The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente

Publication date: July 20, 2021

Date read: July 4, 2021



This book is broken into two parts. "The Future is Blue" was previously published in a short story collection called Drowned Worlds in 2016, and then again in 2018 in Valente's own short story collection called, appropriately, The Future is Blue. "The Past is Red" is a new story. Both are included in this book.

These stories follow Tetley, an outcast who lives in Garbagetown, one of the remaining livable places on Earth after the sea levels rose and covered all the land. (Garbagetown is exactly what it sounds like - a large floating pile of garbage). Tetley is hated by her community for something that she has done, so she sets off on her own to try to find a new place in Garbagetown where she can live in peace.

It's really difficult to write a summary for this book, because it's really short (160 pages) and I don't want to give away any plot points. Especially because this book isn't super plot-heavy... it's mostly just the story of an individual's day-to-day life through a post-apocalyptic world where everyone hates her. There are important things that happen, especially in the "The Past is Red" section, but it's not the kind of book where big dramatic events are happening on every page.

I loved the world building in this book. Valente creates a world that is terrifyingly possible. I would love to read more stories set in this world, both about Tetley and about other characters, or just to read about how Garbagetown was set up after the world flooded. It's amazing how Valente was able to craft such an incredible (and incredibly realistic) place, set in this post-flood future, in so few pages.

The narration is sort of stream-of-consciousness (not completely, but it gives that impression at times), which can sometimes make the story a tiny bit hard to follow - I found myself having to re-read some paragraphs in order to follow the idea. Not a negative, but just a point I have to make. It just takes a little getting used to. But I adored Tetley and following her story. And I didn't mind being in her head.

If you like a good post-apocalyptic story, I recommend this one. It's a quick read, and while not a lot happens throughout the story, the ending packs a real punch. No spoilers, but I loved the ending. It's a wonderfully tragic world to immerse yourself in for 160 pages.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy of this book.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Trigger Warnings: physical assault, death of a loved one

Caution: LOTS of swearing

4 trashy stars! (out today! July 20th!!!)

**Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.**
#ThePastIsRed #NetGalley

Pros
+ future water-world dystopia where people live on floating garbage patches or boats
+ humans of the past (known as "f*ckwits") used up all earthly resources then died out as seas rose
+ Garbagetown is sorted into trash types. For example, Tetley is from Candletown, an area made of candle remnants, which flickers at night and smells good.
+ Tetley (MC) is a girl (10yo), then young woman, then woman (29yo) who we follow as she lives, loves, and protects her beloved Garbagetown despite the consequences to herself.
+ mood: relentless appreciation of life despite how terrible things get
+ Tetley is bisexual/pansexual (has experiences with both a man and a woman on-page) although a label isn't named in-text

Neutral
/ Part of Tetley's daily life is verbal and physical abuse by everyone living on Garbagetown (a floating garbage patch) due to a past action. Despite her being relentlessly positive, it is brutal to watch/read. It may not be suitable for every reader.

Cons
- This book is both positive/hopeful and also very dark/brutalist. The cover and description make it seem like it could be children's or YA lit and IT 100% IS NOT. This is for adult readers only.

TW: parental neglect, physical abuse/assault, verbal abuse (using words like b*tch, c*nt, wh*re...), pill use, death

I received a copy of this book for review from NetGalley. This is a very hard book to describe. I had to take a couple days between reading and reviewing it, and I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about it. The plot is more like a series of memories than one cohesive structure, which is fine, but the strongest piece of the whole is the character of Tetley. She is optimistic against every single odd, fierce, tragic, loyal, and patriotic. She loves whatever she can with all that she has, and she manages to rise back up again and again. I felt terrible for her, and I also felt so proud of her throughout the book. She is the best part of the book, and the reason that I would recommend it.

5 of 5 stars
https://lynns-books.com/2021/07/19/the-past-is-red-by-catherynne-m-valente/
My Five Word TL:DR Review : A modern day fairy tale

I will start this review by saying short stories are not usually my thing, in fact I tend to avoid them because I know I’ll be left wanting more – and strangely enough, I want more of Tetley Abednego, but in this instance it’s not a criticism. I want more because I can’t get enough of this character, this world, the words on the page, the emotional depth and the hope that is delivered in the final pages.

Valente has managed to write a story that on the face of it appears hopeless and yet she infuses this with her own whimsical style and instead of creating something bleak and full of doom comes up with a character who is so supremely hopeful, who sees the beauty in this strange world that is all she’s ever known and gives us a feeling that perhaps things could be better.

Once upon a time a young girl, was born in Candlehole in a place known as Garbagetown. Having managed to survive this strange and bizarre world, finding beauty in stories and looking for leftovers from the previous world before everything was covered in water, she became known as Tetley. For a long period she was hated for a terrible mistake she made, although this was carried out in good faith. She accepted her punishment, expecting sometimes to die on any given day and eventually she came to live alone – until she discovered she wasn’t alone at all. The end.

Obviously this is a story with a meaning behind it. Valente handles this well and it isn’t the type of tale that feels like it’s preaching. More, the author gives the story a kind of inevitability, the world is underwater, a handful of survivors live a bizarre life on a strange floating mass of waste left over from the days before everything went pear-shaped. There’s a strange kind of irony that the rubbish from our throw away society becomes the means for life in this unusual story.

This could be such a book of despair and yet it doesn’t go down that route. For the survivors, they have never known any different so there isn’t the strange nostalgia of the ‘good old days’. Instead, they have these mementoes from the past and they use them – not only to live but to create stories and myths.

Tetley is a fantastic character to read. She tells her tale simply, she doesn’t become involved in making excuses or feeling sorry for herself or blaming others. It is what it is and I just loved her refreshingly direct manner. I would happily read more in fact I would love to do so.

I loved the writing. Unlike garbagetown, which is made up of waste, Valente manages to give every word and sentence meaning. Nothing is wasted here and to be honest she is a magnificent storyteller. She grabbed my attention almost from the first page and I was hooked from there onwards. She brings her creation to life in the mind’s eye with an ease that belies the difficulty of such an undertaking.

Valente – I salute you.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

3.5 Stars

This novella contains two short stories from the same universe and following the same main character. The first is the previously published "The Future is Blue" and the second is the titular "The Past is Red"

I really enjoy Valente's writing. She has such a surrealism to her worldbuilding. These stories have such inventive world building that creates such distinctive imagery. The story lines of both stories linked up through Tetley, the main character, one focusing one her childhood and one on her adult journey. I found that The Future is Blue is a lot more focused on the world building, which I really enjoyed. I especially loved all the different areas of Garbagetown and all the little nods and reference to the world before - St Oscar the Grouch being my favourite. The Future is Red for me had a lot stronger plot, there was a lot more interaction with Tetley and other characters, there was a lot more discovery in what had happened to cause Garbagetown to form and I found it to be the more thought provoking of the two.

I will say this is definitely not a read for you if you don't like swearing. There are a plethora of inventive uses for various expletives used frequently through out both stories. Overall these are interesting and entertaining stories of a post climate change apocalyptic world.

I loved the language and the world that this novella is set in. It's a dystopia and it’s super bizarre, but in a good way. There is something addicting about Catherynne’s writing that I can’t quite put my finger on. The overall message is witty and sarcastic and I loved every moment of this story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for providing me with a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I came to this latest book by Catherynne Valente (wonderful storytelling goddess that she is) thinking that I'd be reading another short story collection.

This is not that.
BUT. It does have a new incarnation of biggest novelette in The Future is Blue from the collection by the same name, updated and filtered through a new lens. You see the previous story was written through the lens of the 2016 election woes, giving us a very bleak post-apocalyptic eco-punk nightmare for our generations to come. The old story was quite apt, living in Garbage Town and having leaders be named after old, partially expired medications from the world of the fuckwits, (I.E., *US*).

