any questions about them, I'd be happy to chat. And if one of them looks like something you'd like to try, then I am so excited for the ride you're about to go on.


When We Were Animals
When Lumen Fowler looks back on her childhood, she wouldn’t have guessed she would become a kind suburban wife, a devoted mother. In fact, she never thought she would escape her small and peculiar hometown.

When We Were Animals is Lumen’s confessional: as a well-behaved and over-achieving teenager, she fell beneath the sway of her community’s darkest, strangest secret. For one year, beginning at puberty, every resident “breaches” during the full moon. On these nights, adolescents run wild, destroying everything in their path.

Lumen resists. Promising her father she will never breach, she investigates the mystery of her community’s traditions and the stories erased from the town record. But the more we learn about the town’s past, the more we realize that Lumen’s memories are harboring secrets of their own. A gothic coming-of-age tale for modern times, When We Were Animals is a dark, provocative journey into the American heartland.


A Children's Bible
Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders--including Eve, who narrates the story--decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.

As the scenes of devastation begin to mimic events in the dog-eared picture Bible carried around by her beloved little brother, Eve devotes herself to keeping him safe from harm.

A Children's Bible is a prophetic, heartbreaking story of generational divide--and a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation.


When Women Were Dragons
Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.