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Strange Labour

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This novel is a post-apocalyptic road trip narrative, but quite different from any I’ve read before. It gives a lot to think on, and in particular, the utterly unique image of the “digger” camps/terraces is evocative and haunting. After looking over my reading notes, I can’t help but wish that for all its ambition, this novel had even a little bit more cohesion. I don’t mind a meandering plot or experimental writing, but there were so many thematic threads here that I had a hard time pulling any meaning from the book, in the end. I think the reader could have used a bit stronger guiding hand in this. I also thought there’d be more exploration of the neurodivergence/cognitive difference that has generated immunity to the “diggers’” condition. Ultimately, it’s the unlikely friendship at the heart of the story that has stuck with me from this novel, and for that alone this book was worth reading.

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A terrific debut. I have read a free sample of the book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. It is important for me to place Strange Labour within the vague contours of Eastern Europe for some reason. Eastern Europe, if such a thing exists, feels post-apocalyptic precisely in the sense that it does not fit with various standard post-apocalyptic tropes of existing SF. It feels like all the imaginings, fabulations, extrapolation of post-apocalypticism did not prepare us for this. Maybe in the same way that Laurie Penny wrote about the inability of 'catastrophe porn' or post-apocalyptic entertainment to prepare us for the new reality we are living at this moment.

The world-building - and this is not a building (but a world to be built?), is a work of Strange Labour that exposes us to the effects of abandonment, to the shadows of massive labyrinthine earthworks that suddenly ungrounded everything. I am maybe wrong but I feel there is a deep affinity with the outcome of rapid de-industrialisation, privatization, the dismantlement of welfare systems and abandonment of everything that happened after 1989 in Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Poland etc
And I say this trying to avoid here the entire charge of Tarkovsky's "The Zone" as something immutable and thus zoned-off and specific to a certain time, movie experience etc place, or even historical chain-of-events. In a sense, Penner introduces us to something else, the dispersed drop-offs, the neurodivergent that cannot join the immense Stahanovist voluntariat that has suddenly pushed the majority of humanity into a febrile and inescapable activity.
Strange Labour has some affinity to most of what the best recent new weird (I am thinking about the works of VanderMeer - Borne, The Strange Bird) tells us - that definitely, something major happened, that it affected everything that came after, we just do not know exactly what. It does that without appealing to a biotechnologically-enabled posthuman frame, but at the same time, all the epileptics and the dementia nurses already inhabit that strange space.
In a way, if we try and inhabit the world of Robert Penner it will not save us from disaster, it will maybe spurn us to appreciate its inchoate beauty and scavenge our own cosmology out of its shipwreck entrails. Such a world is not the wasteland of cannibals, murderous mutants and exotic dangers that most of post-apocalypticism abounds, but of care-work to be done, of temporary respite and mutual associations that do not settle into predictable patterns.

Somehow it makes us perceive the strangeness of that absent work. There is something else besides all the brutalist, cosmist mountain top impossible monuments of Communist heyday - of an almost intangible (for now) finality. At the same time, as a good friend wrote about The Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist Party on Buzludzha Peak such remains became very quickly quite alien, almost unintelligible, its purpose unknowable or aims completely and increasingly irrecoverable.
These are just the most scenic ruins apt for majestic ruin porn tourism - but what about this labyrinthine goings-on? What about the lives, the experiences of people who live amongst, en route towards something else? What about that something that is being slowly digested and is digesting these natural-industrial habitats. Environments and habitats are indissociable from an entirety that is not larger than its parts. Many have made a home there, masses of people that once called it a place of work, are now rambling, searching, almost shambling but there is incredible wayside beauty. It is enough there is an after - but this after - has fused so seamlessly with what came all of a sudden as to be unrecognizable.

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This is an interesting debut. While I didn't thoroughly enjoy Penner's novel, it was certainly thought-provoking. "Strange Labour" follows Miranda as she travels West across the U.S. in the wake of a bizarre and mysterious apocalyptic event. While acknowledging many tropes of the post-apocalyptic sub-genre, the author manages to circumnavigate most of them in a way, approaching or referencing them from a subtly different angle. It's not that Penner has created something entirely new or different with this short novel (though he does get points for a unique apocalypse), but he has chosen a different conversation than that which is typically found in this type of story. His prose is long, meditative, even stream-of-consciousness at times, full of simile, symbolism, and metaphor, whether it be dialogue, thought, or exposition.

There is a slow, steady pulse to it all, which gives a sense of cohesiveness across both character and narrative development, and colors the entire feel of the novel. That feel is slow, reflective, and subdued. The development is slow in part because Penner does a nice job of "showing, not telling," letting the reader put together the world and events preceding the story piece by piece. It is also slow by virtue of the fact that the novel is fairly character driven, and indeed, there is not a whole lot "happening" in the story. Even the minimal "action" in the story itself feels ponderous and a bit removed, as if the reader is meant to reflect on the events, more than experience them. Indeed, though I mentioned that I didn't particularly enjoy the book, I don't think I was necessarily meant to enjoy it. Rather, it feels as though the story is merely a medium to facilitate individual introspection and sociocultural extrospection. In that sense, it is a success. However, it's worth cautioning readers that the novel seems quite bleak, cynical, at times even nihilistic. It is open-ended, without much in the way of "answers" or "statements." Its characters may be hard to invest in or identify with. Again, it is slow, and bleak. This may be frustrating to some, and certainly takes the right mood to appreciate. If that mood is yours, "Strange Labour" is well done and worth a try.

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this was a unique read, the characters were great and I really enjoyed reading htis, I look forward to more from the author.

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I have questions, so many questions... but still, I am oddly satisfied with this book. Post-apocalyptic novels are numerous, but this one stands out from the crowd. The characters feel like they are kept at arm's length, which is something I usually don't get on with, but it really works with this story because you don't want them to get too close. The plot is relatively simple with few explanations. More from Mr. Penner, please!

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

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Not bad. I enjoyed the premise and parts of it. But is often slow paced and a little uneven, and because of this it won't be for everyone, It doesn't have the polish of more experienced authors, but story is OK overall. It has an interesting take on dystopia.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!

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Please find my review for, <a href="https://nw0123books.blogspot.com/2020/08/strange-labour-robert-penner.html">Strange Labour</a> here.

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I think I owe an honest review, and I honestly found this one boring. Nothing at all happens in the first three chapters. OK, so our heroine lives in a post-apocalytic English countryside, and spends her days dodging hungry dogs while looking for old cans of beans that others left behind. I don't need a shoot-out at the beginning but I need something to catch my interest.

Also suffers from too many adjectives.

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