But no worries, folks. This updated version of that tale is much longer, and quite updated to show us a little hope through the much darker lens of our PRESENT day. You know, the day that just keeps laughing at 2016 because we JUST HAD TO TELL IT TO HOLD OUR BEER.

The story is quite an upgrade. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised or even displeased if it became a full novel eventually. Valente has wonderful SF. Clever, detailed, gloriously vicious. And, just so we don't grow so complacent, she makes sure that we taste the full spectrum of emotions including happiness, and even hope when by all rights we really shouldn't have any of that.

One little note: I LOVE that little lava lamp. You'll know what I mean when you read it.

All in all, this is the superior tale and yet I still don't have a problem re-reading the parts that I had just read in the previous collection. It's just that good.

I received a free advance reader's copy for free and am leaving this review voluntarily.

Let me start by saying this review would include obscene language. Tetley is such a sweet character that you can't help but love her. She's an inhabitant in a post apocalyptic world created after the "Fuckwits" (I assumed that's our generation) destroyed the past world. She's hated by everyone after some major catastrophe she caused (no details but I read between the lines). Everyone who meets her beats her or tells her the most awful things yet she still finds beauty in her life and Garbagetown (the floating island made of garbage where she lives). The only bitterness I got from her was when she mentioned the Fuckwits. The story was written in first person through her eyes and I really loved her perspective. However, everytime someone hit her or told her vile things I cringed. It made me feel the same way it would to see a puppy get kicked.
The author described this new world quite well. I loved the words used to illustrate the various environments Tetley found herself in. I knew that the world was literally trash but it sounded gorgeous. I felt sad throughout this story, though, mainly because I knew what would have happened for this world to be created.
This story made me think seriously about climate change and what can eventually happen if we don't start treating it as the disaster it can eventually become.
There's some sexual content and obscene language and quite a bit of violence towards Tetley. This book should be read by older teens or adults.

TITLE: The Past is Red
AUTHOR: Catherynne M. Valente
160 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250301130 (hardcover, also in e-book and audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from the Goodreads page): The future is blue. Endless blue...except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.

Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she's the only one who knows it. She's the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it's full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.

But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: In The Past is Red, Catherynne M. Valente’s novella-length expansion of her short story “The Future is Blue,” Tetley Abednego navigates life as the most hated girl (and later, woman) in Garbagetown with a combination of complacency and curiosity. Tetley’s first-person narration is engaging, reminding me of the way older people who are not accustomed to visitors will enthusiastically share their life story. Words and scenes come out in a rush of lush detail interspersed with moments of deep introspection or pain or longing for what has been lost.

Tetley does not waste time or energy on longing for what was lost in the collapse of civilization precipitated by the rising of ocean levels – she and her contemporaries call those who lived before the rising waters “fuckwits” and blame them what happened to the world. And yet, as the novel goes on, it becomes apparent that some things are ingrained in human nature and will never change. Regardless, there’s a certain amount of curiosity about life pre-flood evident in the details Tetley shares, such as when she discovers a long-lost award for “best wife.” She may not be able to mourn a world she never knew, having been born a generation or more after everything flooded, but she can certainly express interest in it while she describes the world she actually inhabits.

The fact that Tetley exists as a social outcast in her own world colors the way she describes it. She tells us several times that Garbagetown – the former Pacific Ocean floating garbage patch that has solidified enough that people can live on it – is the most beautiful place on the Earth. I can’t help but feel her outcast status infuses her opinion with a certain amount of nostalgia for something that never really was. The first arrivals on the patch sorted the trash to create districts (“Candle Town,” “Electric City,” “Aluminumopolis,” and so on) that have become somewhat rigid and codified and even judgmental of each other. Cycles of “haves and have-nots” repeat even in places where people have truly little.

