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Summary
Summary
National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson returns to future Earth in a sharply wrought satire of art and truth in the midst of colonization.
When the vuvv first landed, it came as a surprise to aspiring artist Adam and the rest of planet Earth--but not necessarily an unwelcome one. Can it really be called an invasion when the vuvv generously offered free advanced technology and cures for every illness imaginable? As it turns out, yes. With his parents' jobs replaced by alien tech and no money for food, clean water, or the vuvv's miraculous medicine, Adam and his girlfriend, Chloe, have to get creative to survive. And since the vuvv crave anything they deem classic Earth culture (doo-wop music, still life paintings of fruit, true love), recording 1950s-style dates for the vuvv to watch in a pay-per-minute format seems like a brilliant idea. But it's hard for Adam and Chloe to sell true love when they hate each other more with every passing episode. Soon enough, Adam must decide how far he's willing to go--and what he's willing to sacrifice--to give the vuvv what they want.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-The vuvv came in peace, offering new technology and life-changing medical breakthroughs. Yet their presence on Earth has slowly eroded Adam Costello's small town. Joblessness, illness, and food scarcity are the realities of his shaky existence, and his only solace is in his painting. When Adam begins to date Chloe, they realize that there's a moneymaking opportunity in their relationship. Taking advantage of the vuvv's fascination with 1950s-era American life, Adam and Chloe plan to film themselves going on old-fashioned dates. The aliens are willing to pay top dollar to watch these episodes. But the teens' love soon turns to animosity, and their grand plan holds dire implications for their families. This sharp, compelling, slim volume packs a punch. Anderson's vivid world could be a mirror for many American communities today. Poverty and its impact on food, health, and daily life are rendered in stark detail. Adam's passion for painting and his idealism in the face of the commercialistic vuvv are a moving nod to the power of art to transform lives. Despite the heavy subject material and pervading sense of doom, the book ends on a hopeful note, making this a solid choice for a variety of readers. VERDICT An engrossing, speculative look at life in the margins, this is a first purchase for libraries serving teens.-Erinn Black Salge, Morristown-Beard School, NJ © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Anderson (Symphony for the City of the Dead) sets this biting and brilliant satire on a near-future Earth where an alien race called the vuvv has brought advanced technology and cures for disease-and ushered in the collapse of Earth's economy. Adam Costello, a 15-year-old artist beset by gastrointestinal illness, and his family are among the many desperate for money and work. Reluctantly, Adam and his girlfriend, Chloe, broadcast an exaggerated 1950s-quaint, pay-per-view version of their romance to the vuvv, who are entranced by "classic" Earth culture-doo-wop music, still-life paintings, and the notion of true, everlasting love. With Adam's relationship with Chloe imploding, his illness worsening, and his art gaining vuvv attention, he must decide whether to bend to the whims of the vuvv or stay true to his humanity. Adam narrates in gloomy, vignettelike chapters whose titles ("Autumn in a Field Near a Discharge Facility") give the sense of each scene existing as a painting in itself. The vuvv, described as resembling "granite coffee tables: squat, wide, and rocky," are only interested in the parts of Earth culture they choose to acknowledge, and ignore the sweeping damage they've inflicted. "I just love the human race," one of the vuvv tells Adam, patronizingly. "You people are so much more spiritual than we are." Anderson takes issues of colonialism, ethnocentrism, inequality, and poverty and explodes them on a global, even galactic, scale. A remarkable exploration of economic and power structures in which virtually all of humanity winds up the losers. Ages 14-up. Agent: David McCormick, McCormick Literary. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Humans inhabit the bottom echelons in this brief satirical novel of alien invasion that envisions a scenario more whimper than bang. Adam, a talented artist, lives with his mother and sister after his father abandons the family. When the 1950s-culture-obsessed vuvv landed years before, people were taken in by their promises to supply advanced technology and medicine, not understanding that they'd soon be obsolete, impoverished, and, like Adam, who suffers from a debilitating intestinal illness, without any means to pay for medical care. In short vignettes titled as if they are pieces of fine art, the bleakness of this new reality is expertly renderedas in an early chapter in which his mother is roughed up by a fellow job seeker who threatens to burn her "motherfucking house down" if she persists in applying for the same part-time position. When they decide to rent out part of their house to another family, Adam and their daughter, Chloe, fall for each other. Monetizing their connection by broadcasting their 1950s-styled romance for the vuvv becomes mightily complicated when the relationship sours. The ethnicities of the main characters are not specifiedthe only time race is textually indicated is a passage where white people are shown rioting on television and blaming Mexican workers for stealing their jobsbut references to European art and the way Adam and Chloe slide into a clichd movie vision of the 1950s both imply they are white and add further layers of interpretive complexity to the book. Resplendent with Anderson's trademark dry, sarcastic wit, this brief, complicated read serves as a scathing social commentary and, as the title indicates, an interrogation of free market economics. (Science fiction. 