As a reader and a writer, I’m a no-nonsense kind of person. I stick by the rules, and rarely stray. So a few months ago, when I was at a bookstore, I saw Moira Young’s Blood Red Road, read the first pages, and promptly returned it to the shelf.
“The day’s hot. So hot an dry that all I can taste in my mouth is dust. The kinda white heat day when you can hear th’earth crack.
We ain’t had a drop of rain fer near six months now. Even the spring that feeds the lake’s startin to run dry. You gotta walk some ways out now to fill a bucket. Pretty soon, there won’t be no point in callin it by its name.
Silverlake.”
I celebrated my birthday recently, and my friend gave me this book, raving about how incredible it was and how I should give it a shot. (She was unaware of my previous hesitations.) So I started reading BRR, and I’ll admit, it took a little getting used to. I came up with the idea of reading the dialogue aloud so I could hear the dialect, and it really helps. It’s also different because there’s very little punctuation. An example:
my own personal rendering of Saba 🙂
“Saba always thinks what Lugh tells her to, says Emmi.
I do not! I says.
Yes you do, she says.
Well, says Mercy, maybe it’s time you started makin up your own mind about things.”
I remember when I wouldn’t read the original edition of Stephanie Perkins’ Anna and the French Kiss because it didn’t have normal quotation marks, and I missed out on it for two years because I wouldn’t get over the punctuation. The same is true with BRR. The punctuation–or lack thereof–can be unsettling.
Saba and the rest of the characters live in the future, in the desert of the United States. Society is not like the twenty-first century.People aim to survive, and most of the time, survival isn’t based on a stellar education. So Saba, the narrator, isn’t well-educated. She uses words like “‘ud” for “would and “afeared” for “afraid”. There’s nothing that cannot be understood: all of her language reflects our language today, just slightly rougher.
If you’re contemplating reading this book, I say read it! BRR has a great story and wonderful, dynamic characters that make you want to cheer. The entirety of the plot is wrapped around Saba’s loyalty to her brother Lugh, and the trouble she gets into on her journey.
On the back of the cover, BRR is compared as a Mad Max + Hunger Games mashup and I can’t think of anything more accurate. It’s an intense, raw, gritty book with a warrior for a protagonist. And better yet, Young executes Saba’s growth beautifully.
If you want to read something different and fresh, find Moira Young’s Blood Red Road. The plot is fast-paced, interesting, and intense. The characters are relatable, hilarious, and dynamic.
BRR is one of those books that needs to be recommended personally, mainly because if it’s picked up randomly, it may anger people or distress readers if they didn’t expect the change-of-grammar going into it. So consider this your recommendation! Don’t let the different writing style scare you: give it a shot!
I have Book 2 on my shelf already 🙂
I admire Allen’s character dynamics and development because not only is every single character unique, but the diversity in this book is staggering. There’s a quiet, ADHD girl, an effervescent dancer, a girl who’s 25% Cherokee, a Brazilian girl, a seriously Samoan boy, and the best part? No one demeans those characteristics. Everyone is different and I love it. A bonus to their differences? Everyone can relate to more than one character and that’s why this book is so awesome (among many other reasons). I could relate to Peyton, Liv, Ana, and Melanie Jane without even trying. Maybe that’s just me, but Allen did a superb job of making these girls real.
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