The first half of the novella is comprised of the original short story, which I had never read, and introduces us to Tetley, her estranged family, her first love, and the society around her. We never get to see the event that turned her into the most hated girl in Garbagetown, but we do get to see the aftermath and her on-going punishment. Valente doesn’t spell out the worst of it, but plenty of violence is done unto Tetley throughout the first half of the book – violence she must accept humbly, and which someday could result in her death. It’s a tough dichotomy to get used to – Tetley’s clearly enthusiastic personality and the way she draws into herself when she gets visitors, not knowing what will happen and if this will be the time they kill her.

The second half of the novella is narrated from a later vantage point in Tetley’s life. Her enthusiasm for telling her story is still the same, but she’s learned more about the world outside of Garbagetown and has a new place to live. This expansion of what she (and therefore we) knows allows the story to breath and prevents it from becoming repetitive. It also allows a peak into Tetley’s dreams. Valente allows Tetley to mislead us a couple of times, describing what she wishes would have happened before telling us what really did. I don’t think this quite makes her an unreliable narrator, but it did make me question some of the narrative – which I think was the author’s intent. Tetley is still convinced that what she did, while devastating to her fellow citizens, was the right thing to do to save them from a worse fate. Nothing in the book directly contradicts this belief, but when Tetley is faced with making a similar choice will she decide the price she’s already paid is worth making people hate her all over again?

The Past is Red is more than just a look at the world post-climate-change. It’s a rumination on acceptance, complacency, curiosity, and the ways in which knowledge can be freeing or can be a burden.

I received an Advance Reading Copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. THE PAST IS RED will be published on July 20, 2021.

In talking about The Past is Red, I have to first talk about Valente’s afterword. In it, she details that she wanted this post-apocalypse not to look back on our “world” as something beautiful but as the mess we are. And I find that in this to be a great strength. Also I find a lot to relate to when it comes to the sentiment. In our current world, both during and before the pandemic, there was this idea that the world how is used to be was perfect. It is what we want everything to be again. But, as with the world of Garbagetown, the past is gone. While the overall story of Tetley paints a picture about a world post climate change catastrophe that we ourselves brought on, it also rings to true to those who cling to what was and refuse to embrace what we have. We can waste all of our resources on grasping at the ghost of the past or we can keep ourselves alive and focus on now. We learn from that past but move on. Maybe I got the wrong message from Valente’s novella. I felt a lot of things reading it, even if it was a short read. That is the mark of something well done.

HIGHLIGHTS
~All hail St Oscar of the Trashcan
~sometimes you have to save the idiots from themselves
~a lot of the time, actually
~garbage is precious too

Depending on how you look at it, The Past Is Red is either incredibly depressing or incredibly hopeful – and I don’t think that’s an accident.

If you’ve read Valente’s anthology, The Future Is Blue, then you already know Tetley. If you haven’t, that’s okay – the short story the anthology is titled after is the first part of The Past Is Red, so in picking up this book, you have absolutely everything you need to fully appreciate it. And there is a lot to appreciate.

I don’t think that’s an accident either.

Rubbing a seal’s stomach is the opposite of nihilism.

Tetley lives in Garbagetown, a floating not-land inspired by the very real North Atlantic garbage patch. There may be a handful of other sea-drifting cities, and there’s at least one band of performers that travels back and forth between them, but for the most part humanity is gone – wiped out by environmental collapse and most especially risen sea levels.

There are some things you just can’t ever get back. Years. Gannet birds. Husbands. Antartica.

Or rather, wiped out by themselves, the Fuckwits – that’s us, by the way, you and me and we – whose gluttony and laziness and entitlement caused that collapse.

There is something bitterly hilarious in seeing the people of our time universally referred to as The Fuckwits; I remember genuinely laughing, the first time I read The Future Is Blue in 2018. Maybe it’s just the general malaise of *waves vaguely at everything*, but it felt much more bitter this time around. Still funny, but almost too on the nose when I’m feeling this raw about the state of the world.

Still accurate, though.

ANYway.

