This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour
A Book Review...
When I read Askaripour’s debut novel Black Buck back in 2021, I read it in a day. I gobbled it right up! I was thrilled when the news was announced that he would be publishing another novel in 2024. Dutton Books sent me a gifted copy and I enjoyed this book and found it familiar in some way and interesting in others.
A speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second-class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.
This Great Hemisphere is a speculative novel that tells the story of a world that’s been ravaged by climate change and how the powers that be turned it around.
It was toward the end of the twenty-first century that the temperature became insufferably hot and toxic for flowers and all animal life, and only hardier plants could thrive; certain vegetables, trees, shrubs, you get it. Drought, flooding, disease. The world was on fire for years, and we almost went extinct ourselves, until we made some lifesaving changes.
The whole idea of the Invisibles was interesting and yet so familiar. Essentially relegated to second-class citizenship, their lives and events surrounding this population felt like a throwback to the Jim Crow era. Power and ambition take a front seat in this story and we see how it is manipulated. This story becomes a mystery of sorts and you’re piecing everything together bit by bit; trying to see the full picture and connect all the dots. While I think this novel could’ve been shorter, and perhaps that would’ve helped with the pacing in the second half of the book, these small issues weren’t enough to take away my enjoyment of the story overall.
This is a novel worth checking out.