The Past is Red by Catherynne M Valente, publishing day 20 July 2021. Tetley loves the world. Tetley tells the truth. Both these things get her in so much trouble. This is the story of a very optimistic girl that embraced its dystopian home, Garbagetown, and eventually ended up learning one secret too many and becoming a jaded outlaw. Still, she doesn’t give up hope. A very optimistic, yet also slightly disturbing novella that makes you think. My one point of criticism, it was sometimes hard to follow the timeline.

The attentive Cat Valente reader will notice that this novella’s title goes really well with a short story of hers called “The Future is Blue” and if you liked that story, you will be happy to know that this book is actually a sequel to it. The novella’s first part is a reprint of said short story, but part two is all new and continues the story of Tetley Abednego, the most hated girl in Garbagetown.

As with many of Valente’s books, I don’t quite know where to begin my gushing. There will definitely be gushing because although she has been my favorite author for a number of years now, she still proves that she can get better with every book, no matter how short. I had hoped for a big chunky novel from her this year, but if we get two great novellas instead (the second one that’s coming out is called Comfort Me With Apples and sounds super creepy), I’ll be more than happy.

Tetley Abednego lives in Garbagetown, a heap of garbage approximately the size of Texas, that floats around on the Pacific. Tetley was born as the elder of twins in Candle Hole. Her house is made of wax, her early childhood is defined by the smells of the scented candles that make up her neighborhood. But Garbagetown has a lot more to offer, if you have an open heart and Tetley’s surprisingly sunny disposition. To her, it’s the best place in the world. Granted, that’s not too difficult to achieve when the rest of the world is… well, ocean. You see, many years ago, humanity from before – appropriately called Fuckwits – majorly fucked up the planet and now everything’s dead and submerged and all that’s left is Garbagetown and maybe a few Misery Boats.

"There are some things you just can’t ever get back. Years. Gannet birds. Hubands. Antarctica."

Tetley grows up in Garbagetown and we get to witness the most formative of her experiences, like catching her name (I absolutely adored that piece of world building!), kissing a boy for the first time, discovering that even in Gargabetown, there’s still something like classism, and of course, the Thing that leads to her becoming the most hated girl in Garbagetown. It’s the reason she wakes up every day to a new slur smeared on her door, to people beating her up, it’s the reason she has to just take it and even thank her violator. The short story just on its own is already brilliant. Filled with clever world building and deep insights into human nature, it draws you in with this mystery, jumping back and forth between times, and on the sly delivering some highly quotable lines – as Valente always does.

The second part, The Past is Red, continues Tetley’s story and uses the same flashback/flashforward style as did the short story. And while it’s always clear and obvious what time setting we are currently in, this storytelling device is so well employed that it provides a few good twists along the way. Valente builds up certain expectations, or at the very least suspicions about Tetley’s past – like her mentioning she was married but isn’t anymore, or her talking to someone called Big Red, or the fact that she now lives on a boat – but the blanks filled in by the reader aren’t necessarily the whole truth. Discovering what really happened was such incredible fun and made me go “Oh thaaaaaat’s why” a few times. There was gasping and grabbing of the head. There were moments that left me open-mouthed and even more moments when I told my boyfriend “This is so gooood”.

Apart from the amazing world building, which is all the more impressive considering it’s achieved in a matter of about 50 pages, I have to talk more about Tetley as a character. She’s not stupid, not at all, but she has a naive sort of love for Garbagetown and everything about her way of life. Her parents don’t really love her – all their love goes to her twin brother with whom she shares a close bond – but Tetley doesn’t let that bother her too much. She adores her home, she loves her society, although she still sees its inequalities. She is the kind of person who is simply happy with what she has. No envy, no greed, just a pure, unadulterated joy for life. And if you think living on a heap of garbage is terrible (as did I), I promise Tetley will change your mind! She will make you love Pill Hill and Electric City, Toyland and her native Candle Hole. She will make you just as excited about discovering an old tape as she will make you care about her Oscar the Grouch backpack. It’s a strange world, Garbagetown, but after reading this book, I’m kind of taken with it.

Because there are several really great twists in this story, I won’t say anything about the plot. But I promise that, unlike some Valente novels, there is a plot. It has a beginning, a middle and an end, it is vastly readable, even funny at times, and always clever. For people who haven’t read the short story, even the end of that is a knife stuck in your chest and I believe everyone should have the pleasure of being stabbed in the heart (metaphorically speaking) by Cat Valente at least once in their lives. The second, much longer, part of the book offers some more twists, none of which I saw coming (yay!) and all of which hit me deep in the guts. Like all the best stories, this one sneaks up on you. It makes you love the characters without even noticing, and then it reveals things that change everything. Afterwards, just leaves you there, not quite knowing what to do with yourself. I’m not making this sound pleasant, but that’s actually my favorite kind of reading experience. The one where you can’t stop reading but you don’t want the book to end. And once you’re finished, you feel deflated and alone, like you just lost your best friend.

In a book set on a post-apocalyptic, post climate change Earth, mentions of how gloriously humanity messed things up are to be expected. But Valente doesn’t go the obvious route here, either. She never outright says what exactly happened – we all know how things will get that far, how our way of life can and probably will escalate. We just keep doing what we’re doing now and we’ll go down in Gargabetown history as the Fuckwits who broke the world…

" Seems like someone should have thought of a rule that goes Do Not Fuck Your Only Planet to Death Under Any Circumstances. Seems like that should have been Rule Number One."