I don’t know how long it’s been since I loved a character as much as I love Tetley. I think most of us would consider it horrifically awful and depressing to be living on a giant garbage heap, but Tetley sees so much beauty in it that instead it feels almost like some fairytale realm. It’s a dissonance that reminds me of Room by Emma Donoghue, and other books with narrators who are not so much unreliable as genuinely don’t comprehend what’s going on. The reader can see how angry and bitter the people around Tetley are, how unhappy they are, but Tetley really and truly doesn’t get it, because to her, the world she has is beautiful. The world they have is beautiful. Yes, lots of things are hard or outright impossible now, but look at what they do have! It’s just stupid pointless greed to want more.

“the kind of hope I have isn’t just greed going by its maiden name. The kind of hope I have doesn’t begin and end with demanding everything go back to the way it was when it can’t, it can’t ever, that’s not how time works, and it’s not how oceans work, either.”

And people hate her for it.

But the thing is, she’s not wrong. I don’t know if you can choose to be happy, but you can definitely work on not constantly ruminating in the things that are gone and done, and it seems more sensible to me to look for joys – big or small – than to focus on all the reasons to be miserable. When we read about Candle Hole – the part of Garbagetown where all the candles ended up, where everyone’s home is multi-coloured and made out of hundreds of different melted candles – it’s magical, and if the other characters don’t see it that way… It’s a mindset issue, isn’t it? At least partly? A question of perspective? They and Tetley are both looking at the same thing. Why is it only beautiful to one of them?

What is it about humans – most of us, at least – that we look at so many things and just…immediately want them to be more? Why is it so hard to be happy with what you have, to delight in what you have, without a voice in the back of your mind whispering but it could be bigger, shinier, fancier? We resent having less even when what we have is enough.

Enough is enough.

“Goddammit, why am I the only one who knows things?”

Listen to Tetley, okay? Because she’s not simple, or slow, or stupid. She’s fucking brilliant. She’s dazzling. She is so brave and so strong and smarter than all of us. The hardest, most courageous thing in the world is not giving into despair, and she does not, will not, cannot.

We can’t either. It would be so easy – it would be understandable – but we can’t. Tetley loves Garbagetown enough to save it, looks at it and sees something beautiful and precious where everyone else sees ugliness and worthlessness. I said it’s not an accident that there’s a lot to appreciate in The Past Is Red and no, obviously it’s not, no writer deliberately tries to write a bad story – Valente sat down to write a good story on purpose – but what I meant was that there is so much to appreciate even though parts will make you flinch, or ache, or want to cry.

And that’s a pretty spot-on metaphor for the world, right there.

It’s very easy, for heartbreakingly many of us, to look at the world and see something ugly and worthless, to see a garbagetown – but damn it, it’s not. We need to look at it properly and see how beautiful it is, because it needs saving, and we need to save it.

Or any future humans who are left will be absolutely right to call us Fuckwits.

St. Oscar, keep your mighty lid closed over me. Look grouchily but kindly upon me and protect me as I travel through the infinite trashcan of your world. Show me the beautiful usefulness of your Blessed Rubbish. Let me not be Taken Out before I find my destiny.

This might be a hard book to read in a moment when you’re feeling raw, but there’s so much to love here. The Past Is Read is all love, in a lot of ways. It’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek. It’s houses made of candlewax and going on quests to find your name and the 8th-Best Daffodil and being the moon. It’s a middle-finger to our present and our future. It is not a promise that everything will be okay, but it is a promise that there will always be something wonderful if you look. It’s not a hug; it’s hands gripping your shoulders and shaking hard, hopefully shaking some sense into us. It’s those same hands touching your cheek to turn your head, pointing out all the things we have to love, everything that’s precious.

Demanding you take care of them.

Anarchy can be so cozy, if you bring enough pillows.

There’s something gut-punching on every page. There’s something to make you laugh, something wry and clever and poking fun around every corner. There’s something beautiful, even in the ugly parts.

