Cherie Dimaline (2017)
Dystopian novel, YA fiction, Indigenous culture, Métis author, climate catastrophe, environment, Canadian author, queer fiction
When I began a stint teaching middle school full time, I decided it was probably time to start reading young adult (YA) fiction.
As a category, it mostly passed me by in my younger years – Nancy Drew fascination excepted. It had been a long time since I’d had a reason to read books written for teens, but it seemed only fair to see what was on offer.
Surprising appeal
Almost to a person, my students LOVED sci-fi. They gobbled it up, swapped their favorite tomes and bonded hard with teachers who shared their tastes for lumbering series of improbable scenarios.
This was quietly filed under my ‘things I respect but will never, never understand’ hoarding.
So it was with some trepidation I picked up The Marrow Thieves. Dystopian fiction isn’t exactly sci-fi, but tends to share the original sin of being fueled by ideology, not character. But – Dimaline’s book has collected more awards than Michael Phelps so…
The big idea
The Marrow Thieves takes place in Canada, not long from now. Environmental calamity and the ensuing social trauma have robbed all except Indigenous peoples of their ability to dream. Government “recruiters” hunt and kidnap the remaining dreamers to suck the visions out of their bones.
Dimaline introduces herself on her website, writing:
I am a registered and claimed member of the Metis Nation of Ontario (www.metisnation.org), the federally and provincially recognized representative government for our community. Specifically, I am from the Historic Georgian Bay Métis Community with section 35 Indigenous rights….
I come from hunters and women who told stories and made their own remedies when they weren’t purchasing salves from the ‘peddler’ who would come across the Bay once in a while. Some remedies used holy water from the Shrine in town, others used water collected from the Bay on Easter Sunday. Many were based around onions and pine. To this day, my family hunts and harvests.
She notes, “I’ve spent my entire working life, with a few small detours, working in and for the Indigenous community… But all I ever wanted to be was a writer.”
Her callings combine in The Marrow Thieves. It is a tense, gritty, powerful tale cram-jammed with vivid characters including the protagonist Frenchie, whose brother’s kidnapping opens the story.
It also shines a hard, unsparing light on the historic trauma suffered by Indigenous peoples in what is now Canada – including the residential schools designed to rend children from the fabric of family and culture.
Stakes are high from the first page, which generates real tension. Yet they aren’t cheap thrills; the action matters because the characters matter.
Impressively, the novel succeeds in being educational without being didactic, and tackles big ideas without pamphleteering.
From a teaching standpoint, it is a curriculum designer’s dream.
Want to talk about history? Colonialism? Environmentalism? Sexuality? Community? Cultural identity? Language? Family?
You can do it all with The Marrow Thieves, and more.
My take
Grim but compulsive take on an all-too-plausible near future. The Marrow Thieves soars where so much dystopian futurism sags: characterization.
Their take
“Though the novel tackles some heavy subject matter, The Marrow Thieves feels lighter as a result of Dimaline’s graceful, almost fragile, prose. “The skeletons of the green trees curved under the elegant weight of the snow, bowing and twisting like ribbons in the wind,” she writes, providing a beautiful undercurrent to a world that seems to have been damaged beyond repair.” – Jessica Rose, Quill & Quire, May 2017
Must read for
Teen fans of dystopian fiction/sci-fi/futurism; adults who love a good (and troubling) imaginative tale
Read also
Hunting by Stars by Cherie Dimaline
The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin
Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden