In this masterpiece about freedom, feminism, and destiny, Printz Honor author A.S. King tells the epic story of a girl coping with devastating loss at long last--a girl who has no idea that the future needs her, and that the present needs her even more.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
I wanted to love this book so much
By Tiffany M. Stephens
I wanted to love this book so much, but I couldn't. As a women who is not afraid of the F-word (that's feminism, not the other f-word) I was excited to see a teen book fully embrace modern feminism, but, ultimately it was the feminist message that fell flat for me. The book, in a very small nutshell, is about a young woman named Glory O'Brien who, along with her friend Ellie, gains the ability to see people's future when she looks into their eyes. From these visions, Glory learns that in the relatively near future a law will be passed preventing women from working. This law will snowball into a hellish landscape for women and spark a revolution that Glory herself will be intimately involved in.The book has a strong feminist message, but IMHO, the message gets convoluted. For starters, Glory O'Brien and her father are both self described feminists, yet none of their actions seem to support this idea. Glory's father's feminism is mentioned, but never shown. He doesn't make any overtly feminist statements or go out of his way to help the feminist cause. We have to believe he is a feminist because Glory tells us he is. Glory herself is constantly slut-shaming her friend Ellie (and other women too). She seems hung up on the idea that women are overly sexualized in this country (which they are), but fails to see any sex-positive roles a woman can embrace. Every mention of sex or sexuality in the book is painted as a negative experience.This though, wasn't my biggest problem with the book. My biggest issue was that Glory's visions of the future seemed hokey. As a teen librarian, I've read my fair share of dystopian literature. For any dystopian world to work for me, I need to buy the origin story. How did the world get this way? I like the idea that it might be caused by the dissolution of women's rights, but I just could not buy that this would happen in the near future. Perhaps if King would have spent more time building the case for the coming revolution I might have believed it, but I don't buy that some time within the next twenty or so years a law will be passed that states that women can't work and that enough people will go along with it for it to be in any way successful. I could not suspend my disbelief to that degree. It also seemed convenient that everyone whom Glory came across seemed intimately involved in this future. Seriously, everyone involved in the coming downfall of the United States conveniently goes to Glory's school or spends time at the local mall? The whole situation seemed hyperbolic and contrived, like I was being hit over the head with the message. The problem with all of this is that I don't think it leads to a thoughtful discussion about women's rights and feminism, because everyone, even people who hate the whole idea of feminism, can look at this future and say "That is horrible!" It lacks the nuance for a good discussion.Despite my bitching, there were several things I really liked about this book. I think the story line about Glory's mother and photography are lovely, and I think the language and pacing are spot on. But none of it was enough to for me to get over the overly simplified, mixed feminist message. Perhaps I had too high of hopes for this one. I will recommend it to my students, though. I am interested to see what a young person thinks of the story. My dislike for the book may be tainted by my age and experience.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A book that demands attention
By The Compulsive Reader
Glory O’Brien is graduating from high school, and unlike her classmates, she has no idea what’s next. Both Glory and her father have been in a sort of stasis, unable to move on since the suicide of Glory’s mother fourteen years earlier. Glory’s feminist beliefs tend to ostracize her at school, and her only friend, Ellie, is self-centered heading in a different direction in life. When the girls drink the mummified remains of a bat one night, they start receiving transmissions from every person they look at, seeing their pasts and their terrifying futures.While the premise is not the weirdest thing King has come up with, Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future commands attention. The transmissions that Glory and Ellie receive are equally fascinating and chilling, and the future that Glory tells takes over the entire novel. Glory’s voice is funny, emotionally-charged, and insistent, but she’s a bit lost. Her exploration of a future where society is dismantled not by bombs or wars, but by refusing women equal rights, causes Glory to take a closer look at how she interacts with people in her life. King does a great job at showing connections between people across time and generations, a good reminder that every decision and action has a consequence that we can’t always see. King’s newest book is, as always, memorable and unique.Cover Comments: A.S. King always wins the good cover lottery. I like the black and yellow, and I love the title font. This is a fantastic and attention-grabbing cover.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.Not as Groundbreaking as I Had Hoped
By Stormy(Book.Blog.Bake.)
Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future was oddly political. Based on the summary, I assumed there would be some of that, but I wasn’t prepared for just how political the book ended up being. It felt very much like a forced message to me, which makes it difficult to evaluate Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future as a story, but I’ll try.Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future starts with Glory graduating high school and unsure of what she’s doing next. She’s not going to college(at least not right away), and she’s still dealing with her mother’s suicide, which made both Glory and her dad put their entire future on hold. During hanging out with her only friend, Glory ends up drinking petrified bat ashes(it’s strange, but part of reading a book such as Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future is just going along with the weirder elements), and finds she can see the future, but only in glimpses. As she begins to piece together these glimpses, she realizes what horrors the future might hold.Glory is a difficult protagonists, because one of her defining traits is her passivity. She doesn’t know what to do after she graduates high school, she only has a friend based on convenience, and her only real passion for anything is for photography–a passion she shares with her deceased mom. The photography takes up a lot of the book–there’s several scenes in a dark room, several passages about what Glory sees when she looks through a camera. On the whole, while I appreciate this passive character having an interest in something, the technical bits of photography got boring quickly. I understood why it was added–Glory seeing her world through the flash of a camera and still moments, and how that plays into the fact she sees the future in glimpses–but the way it was done didn’t keep me engaged.That being said, I LOVED the glimpses into the future. After glimpsing into the future via several people, Glory begins to piece together the story–or the history of the future, as it were. In the future, it turns out the Fair Pay Act–which is suppose to make it illegal to pay women and men different wages for the same work–has a loophole that some shady politicians exploit. The end result is a terrifying future in which women systemically begin to have any rights stripped away.I’m of two minds on this. Even though the future that Glory sees seems unrealistic, it’s not impossible. It would have been easier for King to just come up with some sort of whole new system, like a government being overthrown, but instead she uses the political systems and the government that’s currently in place. It makes the future seem all that much more terrifying and also shows how systems humans often think of as infallible are used by incredibly fallible humans. Considering the fact this new power of Glory’s is coming around because she drank bat ashes, there’s something incredibly grounding about this approach.On the other hand, this approach feels extremely message-driven. And it’s not a message I disagree with, by any means(I’m all for literature exploring feminist issues), but I prefer some nuance in my books. Life is often messy and complicated and things often have multiple causes. The future in Glory’s visions seems so. . . straightforward, albeit in a really awful way. It jumps around screaming “look at me! think about these issues!” instead of letting them quietly hang in the back of your mind weeks after finishing the book.To further complicate my feelings on this matter, the end result of Glory’s vision is suppose to be a feminist and empowering message, but it clashes with the high amount of slut-shaming in this book. Now, real people often do slut-shame others, so I’m not always bothered by it in books when it’s portrayed realistically. I had a HUGE problem with it in Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, though. Not only is the future that Glory sees surrounded by women having their rights taken from them, but it’s pointed out in the book that Glory was raised by a feminist father. . . and yet she constantly slut-shames her best friend(well, her friend of convenience), Ellie. It felt out of place for Glory to do this based upon how she was raised plus the visions of the future she saw, and she never really learned from it.That being said, for the most part I actually did somewhat enjoy Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future. It was thought-provoking, if not exactly subtle. It was a fresh take on genres like Dystopia–having a main character who gains the ability to see the future and how the world comes to be that way–which kept me reading the entire time. There’s also something about King’s writing that makes her books easy to slip into, even when I find the subject matter less than fascinating(like the emphasis on photography). In the end, I just feel so conflicted about this book. There were enjoyable aspects, but then there were issues that counteracted those enjoyable parts. I think Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future will be worth it to some readers, but it’s not as groundbreaking as I had hoped.