The Past Is Red is an unequivocal condemnation of how humans are collectively dealing with the environmental crisis – but it’s also a book about optimism; about how you can find beauty in almost anything if you look hard enough, from the right angle. It’s whimsical and biting; despairing and delightful. It’s a story about how nothing’s fair. It’s a frustrated scream for people to just stop. It’s a stubbornly hopepunk little book…about the dangers of hope, when hope is just a mask for greed. It’s about the strange and wonderful forms human happiness can take. It’s about how having enough is enough, for the love of all the gods.

It’s a question:

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be Tetley. Or at the very least, not a Fuckwit.

The Past Is Red releases July 20th, and honestly? You’d have to be a fuckwit not to grab yourself a copy.

I was excited to see a fleshed out version of the story The Past is Blue, which I read in a sci-fi anthology from a couple years back. However, I was surprised that that story is pretty much verbatim the beginning of this short novel. As a consequence, it really does feel tacked on to the beginning of a different story, like two puzzle pieces that don't quite fit together. That is not to say that I didn't like it, but I just think it could have felt more unified in whole of that story had been retooled into the larger part of the narrative, rather than operating as a sort of displaced preface from the rest of the novel.

I am most intrigued by the world of this novel, and feel like it could have been explored for hundreds of more pages. I really love the way that Valente's mind works. Her worlds are always so fascinating and developed, even if I feel like they could at times be more fully realized on the page. I also adore her writing, particularly in the way that she describes things. The world felt so tangible and sad, which a sprinkling of hope thrown in for good measure. I think the setting of a floating garbage island sorted into categories of trash is one that makes it so easy for the reader to ponder and explore in their own imaginations. I know it did for me. I also felt a lot for our protagonist, Tetley. I would have loved to see more of her culture and traditions on Garbagetown. I also found the timeline got a little confused and blurry at the end. Its deviation from a singular timeline was not immediately apparent to me and I feel like I would need to go back and reread it in order to fully understand the order of events. But the worldbuilding and the writing related to describing the world are the real stars of the show here. I feel like there are so many other stories waiting to be told on this flooded Earth.

The Past is Red follows The Future is Blue to show how hope lingers even to survivors of a wet apocalypse.

In this dystopian future, the world is mostly ocean, with clusters of humanity clinging to survival on floating piles of refuse.

We see Tetley grow up in Garbagetown and then commit an act that makes her hated by all, even as she saves them from disaster.

Tetley lives in Candle Hole, a town made purely of discarded candles on Garbagetown, a floating island of trash. She meets Goodnight Moon in Electric City, the only place left with any kind of power. This is where the rich people of Garbagetown live.

When a traveling circus comes through promising dry land, the hopes of the residents skyrocket. One of the carnies breaks Tetley’s bubble though: they’re lying. They’ve never seen dry land. As Garbagetown prepares to find the dry land, Tetley does something terrible in their eyes and becomes a pariah.

I really enjoyed The Past Is Red! It’s set in two parts: The Future is Blue, which is Tetley’s childhood and early adult years, and The Past is Red, which is Tetley’s older adult years. Tetley was a great character. I love how she kept her optimism no matter what happened.

While this may seem a fun story about pill bottles and tags of cheese, it really is a climate change story. It is very serious. The characters lament constantly on the fact they do not have a choice in whether or not they can throw out half-used items, or waste water, or waste power. They are forced in this life. But Tetley doesn’t see that as a bad thing. She sees that this is the one life we have, we may as well enjoy it instead of looking toward the could-have-been.

Thank you to Net Galley, Tordotcom, and Catherynne M. Valente for this advanced review copy! The Past is Red releases on Tuesday, July 20th.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review.
This story has a fun premise. I really liked the world building and Shakespeare references. I felt like it was a bit too deep at times, and the message went a big over my head.

I’m not sure what I like best about Catherynne M. Valente’s The Past is Red. Is it that it refers to current-time Earth’s inhabitants as “Fuckwits” for effing up this planet so badly? Is it that it paints the rich a-holes who escaped this world but don’t give a darn patootie about those left behind as, well, a-holes? Is it that it calls out very clearly a result of our consumerism? Yes, yes, and yes. I’m all for calling it like it is! Especially when the future envisioned in The Past is Red doesn’t seem too far-fetched, which should scare the crap out of us while we still have time to fix things.

