We are all ghosts in the forest - Lorraine Wilson
This book was very confusing since the first pages, we know we are in a dystopian world where the internet has crashed down and created some sort of ghosts from the blurb only and we actually never learned much more about what and how it happened. At first I was frustrated of not having more information, but it actually made sense since the characters didn't seem to know much more either. What mattered to them was how to keep on living in a new world.
The focus was, as I said, not on this new world but on the characters that live in it, mainly Katerina whose point of vue we follow. Through her eyes, we see a "new" society with the flaws of the past (of our present): racism, prone to discriminate and to ostracize those who don't fit their sense of security.
But there are so many people who are different, Katerina is a mixed race single woman who travels, makes remedies and talks to bees, Elisabet who is on the spectrum, a mute boy send by his sick father to someone he doesn't know, a gay father who tries to catch his dead partner's ghost... and people who succomb to a new infection.
Although I was at times lost in the narrative (I don't know if I misunderstood or if some words were missing), I enjoyed this contemplative book. I understood how Katerina was stuck in a place of culpability and responsability to everyone around her. I understood that it was hard in a world like this to properly deal with one's trauma, especially if people around you don't make you feel safe for something as ridiculous as one's skin colour. I thought the characters felt real, but the action was lacking something. But what I really didn't like was what the bond became. It was rushed and it didn't feel natural or coherent with the story.
I saw the author was a biologist and it shows in all the info we get about plants, this will surely please all the witchy girlies out there :) And there's a CAT!
Rep: mixed-race MC (the author is also mixed race but not the same origins), selective mute SC, autist SC, gay SC
TW : death, illness, virus, grief, racism, misogyny, witch hunt, verbal and physical violence
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