The Book of Etta (2017)
Written by: Meg Elison
Genre: Post-apocalyptic fiction
Pages: 305 (Paperback)
Series: The Road to Nowhere Book #2
Publisher: 47North
Why I Chose It: The Book of Etta is one of the nominees for the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award, which Speculative Chic is covering. I did not want to read this book at first, because it is the sequel to a book that I had not read, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife. I spent quite a bit of time ignoring the editor’s post, hoping that someone else would volunteer. No one did, so I wound up reading The Book of the Unnamed Midwife and enjoying it. I looked forward to learning what happened to the world that Elison created.
The premise:
Etta comes from Nowhere, a village of survivors of the great plague that wiped away the world that was. In the world that is, women are scarce and childbearing is dangerous…yet desperately necessary for humankind’s future. Mothers and midwives are sacred, but Etta has a different calling. As a scavenger. Loyal to the village but living on her own terms, Etta roams the desolate territory beyond: salvaging useful relics of the ruined past and braving the threat of brutal slave traders, who are seeking women and girls to sell and subjugate.
When slavers seize those she loves, Etta vows to release and avenge them. But her mission will lead her to the stronghold of the Lion—a tyrant who dominates the innocent with terror and violence. There, with no allies and few weapons besides her wits and will, she will risk both body and spirit not only to save lives but also to liberate a new world’s destiny.The Book of Etta is the sequel to the Philip K. Dick Award–winning novel The Book of the Unnamed Midwife.
Spoilers Ahead
Discussion: This book is more of a companion to The Book of the Unnamed Midwife than a direct sequel. Etta lives in Nowhere, the former fort that the midwife settled in at the end of the first book, but everyone who knew the midwife is long dead when Etta’s story begins. The midwife has become a folk hero, almost a goddess, which I found strange since she did not found the settlement, birth the first baby, or even cure the plague. I also thought it was odd that now the plague only seems to affect pregnant women and babies because in the first book, everyone was at risk. The diary that the midwife kept has become a holy book in Nowhere, carefully copied and handed down. Journaling has become a sacred obligation to these people, and Etta only begins to write down her story because Ina, her mother, is furious with her for not keeping a diary.
Mothers and midwives are revered in Nowhere but Etta wants to be a raider, saving women and girls from slavers. The midwife is a personal heroine to Etta because she was an idealist who rescued girls and women. Etta also disguises herself as a man and calls herself Eddy for safety, as the midwife did. Nowhere is a matriarchal culture, where women are practically worshiped, but Etta does not fit in. She feels more at home as Eddy on the road in constant danger than she does living in a society that pressures her to be someone that she is not.
Even though generations have passed since the plague that wiped out most of humanity, the world is still a treacherous place for women. Flora, a woman that Etta meets in a neighboring settlement, tells her that women are sacred. Etta responds, “Before the plague, women were rulers and peacekeepers and cooks and dancers and whatever they wanted to be. And they had medicine that made it impossible to get pregnant. They were free. And now they’re property almost everywhere, raped to death and sold to monsters by monsters. But I’m so glad they’re sacred now” (p. 80). This book is not as bleak as The Book of the Unnamed Midwife but there is still an unsettling amount of sexual violence.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is how the various settlements cope with the lack of women. Towns that are within traveling distance of each other have entirely different cultures. In Nowhere, women have polygamist relationships with multiple men in a practice known as “Hives.” In Estiel, the stronghold of the brutal warlord called the Lion, women are slaves. It’s a common practice in Jeff City for castrated boys to be raised as females, which keeps the Lion’s men from kidnapping all the women. Etta visits Manhattan/Womanhattan where men and women live separately and only come together to mate. When Etta travels farther West, she encounters a settlement of Mormons who have evolved to worship God as a mother figure.
As the book progresses, it becomes clear that Etta does not truly feel that she belongs anywhere. Another kinship between the midwife and Etta is that they’re both attracted to women, although the midwife was bisexual and Etta is only attracted to women. Lesbianism is severely frowned upon in Nowhere because of the importance placed on having children. When one of the elders catches Etta and another girl together, she tells them that they were “wasting something, like kids who ate all their honey at once.” (p. 214). In the beginning, Etta describes disguising herself as a man on the road as something that she does for survival. It gradually becomes clearer that Etta is transgender and Eddy is not a disguise, but Etta’s authentic self. Elison uses female pronouns for Etta and male pronouns for Eddy, so I have used female pronouns in this review for simplicity.
In conclusion: The Book of the Unnamed Midwife won the Philip K. Dick Award in 2014. The Book of Etta suffers a great deal in comparison — Etta is not as compelling a heroine as the midwife and Etta’s story isn’t complete. The idea of post-apocalyptic survivors banding together to take on an evil leader feels like something I’ve seen and read before. I’m pretty sure this is the premise of multiple seasons of The Walking Dead. However, Elison made a familiar plot fresher by addressing concerns of sexual orientation and gender identity. This focus allowed me to include The Book of Etta as a part of my 2018 resolution project to read more diverse books.
I’ve gone from not wanting to read this series at all to definitely planning to pick up the final book. I haven’t read any of the other nominees, so it’s hard for me to gauge The Book of Etta’s chances, but the Philip K. Dick Award does seem to favor post-apocalyptic fiction.
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