Valente’s world has the remainders (those who didn’t make it off-planet when the world drowned) living on islands of garbage. It’s a struggle to survive but they do it, limited resources and all. They send their children out on “quests” to find their name, which is basically when a product label attaches itself to you. Tetley’s came from a tea label. She’s bright and inquisitive and worries about the continued survival of the remaining humans on Earth – and gets in trouble when she takes action to stop the people of Garbagetown from expending their scarce resources on a false dream.

We meet Tetley as a child who loves life, then as a teenager paying the consequences of her actions, then as an adult figuring out her future. Is there a future?

I really enjoyed the characters we meet in The Past is Red, as much as I’m afraid that our current disposable lifestyle will lead directly to a world like this. And only the billionaires will be able to escape to Mars.

drey’s rating: Excellent!

TL;DR: The Past is Red is undeniably gritty, quirky and fun, but the slow pace of the plot dampened my initial interest and I DNF at 30%.

I requested this title on NetGalley because I had read and enjoyed Valente’s unique re-imagining of the Russian folktale, The Death of Koschei.

I was immediately drawn into The Past is Red because it is WEIRD. I love books that surprise me; and Valente’s abundant, inventive swearing and funny, biting prose did that for me in the first chapter alone. Despite being set in a horrifying future where all land has been submerged and the remainder of humanity lives on floating refuse, I loved how totally flippant the tone of the first-person narrator, Tetley, is. The references to various cultural artifacts that now make up the garbage landscape were also humorous and creative.

BUT as I kept reading on, the writing and plot simply didn’t evolve much. At 30% I decided to call it quits and DNF. The things I was surprised and delighted by at the start felt overdone a third of the way in, and I still hadn’t learned anything about Garbagetown, Tetley, or why everyone physically and verbally abuses her.

If you can stick it out, there is sure to be a big reveal about what Tetley did to become so despised in Garbagetown; I just lacked the patience.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for giving me advance access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

Wow so I fell in love hard with this one. And I won't pretend that I am not a little surprised by just how much. Sure, I thought it would be entertaining and fun. But I had no idea how much heart it would have. So when you look at the synopsis and think "um girl living on garbage?" and are skeptical... well look, it's only 160 pages, what have you got to lose?

I loved Tetley from the first page. She is hilarious, but also very sharp. This creates problems for Tetley, since, as we should all know by now, people are often quite keen to revel in their ignorance. But Tetley isn't just smart, she has such a lovely insight, and a really positive outlook on life despite how easy it would be for her to hate it all.

The world itself is, as you can imagine, not great, when the best you have to offer is piles of trash. Basically, Earth has flooded, and the only way humanity has been able to survive at all is via random outposts of our own past (well, Tetley's past, our current) besmirchment. And as always, people can be cruel and selfish. The world itself, and the turns the story takes in general, definitely surprised me, in the best possible way.

Bottom Line: I could not put this book down, nor did I ever want it to end. Tetley had my whole heart from the start, and I fell wholly in love with her story.

