Meg Howrey

A very fun read. Music, mystery, intrigue and sexy aristocrats. You'll either love or hate this book, I think. It has a quirky style that I enjoy, but (judging from other reviews) just grates for some.

The author interview here on Goodreads is a fair preview of the weird-ity you might expect. If it makes you smile, then this book might be for you. https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/3526759-an-interview-with-magnus… (plus d'informations)

PRE-SPOILERS PART: Meg Howrey has done perhaps the best job of relating the current thinking/engineering of getting humans to Mars. And she does so without going into in-the-weeds tech jargon. But if you are at all familiar with the various humans-to-mars mission ideas swirling around these days, you will recognize almost everything she describes and appreciate the accuracy. But more importantly, The Wanderers is about the interior lives of the astronauts and their families. It is obvious to me that Howrey has read multiple astronaut autobiographies as well as works by aerospace psychologists. She really understands how astronauts think. If you grew up wanting to be an astronaut, or have ever seriously pursued the dream of space travel, or have done work that supports those who travel in space, then you will find beautiful prose here that may seem like someone pulled secrets from your soul.
Oh, and lot of the dialog is damned funny.
[Audiobook note: The reader, Mozhan Marno, is quite good and handles the various accents (Russian, Japanese) superbly.]


SPOILERS PART: Like [book:The Martian|18007564], The Wanderers has no villain. The conflict and suspense come merely from the situations in which the astronaut trainees and their family members find themselves. I find this immensely refreshing. I also appreciate that Howrey avoids most of the all-too-familiar tropes of Mars-mission fiction: the last-minute crewmember swap-out, the crewmember who goes nuts, the catastrophic dust storm, some bio-contamination from Mars that threatens the crew, etc. Of course, she avoids this in part by writing not about an actual mission to Mars, but a simulation of one. Or does she?


SUPER-SPOILERY PART: Seriously, don't read this until after you finish the book.



No, really. I meant it. Have you finished the book?



Okay. It was just a simulation, and Sergei, Helen, and Yoshi would have been able to quickly realize why based on physics.




You really finished the book? Because I'm gonna drop the spoiler here. Alright then.






In the story, the astronauts are told that Prime engineers have created tools that weigh 38% of what they do on Earth to help with the simulated feeling of being on Mars, and have weighted the boots of the astronauts' Mars exosuits to prevent injury-inducing running and jumping while working outside. But whether inside the "lander" or outside on "Mars", there is no way to change the rate at which things fall. If the astronauts had really been sent to Mars, they would have known it by the simple fact that anything dropped would fall to the ground much more slowly than on Earth.

BUT it is to Howrey's credit that I didn't even start worrying about this question until almost the last few pages of the book. I was so swept up in the story that my skepticism was dampened. There is some seriously good writing here.… (plus d'informations)

Much darker and more ballet-y than Howrey's more recent ballet novel (They're Going to Love You, which I loved) and also less original -- it felt pretty of a kind with others in the "woman's descent in mental illness" genre. Which isn't to say that it wasn't good! It was very good. I found the voice of charmingly cynical narrator Kate both compelling and entertaining, and the descriptions of Gwen's illness were genuinely quite eerie (the mouse thing! what the fuck!!!). If you're looking for something creepy and thriller-y, but not an actual honest-to-god thriller, this would be a good pick.… (plus d'informations)

A year ago, I was going my rounds of the local little libraries when I found what sounded like a very good book. Ballet! Fraught relationships! A mysterious event from the past that the narration will coyly avoid clarifying until the split-timeline climax!

This is not that book. (That book was The Ballerinas by Rachel Kepelke-Dale, and it wasn't any good at all.) This book is what I wanted that book to be. Which is very lucky for me, because I bought this book new (!!!!) for full price and everything.

Meg Howrey does a great job at constructing emotionally complex relationships between her characters. Carlisle's desire for her fathers' love and loyalty—and her complementary neglect of her relationship with her mother—felt realistically painful and naive. And the invisible weight of misogyny, both in her personal and professional relationships, felt—for lack of a better word—very real. Reminiscent of the feeling I had reading Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels—yes, this person gets it, yes, this person lives in the world I live in. It's not quite a favorite, but I'm sure I'll be recommending it people. It would make a great book club read.

As for my one and only negative note: the more books I read, the more I sour on nonlinearity. It feels like a cheap ploy for tension, like the author doesn't trust the narrative they've constructed to stand on its own merits. I think I would have liked this better if it were told more straightforwardly. The emotional consequences of Carlisle's estrangement from her fathers would have been weightier if the narrative lingered there longer, instead of resolving the estrangement as soon as we understand why and how it happened.… (plus d'informations)