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Strange Labour

by Robert Penner

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1911,150,429 (5)1
"The majority of the global population have left the cities and towns to become diggers and work themselves to death in the construction of monumental earthworks. The adults unaffected by this mysterious obsession are part of a dwindling population that survives in the margins of a new society, struggling to construct a meaningful future for themselves. Miranda travels alone across what had once been the American West. After taking care of, and then abandoning a group of dementia patients, she meets Dave, who becomes her travelling companion. Dave recounts his many theories about how and why the apocalypse happened, as they search among the dispossessed for a place called Big Echo. A mesmerizing and uncanny meditation on the meaning of humanity in a universe indifferent to our extinction."--… (more)
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Thanks to Netgalley & Radiant Press for the ARC.

Strange Labour was an eerie read in the midst of a pandemic. It will be an eerie read for you when you pick this one up. Robert Penner has given a fresh, to this reader, approach to the post-apocalyptic. It is unsettling. It is unsettling in its stark imagining of what could happen after the after. For novel in this genre and in this mode Strange Labour is a great slow-burn of a novel. It is the sort of novel to read in the now-times. For those that understand that this pandemic is still around and will take time to be on the other-side of this novel is a really timely of-the-moment kinda read. More than ever, more than when it was actually planned and written this novel begs more than it ever could have imagined for you the reader to look around and see what the other side of the after can look like and what it means to find meaning. Strange Labour is a story about a young woman traveling the post apocalyptic landscape of the United States, witnessing, and interacting with survivors enduring (throes of madness?) world around them all that can never be the same again. The past looms heavy as a burden that holds on to the characters like a spell without magic for its reversal. In all its a road-trip from hell barrelling towards the hope to find meaning. This is not your typical jaunt into the post apocalyptic. It defies in itself the category, post-apocalyptic scifi, in the way that it treats itself.

I am writing this on a sunny clear day in Los Angeles. People are walking outside without masks. People are going about their daily life as if there is nothing happening. Meaning in life. What can an aftermath look like for people who face the obvious with such unaffected denial? From the publishers description "Most people have deserted the cities and towns to work themselves to death in the construction of monumental earthworks." This is not escapist fiction. This is you are trapped and must confront the piece of art as it comments on the world sort of fiction and though you are bleary-eyed and possibly have a headache or are hungover cannot and must not look away. Must, in fact, keep reading. Must, in truth, read and keep the lights on and be miserable the next day for lack of sleep and blow-off other responsibilities to get-through the thing sort of fiction.

And yet the novel is not without hope or humor. It is hopeful in a way. Devastating. To this reader it is a wonderfully written story that is a mirror to the now. It is a mirror to the now that is aimed at the sun and is blinding in its commentary and insight.

Strange Labour is not for everyone. If you can handle it - it will not disappoint. Not by a long-shot. If you cannot tell by now... Highly Recommend. ( )
  modioperandi | Sep 4, 2020 |
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"The majority of the global population have left the cities and towns to become diggers and work themselves to death in the construction of monumental earthworks. The adults unaffected by this mysterious obsession are part of a dwindling population that survives in the margins of a new society, struggling to construct a meaningful future for themselves. Miranda travels alone across what had once been the American West. After taking care of, and then abandoning a group of dementia patients, she meets Dave, who becomes her travelling companion. Dave recounts his many theories about how and why the apocalypse happened, as they search among the dispossessed for a place called Big Echo. A mesmerizing and uncanny meditation on the meaning of humanity in a universe indifferent to our extinction."--

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