Just as you think the post-apocalyptic narrative might have become a bit stale along comes Catherynne M Valente to blow it out of the water. Which is not surprising for an author who has been shortlisted for every major science fiction and fantasy award going and whose back catalogue is as eclectic as it is engaging. Just as an example, she followed up her five volume Fairyland series (starting with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her on Making) with her 2016 weird decopunk paean to the silent movie era Radiance and more recently Space Opera a science-fiction homage to the Eurovision Song Contest. Which brings us to The Past is Red, a post-apocalyptic environmental fable with as much bad language as it has heart.
The first part of this short novel is titled The Future is Blue. The Future is Blue started life as a stand alone short story about a post-apocalyptic world in which a girl called Tetley Abadnego lives in a place called Garbagetown and spends her days being abused by her fellow residents. Garbagetown is a floating collection of all of the remains of our civilisation and is one of the remaining settlements on a drowned Earth. Based on the very real Pacific garbage patch, Valente imagines that patch has grown and the garbage has been sorted to form individual neighbourhoods (such as Candle Hole, Scrapmetal Alley, Pill Hill, Toyside, Teagate, Electric Town) and home to some of the last remnants of humanity who scavenge its remains. Even this does not take too much imagination, there are plenty of places in the world, even now, where communities live on the refuse of others (a situation highlighted in Hwang Sok-Yong’s 2017 novel Familiar Things).
The Future is Blue tells Tetley’s story and comes to explain why she gladly accepts the punishments of her community. The second half of the novel, The Past is Red – takes Tetley out into the wider world of Garbargetown to continue her story. This section is told from a place of exile where Tetley only has one person to speak to – Big Red Mars – and she admits that she hates Big Red 66% of the time (and loves her the rest of the time). The identity if Big Red is ambiguous at first and is one of the many gut punch reveals of the second half of the novel.
In most postapocalyptic tales, our current age is lionised for its freedoms and possibilities. In Tetley’s world, this is not the case. Valente says that she “wanted to write about a postapocalyptic world where our civilisation was not looked back on with awe and admiration”. And she succeeds. The generation of 50 years before, known throughout the book as the Fuckwits, is clearly seen as the generation that “wrecked a perfect biosphere because we couldn’t be bothered not to”. While the people of Garbagetown get on with the lives that they have, they are also resentful and more than a little envious of the past
Into this world Valente drops the character of Tetley Abadnego who she admits, in her Afterword, is deliberately intended to be a Candide-style character. Tetley believes in herself and always sees the positive. She is a person who even after being struck for a wrong she admits to having committed will honestly say: Thank you for your instruction. Tetley sees beauty in everything, including her home and has a deep wellspring of optimism and fairly realistic hope.
The Past is Red is a short read but Valente, as always, makes every word count. This is a novel of hope and resilience but it is also an excoriating takedown of commercialism and the inertia that we have fallen into in dealing with the environment. Tetley’s optimism for the future may demonstrate that as humans we have the capacity to deal with anything but should also make readers feel guilty for the fact that anyone should ever have to.

* Thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and Netgalley for an advance copy for review purposes *

"The Past is Red" is quite a punch in the gut, while also filled with the hope. The story is told from the perspective of a young girl, Tetley, who lives in Garbagetown, a floating pile of garbage that sustains human life in a not so distant future where climate change has caused the ice caps to melt, and the entire surface of the Earth to be swallowed by water. Tetley's life is rough, but she holds so much optimism and hope, based on acceptance. while others sink into despair and violence once their only source of hope is gone.

I had previously read "Space Opera", from the same author. "The Past is Red" is an entirely different beast, with no humour whatsoever (although some of the things like Oscar the Grouch being elevated to deity status by Tetley are kind of funny in a sad way), I don't expect it to be as polarizing as "Space Opera" was.

"The Past is Red" leans into popular culture to stress its point - humanity is very adaptable, but our tendency to dole out blame and to abdicate personal responsibility in lieu of comfort remains. Its most poignant moments come from looking at our current days of abundance from a perspective of scarcity - a scene involving piles of trophies was particularly powerful in highlighting what we actually value versus what it seems we would value when looking at what is left behind.

The structure of the book can be a little confusing at points, as it alternates between the voice of a 17 year old girl and a 29 year old girl, but they don't sound that different. Based on clues of the environment, it is straight forward to put stuff in the correct timeline.

The ending is a double punch and quite in line with the little faith in human kind one can have these dayswhen looking at the news or straying into social media. There was never much background provided regarding the attitude of Tetley's parents toward her prior to the big incident, other than the way she spoke (but that was due to Tetley already noticing a difference in treatment between her and her twin brother). I wish that had been fleshed out a little more to truly understand the society depicted, but there is only so much fleshing out that can be done on a novella.

For a very short read, this is one that will stick in my head for a long time. I keep mulling over the scene in the trophy room . Do we still have time to be truly alive?