Brother Bronte was an excellent read. The writing was propulsive and the character development was rich. I would read more from this author.

I had such high hopes for this with it being a dystopian novel, but I struggled to follow the world building and to get invested in the story.

BROTHER BRONTË by Fernando A. Flores is an off-kilter near-future dystopian novel set in Three Rivers, Texas. I call this a “soupy” book because the way the worldbuilding is pieced together feels like how you’d make a stew: raid the fridge, throw some ingredients together, and serve it up. In this dystopia, the ingredients include bans on literacy, the forced labor of all mothers in a fish cannery, climate catastrophes, a Bengali tiger (?!), immigration raids, corporate-political corruption, and stories within stories. It may sound like a lot, but I wanted to see where Flores would go with it all.

As a stew, this novel is going to feel too weird and random to many readers, but I can see it working for those who like to lean into the bizarre. For me, though there were some interesting subplots (especially one involving an author, and an identical twin turned wannabe assassin), the novel didn’t quite have enough 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 there. Any commentary about haywire politics and repressive governments got lost in the rowdy arbitrariness of the imagery and plot; it was hard to take seriously. The numerous characters didn’t get developed in a meaningful way. The one thing this novel does deliver is taking readers on a “mordant, gonzo romp” as the blurb describes it, so if that sounds appealing, do give this one a try!

Hypnotic and slightly absurd, this post-apocalptic trip through the human psyche is perfect for fans of Kurt Vonegut and his work. If you like your magical realism with sharp edges, you'll love this book.

March 3: Expanded review and posted on TikTok.
February 23 update: Posted to GoodReads, creating a two-part review for this e-ARC added to my audiobook review. I'll add the TikTok link when I post the video.
This book became my comfort against the crazy state of the world. The near-future Texas bordertown felt completely real to me. The brave, vibrant women resisting the destruction of lives, books, and freedom kept me captivated. The book hit me like a magical, uplifting anthem to hope.
I've been spreading the word about this book. I want everyone to read it.
The stories within the story, the vivid writing, the wildness of the place and people in street-level resistance juxtaposed with the prison-like factory work kept me immersed in this tale. It moved, entertained, and heartened me.
I marked many exceptional passages. There are many wonderful details that make this world extraordinary and complete. I've never read a dystopian novel that left me feeling so good. This is exhilarating vision.
I'm glad I discovered Fernando A. Flores. Highly recommend for readers of any genre.
Thank you, Farrar, Straus and Giroux | MCD, for the eARC for consideration. These are solely my own opinions.

Currently catching up on reviewing my arcs so I will give a more detailed review in the future!

Safe to say...dystopian stories aren't for me. This book was good and I know there is an audience for it somewhere because the writing itself was really good, and so where the characters.

Was this futuristic, anarcho-romp through a dystopian political hellscape a joy to read? Yes, mostly, once I let the madcap pacing and language wash over me. There's a lot to love in here: a novel inside a novel, two plucky teenage girls taking on the literal world, a near-future where books are outlawed and being literate is the ultimate taboo... but I found some of the stories inside the stories hard to follow. (Nested novels can be hit or miss for me, depending on how hard it is to shift from one story to another.)

I love young punks fighting the good fight in fiction, I just wish I had been able to smoothly follow the plot a bit more. (Also, to be fair, reading a novel with such frenetic energy at this particular moment might not be the easiest reading experience. But it might be cathartic for other folks!)

Thinking of comps for this is a real trick, but the reading experience reminded me of "The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion" more than anything I've read recently.

Readers looking for a raucous and bold dystopian tale should not miss this one.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Could we reach a point societally that we degrade or backslide to life lived on the small scale and a lack of literacy? Brother Bronte by Fernando A Flores imagines such a world in the town of Three Rivers, Texas. In this 2038 dystopia, the may Pablo Henry Crick has been in office for decades. He distributes shredders to the young who go around destroying books in a continuing effort to ban them .

