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A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
Jan. 31st, 2023 04:13 pmA Half-Built Garden
4/5. It’s complicated. A deeply queer, deeply Jewish first contact story about a woman who is accidentally on the forefront of things when aliens touch down in the backyard of her community attempting to reverse environmental degradation in a post corporate society (sort of). Also she has an infant and is in the process of building a queer, multicultural, maybe poly household.
So I read this in early January, i.e. before my household contracted Covid and norovirus in rapid succession. Which is to say, approximately a decade ago. So it feels like I read this on another planet, and yet, miraculously, I remember it well.
Oomph so good, so chewy, so talky. Also, so very and intensely Jewish, by which I mean that the Jewishness of several of the characters deeply informs their views of the central conflict, and of what first contact should be in a really beautiful way (she says, as someone with only a passing secondhand understanding, so take that as you will). Also, her motherhood matters intensely; if I had read this, a science fiction book about hope and reclamation and reaching out and fighting for what you have all while nursing an infant, back when I was nursing an infant, man I would have cried so hard.
Also, for that subset of you -- you know who you are -- they do bang the alien.
4/5. It’s complicated. A deeply queer, deeply Jewish first contact story about a woman who is accidentally on the forefront of things when aliens touch down in the backyard of her community attempting to reverse environmental degradation in a post corporate society (sort of). Also she has an infant and is in the process of building a queer, multicultural, maybe poly household.
So I read this in early January, i.e. before my household contracted Covid and norovirus in rapid succession. Which is to say, approximately a decade ago. So it feels like I read this on another planet, and yet, miraculously, I remember it well.
Oomph so good, so chewy, so talky. Also, so very and intensely Jewish, by which I mean that the Jewishness of several of the characters deeply informs their views of the central conflict, and of what first contact should be in a really beautiful way (she says, as someone with only a passing secondhand understanding, so take that as you will). Also, her motherhood matters intensely; if I had read this, a science fiction book about hope and reclamation and reaching out and fighting for what you have all while nursing an infant, back when I was nursing an infant, man I would have cried so hard.
Also, for that subset of you -- you know who you are -- they do bang the alien.