A review by starrysteph
The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was just … a delight to read. 

“St. Oscar says SCRAM to all that. Just be trash together and love as long as you can and then stop when you can’t anymore and be trash separately.”

We follow Tetley, who lives far in the future when the remnants of the human race float around the ocean in small communities. Her home is Garbagetown, a floating pile of (very organized) trash that was once the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The humans of Garbagetown don’t reflect on the past with reverence. In fact, they call the last generation of land-living humans “Fuckwits”. They messed it all up!

Tetley has done something her community considers unforgivable. And so they are allowed to do whatever they’d like (except kill her), and she has to thank them for it. We get glimpses into her life before this incident (10 years old), living with the consequences (19 years old), and her slightly-more-futuristic circumstances (29 years old). 

“Everyone says they only hate me because I annihilated hope and butchered our future, but I know better, and anyway, it's a lie. Some people are just born to be despised. The Loathing of Tetley began small and grew bigger and bigger, like the Thames, until it swallowed me whole.”

And yet she offers up relentless optimism (NOT naivety, but cheerfulness and resilience) and an incredibly well-executed narrative voice. 

It’s so charming. It’s so thoughtful. It’s creative and a little morbid and somehow makes perfect sense. It’s bleak and it’s shining and I just adored it.

“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.”

CW: cursing, violence, physical abuse, bullying, child abuse, torture, grief, death, drug use, fatphobia, hate crime, toxic relationship, blood, vomit, abandonment, injury, animal death, ableism, sexual content, rape (mentioned), chronic illness