I wish I could tell you more about all the other amazing characters like Goodnight Moon, Mister, or King Xanax, but I want to give as little about this book away as possible. Let me just say that, despite my extremely high expectations, Valente managed to surpass anything I hoped to get from The Past is Red. It is a book that should be depressing but is utterly, utterly filled with hope. Its protagonist goes from cheerful Pollyanna to a much more mature adult who just can’t shake that hope habit of hers. She lets us in on a world that, although strange to us, is normal to the people who live in it, and she shows us that you don’t need much to achieve happiness.

Laslty, let me gush about that cover by John Hendrix. It is not only eye-catching and just plain gorgeous, it’s actually filled with a lot of detail that’s important in the book. I can’t wait to hold the paper copy in my hands!

MY RATING: 9/10 – Damn near perfect!

This was a very interesting read for me. I'm not sure I've read anything like it before. It's very hopeful, yet it takes place on a landmass made out of garbage, separated into sections named after what kind of garbage resides there. Our main character did something for the betterment of humankind, but in doing so made her a pariah. She basically must put up with abuse from anyone at any time yet can't object or fight back. Its message reminded me of the movie Parasite in that they both share the dangers of having too much hope. At which point does hope become dangerous? Well in this story it's when people decide to Invest their dwindling resources into finding a land mass that doesn't exist. This was a quick yet fun read with a good message. Don't be a fuckwit (it will make sense if you read the book), read it!

In a futuristic world where climate change has drowned all dry land, a colony of survivors have made their lives on a floating pile of medicine bottles, discarded trophies, candy wrappers, and the detritus of a million lives aptly named "Garbagetown". In this dystopian future, Tetley Abednego prays to Saint Oscar the Grouch and scrapes out a life in a house made out of candle wax until a floating Shakespearean carnival docks in Garbagetown and wreaks havoc on her small community by sowing misguided hope. This novella was profoundly unsettling and deeply raw, juxtaposing the bleakness of a climate-ruined future with murmurs of hope as fragile as a butterfly's wings.

This story is all classic Valente; her supple, sprawling prose and an unrivaled imagination meld to form nearly poetic descriptions of the floating wasteland Tetley calls home. Tetley herself is heartbreaking: as much a combination of broken parts as the world around her, yet still naïve and bright and resolutely hopeful, even as she struggles to be the voice of realism in a world desperate for change. I really enjoyed the structure of this, as the story weaves back and forth between the past and the future and blurs the line between reality and wishfulness. Tetley herself proves to be a slyly unreliable narrator, leading me to question her observations and sometimes read between the lines to understand her feelings and motivations. Overall, Catherynne M. Valente has crafted an utterly unique take on the post-apocalyptic genre the grapples with questions of responsibility, climate change, technology, and the evils of late-stage capitalism.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Phew, this was a lot. It was an intensely heavy read that felt like it was at least twice as long as its actual page count. It's a story of post-apocalyptic life after the climate collapses. It was a story about human hardiness, and it pulled no punches.

It was a beautifully-written story about how humanity would survive, because it always does, even if it lived on scraps of what it had, even if nothing lasts forever and nothing you love returns to you. It was about the indelible mark that late-stage capitalism has left on humanity -- to the point that if children survive until 10, they go on a quest to get so covered with garbage that a stranger insults them by calling them by the brand name of one of the pieces of trash, and that becomes their name so you have names like Tetley (our protagonist) or Goodnight Moon (the love interest). Tetley lives on a floating island of trash, organized into its useful components and made into districts in that way.

It is absolutely a story about the cruelty of humanity, full of violence and beatings and implied or referenced rapes. It is a story about community, but doesn't let you forget that one form of community is mob mentality, and that if there is someone everyone can bond together to hate, they're still bonding. It's the story of how there will still be things to love and be passionate about no matter how desperately you are looking for a better world in either the past or the future.

I am not entirely sure it sold me on being hopeful. The protagonist is, or says she is, but by the end there is so much bitterness and hate I am not sure it can be extracted from her hopefulness. And it's a promise that humanity, being humanity, will survive in one form or another -- as it has, as it still does, and we can't forget that even now in our current era there are cultures which are surviving in what is to them a post-apocalyptic era where people destroyed their traditional way of life. I know from reading the afterlife that the intention of this story IS a solid belief to cling to that there is no end, there is only change, but I am not sure the world that was presented and the lives that are being lived are that of people who <i>have</i> hope. Which ... is fair, really.

Powerfully and beautifully written and I honestly don't know how I feel about the world it presented. It was a real gut punch, though, especially the way it concludes.

The commentary in this story... omg.

It is hard to believe that in such a short book a reader can be transported into such a diverse world... our future. And how scary it is.

This is a very politically charged story, and honestly very timely and important. I applaud Catherynne M. Valente on the ability to grip readers with such raw emotion and a sense of urgency.

Our planet is crying for help, and this is a beacon to bring us together.

If I told you that a book about a despised young woman who lives on a vast floating patch of garbage in a post-global-warming, mostly destroyed and depopulated, drowned version of Earth was also a beautiful book about the universal need for stories and connection, and filled with joy, humanity, and hope- would you believe me?

This novel is funny, heartbreaking and yes, ultimately, hopeful. It took me a few pages to get a feel for the strange landscape and colorful language that our narrator, Tetley, revels in, but once I finished the first short chapter, I was completely drawn in.

Highly recommended for readers of sci-fi and satire, as well as anyone looking for some much needed hope among what sometimes feels like inevitable ruins.