This is a post-apocalyptic young adult novel that takes place in a world where climate change has destroyed the land. The coastlines have moved inwards, waterways have become polluted, and populations have become more and more dense as people were forced to migrate inland. In this world, white people have lost the ability to dream. But they have discovered that dreams are captured in the bone marrow of indigenous peoples, so they have started rounding them up, keeping them captive in newly built “schools,” and harvesting their marrow.
There are so many themes in this book, and they are all so important. The two closest to the surface are climate change, and the terrifying historical abuse of first nations people at the hands of residential schools. Both of these issues have deep significance to Canadians – particularly first nations communities – and are very important for young people to learn about and address. But these themes link to so many others in this book. How cultural inheritance is vital to sense of self, the importance of family (both biological and chosen), respect for the environment and every living part of it, and the need to stand up for what is right, no matter how steep the odds.
Although Canada is seen as being the nicer of the American cousins, it still has a shameful history when it comes to treatment of its indigenous peoples – and that history isn’t over. This book’s most important and affecting theme is the prejudice and injustice that overshadows the lives of first nations peoples to this day. It captures a sense of menace that hovers over them and speaks to the overt and less obvious forms of prejudice that are part of the day-to-day lives of first nations people in their own homelands. It’s something that, as much as white Canadians might try to deny it, is a huge source of pain and injustice. There are so many stories of first nations people being abused, violated, brutalized or even dying in ways that are completely avoidable, and that, had it happened to a white person, would have been an outrage. But a lot of the time these stories slip past, largely unacknowledged, and this is something that desperately needs to be addressed and changed.
In this sense this book is a wonderful contender for Canada Reads this year – the theme being “a book to open your eyes.” It does that, for those who are paying attention. So for this alone, it is an incredibly valuable and important book.
I loved the characters Dimaline created in this story. I felt like I knew them and was walking beside them. I also loved their diversity and how that diversity wasn’t made self-consciously, but just felt natural, as it should. And while I’m not first nations, and therefore can’t speak in any way to the accuracy of the representations of first nations beliefs and culture, to this outsider it came across as realistic and full of positivity. If I’m right, then I’d like to think that this book will give young first nations readers an opportunity to see themselves and their communities represented on the page, and we all know how very important that is.
This is where I get to the difficult part of the review, since I thoroughly recommend and appreciate the importance of this book. If I were to separate the content of the book from the story, I would have a few criticisms. There were times when I felt like the plot shifts were a bit forced, and that I could see the author pulling the strings behind the scenes to create drama and forward movement in the story. I don’t know if this would be as apparent to younger readers – maybe it’s a matter of a young adult book that doesn’t work as well for adult readers. But it did take me out of the story towards second half of the book.
The other thing that stood out to me was that there wasn’t much explanation of the white people’s perspective or the issue with dreams. It didn’t talk about what happened to them without dreams, whether it was similar to not sleeping for days and becoming mentally unstable, or if it was a less dramatic ailment. It didn’t go into what was done with the marrow once it was collected. It didn’t talk about how society was structured – how many people had died since the world had begun to fall apart, how many people were left, what their plan was for long-term survival.
I know this may very well have been intentional. I see it as a reversal of the many stories in which “Indians” are evoked as an antagonist without any exploration of them as a people or as individuals, no cultural explanation and complete lack of their own voices. Not to mention the overt white-washing of history. This makes sense as a conscious choice on the part of the author, and I don’t think we needed dual perspectives or any kind of sympathetic portrayal of the white people in the story. Quite the opposite – I thought it was that much more powerful for not having it. But I do think that, from a story-telling perspective, the tension would have been more intense and the story better contextualized with better world-building, which would have needed to include more information about exactly what was going on for the white people. What was driving them? How dire was their situation? How many of them were left? Was the marrow harvested from one person only enough to treat one white person, or many, and for how long? This information would have helped to contextualize the events and characters in the book, and I think could have made it feel even more dramatic because it would have let the reader in on exactly what the stakes were. Without that I often felt as if I was being kept at a distance. I couldn’t step into the world, and I couldn’t fully identify with the characters because I didn’t understand the mechanics of the world they inhabited. As a reader, this is important for me in a story like this one that is rife with suspense and pursuit. I need to feel that tension. I need to be looking over my shoulder, expecting to see the pursuers gaining on me. I need to understand what would happen to me if I were caught, and I need to know how driven my would-be captives are based on their own predicament.
This separation of my criticism of the execution of the story and my reaction to the content and context of it has left me feeling rather conflicted from a review perspective. I finished this book quite a while ago, and started writing this review shortly thereafter, but I’ve been having such a hard time figuring out what I needed to say about it, and how to settle on a rating. The conclusion I’ve come to is that there are different criteria I apply to rating different books. In this case, were the book being judged entirely based on the reading experience and execution, I would have given it a middling rating – probably around 5/10. It was entertaining, I wanted to know what would happen, but I wasn’t fully immersed in it, and I didn’t find it difficult to put the book down and leave it for a day or more before picking it up again. However, I don’t feel that is a just rating for this book in particular. Here’s why.
I think that there are other elements to some reading experiences – not all, but some – that skew the book in one direction or another, quite apart from the book’s literary merit, structure and characterization. These are the underlying social context of the book. For some books the story is well written, I am totally enthralled and can’t wait to read further, and they may even be wonderfully written and have excellent structure. But if there are problematic elements in the book (racism, sexism, negative stereotyping, lazy cultural representation, insensitive portrayal of sensitive topics, etc.) or if I learn that the author is someone I strongly object to, that does negatively impact my view of the book. It’ll bring it down one or more rating points for me, because those are things that matter to my reading experience.
Likewise in the other direction. This book has a few very important things going for it. It has wonderful cultural representation. It also has interwoven diversity (as in not made a point of, just part of the normal everyday lives of the characters). And it is an own voices story written by a Métis Canadian author (and a woman). It addresses vital issues to Canadians – both in terms of historical awareness and reconciliation – and presents young people (first nations youth in particular) with a story they’ll enjoy reading that also gives them a sense of what it really means to be first nations in Canada, which will hopefully encourage open engagement in white readers and evoke a sense of pride for first nations readers. The importance of this cannot be understated. There are not enough positive representations of first nations youth in popular culture, and I will support any I find.
Because of this, I’m left feeling that, while the story taken on its own wouldn’t be one of the best dystopian YA novels I’ve read, the context surrounding the book and the beautiful representations found within its pages make it one I would highly recommend and feel that I need to rate highly.
I would very much value some discussion about this book from anyone who has read it – particularly anyone of first nations heritage who could perhaps shed more light on the choices made by the author regarding the plot and world building. I’d also love to hear any thoughts you have on how the themes and representation in a book affect your rating, if at all. For anyone who has read it, what did you think of the cultural representation? The plot structure? Did you have any issues with it, or did you feel that it worked well as is? This is a great one to discuss, so please feel free to share any opinions, questions or insights in the comments!
In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America’s Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the “recruiters” who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing “factories.” – Goodreads
Book Title: The Marrow Thieves
Author: Chérie Dimaline
Series: No
Edition: Paperback
Published By: Cormorant Books
Released: May 10, 2017
Genre: Fiction, Young Adult, Dystopian, First Nations
Pages: 180
Date Read: February 21-28, 2018
Rating: 8/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.15/5 (1,152 ratings)