At the start of the story, Neftali's home has just been raided with her books and records destroyed, and she must find a new place to live. Running into her former band mates Prosperina and Alexi. They go off to visit their mothers who work in a fish cannery, the main town employer. Instead of wages, the cannery employees mothers, guaranteeing that their children will be fed. We follow this main trio of characters as they seek to survive and their gains and losses. News is spread through government provided 'newscubes' that give off regular audio reports, needing no power or charging to work.

Flores brings in other characters and neighborhoods, there are competing strains of society, those out for their own gain, those looking to help their community and those who want to be left alone in their own quiet struggle for survival. There is also an interlude focused on the life of the in-book author Jazzmin Monelle Rivas. Neftali has one of her books, her only one left and Flores shares the book title with one of Rivas. And then dark clouds cover the sky, is it from volcanic eruptions? Bombs? Or wildfires? Daily life takes on a harder edge.

It's a dark book that unfortunately feels all the more possible.

Recommended to readers of dystopias, fiction as criticism or fiction in general.

Though I've heard great things about Trufflepig, this is my first encounter with Flores' writing, and maybe I would have liked this better if I had come in with a sense of his ambitions and style. As it is, I didn't respond to this at all. For me the writer's desire to honor and emulate the books he loves is the most prominent feature of this novel, and with all novels that feel primarily to be built that way, it's the characters and emotional heart of the work that suffers. Let he who is without sin etc, but I didn't feel that any of the characters here had emotional reality and seriousness, especially not the central women. And a good deal of the people who occupy this novel are essentially human-shaped jokes, like Alexei Tolstoyevsky, which is not my favorite thing. This is uncharitable, but a lot of the book seems to aimed towards demonstrating the writer's cleverness and political and cultural competence -- good things for a writer to have, but again not a direction that typically produces interesting fiction. I'll be interested to hear from others when this book comes out in a few days because certainly some of my resistance to it comes down to aesthetic preference... but all in all I was disappointed with this.

very weird and almost plotless in aspects. some aspects never seem to mean anything to the story, but i think that is part of how well this one works. 4.5 stars, rounded up/ tysm for the arc.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advanced reader copy! All opinions are my own:

Brother Brontë, told in three books, tells the story of a Texas town in 2038 living in a book shredding, forced labor dystopia that has outlawed reading. We follow best friends Proserpina and Neftali in their attempt to reclaim their city.

This one just didn’t resonate with me. The synopsis sounded really promising but I feel like a lot of the book was pretty random. There wasn’t really a very gripping plot to the book for me, mostly just telling about what went on in the town. I predicted the twist for Moira pretty much immediately and the ending, in my opinion, doesn’t line up with the expectations set by the synopsis of the book.

This book just wasn’t for me, but may end up being great for others.

Beautifully written and imagined but did take awhile to coalesce. I'm glad I stuck through until the end! The atmosphere and world building/philosophy were highlights.

This is an amazing read that drifts between a nearish future company town dystopia where books are forbidden and they attempt to make everyone possible work at the fish canning factory, a near past detail about a young author who ends up becoming involved in the struggle around the town, and the standoff that eventually ends up happening between the town and workers and the company itself. It's a hell of a journey, and deftly plotted. Definitely worth picking up when it comes out in February.

This book and I never quite gelled. It is well-written and I can appreciate that it comes from an acclaimed Latin American writer, but plot points and characters came across as more random than anything else to me. For example, for most of the book, one of the main characters has a full-size Bengal tiger as a pet. No real reason, just because. There is also a fierce, at times, round up and burning of books, but the effort is mostly a side note. I get it…the world of the novel is dystopian and times are tough and weird in lots of ways. It’s just that these ways felt random and didn’t contribute to a strong story arc in my opinion. Having finished the book 5 days or so ago, I already find it hard to remember what it was about.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for letting me read an advance copy of this book.

While the writing itself was mostly captivating, the tangents the story went on made me wonder how everything was supposed to come together and why I was still reading this book. By the end it all formed a cohesive and coherent whole but it took a bit to get there.

This felt very mad max to me? And it was weird… but good weird. Writing is so good. Overall I really liked this one! The cover would 100% grab my eye at the bookshop too, intriguing and a little sinister…