I picked up this book because another reader was so very enthusiastic and had a very curious yet careful way of explaining the book. After reading it... I get it.
An amazon summary, "In an alternate reality a lot like our world, every person’s physical size is directly proportional to their wealth. The poorest of the poor are the size of rats, and billionaires are the size of skyscrapers.
Warner and his sister Prayer are destitute—and tiny. Their size is not just demeaning, but dangerous: day and night they face mortal dangers that bigger richer people don’t ever have to think about, from being mauled by cats to their house getting stepped on. There are no cars or phones built small enough for them, or schools or hospitals, for that matter—there’s no point, when no one that little has any purchasing power, and when salaried doctors and teachers would never fit in buildings so small. Warner and Prayer know their only hope is to scale up, but how can two littlepoors survive in a world built against them? A brilliant, warm, funny trip, unlike anything else out there, and a social novel for our time in the tradition of 1984 or Invisible Man. Inequality is made intensely visceral by an adventure and tragedy both hilarious and heartbreaking." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
Ultimately this book felt like a coming of age story, wrapped up in survival themes, but also a caste system. ..it's a bit much, but it's mostly okay?
Alright, let me back up. When I first read the description I was kind of like, "So, it's the Borrowers and Giants with everyone in between and it's all based on their money? ...what???" But again, the other reader had that enthusiastic, curious yet careful way of trying to explain the book. So I gave it a chance.
Warner and his sister Prayer had a Father who was crushed by a bigger person who was pushed to step on top of their house by other bullies. Their mother was crippled and unable to work, which left Warner and Prayer to fend for themselves. Their mother wants them to go to law school so Prayer can attract a lawyer and make them all bigger through marriage/shared munmuns. Munmuns are essentially currency and the more munmun you have, the bigger you are.
Prayer and Warner go to law school, and Usher, Warner's friend, tags along for the journey as protection for Prayer...but he's in love with her and hopes she falls in love with him. Their whole mission is to find a husband for Prayer essentially...but the journey starts getting filled with mishaps and adventures along the way.
The thing to keep in mind, is Prayer, Warner, and Usher are all little, about the size of rats. Cats, dogs, basically everything that moves and is bigger than them is a real threat to their safety. Their fragile, but never count them out.
There was a little bit more to this odd book, there are a lot of words spelled how they sound. Like 'ecks' is actually 'x'. There are strong themes of illiteracy because they're poor, did not go to school and it's cleverly reflected in the writing throughout the book.
There were also big themes throughout the book about the coming of age process that was super highlighted by the caste system and different dilemmas not only with coming of age but also society as a whole. I would go more into that, but it's woven throughout the story for the long haul, and no spoilers.
ALL OF THAT BEING SAID, I'm not sure it worked together cohesively and coherently. Admittedly, due to the style of writing it was a quicker read, but there's a LOT of content. It's 404 pages and I'm not entirely sure the ending is ...well, good enough for the rest of the content of the book. It's definitely an ending, I'm just kind of annoyed at which like last notes the book decides to end on. It makes a kind of heart wrenching point that echoes from previous parts of the book, but.... I wanted it to hit the gong so to speak. I feel like it was a xylophone end note rather than the booming gong I needed it to be? ... look at all these analogies.
Overall, I did like it, I really enjoyed the mechanics of the big/small once it was explained (I stopped thinking of them as Borrowers, haha). I'm kind of all over the book shelf on this one (haaaaaaaaa....haaaaaaaaaaaaa).
Happy reading!
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