14-adult) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Some fear that hypercapitalist technocrats, under the guise of altruism and progress, are fleecing the world; Anderson (Feed, 2002) stretches this premise to deliriously enjoyable extremes. In this novella-sized offering, an alien race known as the vuvv has overtaken the universe by promising to put an end to suffering with advanced technology. For most people on Earth, things don't pan out as planned. Sure, rich people in collusion with the vuvv get to live in sky mansions, but everyone stuck on the ground must contend with devastating poverty, a ruined environment, and the sundry humiliations of catering to a ruling class shaped like coffee tables. Enter Adam, our teenage hero, who happens to be a sarcastic artist suffering from considerable gastrointestinal distress. He and girlfriend Chloe start bringing in decent cash by streaming fake dates to vuvv audiences enamored with the notion of '50s sitcom romance. But when they break up in real life, can they keep up the illusion of being in love? What humiliations will they endure to keep their families from going hungry? Throw in a romantic rival, an interplanetary art contest, and plenty of scintillating details about the Lovecraftian horrors of the vuvv, and you've got the makings of an elegant, biting, and hilarious social satire that will appeal to dissatisfied, worried readers of all ages.--Williamson, Eugenia Copyright 2017 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
A Small Town Under the Stars Under the stars, a small town prepares for night. It is almost eleven o'clock. Down in the boxy houses, people are settling in for bed. Car headlights crawl through the tiny streets. The bright streetlamps on the town's main drag illuminate empty parking. The businesses are closed for the day. The hills are dark. All of this is seen by two teens up on some ledge, on a road called Lovers' Lane. They're parked in a fifties fin car and "necking." She's in a tight sweater; he's in a Varsity jacket. The view over their town, the place they grew up, makes them sentimental, and they grind together over the gearshift. "Gee, Brenda," says the boy. All of this is seen by the creature in the bushes. Stems of some kind of terrestrial growth block his goggle-eyed vision. He sweeps the branches away with a claw. He observes the two hairy snacks writhing in their metal box and wonders what their mashing together could mean. His breath is loud. With an unsteady lunge, he moves forward. Branches snap. He is on the pavement. He is beside the car. All of this is seen by hundreds of teens, watching in horror. Boyfriends and girlfriends squeal and lean into each other. Couples grin. They're parked in fifties fin cars and "necking." The movie screen above the field of parked cars is reflected in their windshields. Of course, when the interstellar invasion came, it looked nothing like that. A Small Town at the Foot of the Rendering Sails There is no full night in our town because the rendering sails of the vuvv stretch high into the air and glow with a dull yellow light. My girlfriend Chloe and I are lying on the grass next to the school gym, watching the sails up in the sky ripple in some invisible electromagnetic tide. Gazing upward together, we hold hands and I say, "It's so beautiful." I think for a minute and then say, "Like your hair. Blowing." "Adam," she says, "that's a really nice thing to say." "Yeah," I agree, and I tilt my head so it's leaning on her shoulder. "Gee, Chloe," I say, and turn to kiss her cheek. As it happens, Chloe and I hate each other. Still, my head is next to hers, which I would gladly, at this point, twist off with my bare hands. All of this is seen by hundreds of vuvv, paying per minute. The Landing Site: A Statue of Glass Pillars in Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois I've never been to see the Vuvv First Landing Site. We all saw the landing on television when it happened, though, and for a school project in eighth grade I drew the monument that was built there on Wrigley Field. I used colored pencils and copied the picture off a cheap hologram bookmark. It was one of the first times I tried hard to draw clear glass. When I look at my drawing now, I can see a lot of the mistakes I made in getting the reflections and distortions right. The pillars look bent just because I didn't know how to do perspective well yet. We were all surprised when the vuvv landed the first time. They'd been watching us since the 1940s, and we'd seen them occasionally, but we had all imagined them differently. They weren't slender and delicate, and they weren't humanoid at all. They looked more like granite coffee tables: squat, wide, and rocky. We were just glad they weren't invading. We couldn't believe our luck when they offered us their tech and invited us to be part of their Interspecies Co-Prosperity Alliance. They announced that they could end all work forever and cure all disease, so of course, the leaders of the world all rushed to sign up. For a year or so after the first landing, one of their ships hovered above Wrigley Field to mark the spot where they first greeted us. Now the ship's gone, and there are luxury condos floating there instead. Everyone complains, because they block the sun, which was supposed to fall on the glass columns of the Vuvv First Landing Monument. A few years ago, some guy in cargo pants was caught tipping over one of the monument's pillars. At first, everyone thought he was doing it as an anti-vuvv protest. Later, it turned out he was just a douche. Excerpted from Landscape with Invisible Hand by M. T. Anderson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
