526. The Sunlight Pilgrims
Rating: ☆☆
Recommended by: Boulder Librarian
Author: Jenni Fagan
Genre: Fiction, Dystopia
310 pages, published March 24, 2018
Reading Format: Book
Summary
The Sunlight Pilgrims is set in a futuristic 2020 and imagines the world in a new ice age. Rather than head south as many others are doing, a grieving Dylan heads north to bury his mother’s and grandmother’s ashes on the Scottish islands where they once lived. At the same time on the Scottish Highlands, twelve-year-old Estella and her survivalist mother, Constance, scrape by and prepare for a record-breaking winter. When Dylan arrives in their caravan park, life changes course for Estella and Constance.
Quotes
“When grown-ups hear a little dark door creaking in their hearts they turn the telly up. They slug a glass of wine. They tell the cat it was just a door creaking. The cat knows. It jumps down from the sofa and walks out of the room. When that little dark door in a heart starts to go click-clack click-clack click-clack click-clack so loudly and violently their chest shows an actual beat – well, then they say they’ve got bad cholesterol and they try to quit using butter, they begin to go for walks. When the tiny dark door in her heart creaks open, she will walk right through it. She will lie down and inside her own heart like a bird in the night.”
“…the child of a wolf may not feel like she has fangs until she finds herself facing the moon, but they are still there the whole time regardless.”
“I’m going to draw up a human-rights contract that says everyone on earth must agree we are here as caretakers of the planet, first and foremost.”
“She focuses, trying to absorb the suns’ energy deep into her cells so when they descend into the darkest winter for 200 years, in the quietest minutes, when the whole world experiences a total absence of light — she will glow, and glow, and glow.”
“It’s all borrowed: bricks; bodies; breathing — it’s all on loan! Eighty years on the planet if you’re lucky; why do they say if you’re lucky? Eighty years and people trying to get permanent bits of stone before they go, as if permanence were a real thing. Everyone has been taken hostage.”
My Take
I found The Sunlight Pilgrims to be a meandering slog without much to say. It includes a completely unecessary subplot about gender identity that distracts from the cataclysmic environmental message of the book. Skip.
