Foe

No spoilers. 4 1/2 stars. This is one of those novels that has no middle ground; people are going to choose up sides and really like it or really hate it… Junior and Hen live their married lives on a canola farm. They are comfortable as farmers and with each other… She\’s his anchor… While sitting on their porch late one hot evening, a car comes up their private dirt road shining its green headlights on them. A man gets out of the car… … his name is Terrance and he\’s here at that hour to tell the couple that Junior has won a government lottery and will be living for a time on a space station… … but only Junior will be going, Hen will be left behind… the government will be taking care of her and providing a high-tech replacement for Junior who will be just like him in every way… Terrance eventually comes to live with the couple to help Junior get ready for his trip and to prepare Hen to live with a sophisticated hologram of Junior in his absence… … but Terrance\’s presence in their home is very invasive in their lives. Junior wants to do his part for the government but Terrance has changed their routine. In fact… …everything has changed and… … Junior becomes more and more distrustful of Terrance and his motives. Junior is having second thoughts about his impending trip… What\’s a ship without an anchor?… and Hen is Junior\’s anchor… I\’m of the camp that really liked this bizarre novel which I would classify as sci-fi/horror. It isn\’t until you\’re about halfway through that a future time frame is established as the setting. It is true that there is no cut and dry ending causing the reader to ponder its meaning (1/2 star deducted for that loose end) but the way it ends causes the story to stick with you long after it is finished.

I just finished this gem! This is Reids second novel and after reading his first one, my expectations were extremely high; that book consumed my thoughts for weeks after finishing it. Foe, though completely different from his first novel, touched on the same themes of how isolation can affect someone and their relationship with others. Reid also poses philosophical questions that make the reader think deeply about how satisfied they may or may not be with their life and the routines it breeds. Reids ability to create an unsettling mood from start to finish is like no other and his plot twists are brilliant. More often than not, when a new author comes out, their work gets compared to another authors work because their style may be similar or their work falls under the same genre. Reid is unique in so many ways and he shouldnt be compared to anyone because his work is hauntingly beautiful. His writing will make your skin crawl, haunt your dreams, and make you cry all at the same time.

Foe is equal parts off-beat, Coen Bros-esque science fiction about a relationship, and far-left propaganda which has stealthily slipped its parasitic essence into the guise of a drama. As a sci fi, it works fine. You can see the twist a mile away (and the genres effectiveness rests entirely on the twists shoulders), but, you know, its fine. The relationship dynamic between Junior and Hen also worksalthough, sometimes it meanders, and its only a vehicle in which to deliver the critique against traditional masculinity. As socio-political satire, what works with Orwells 1984 is something grounded in reality. It was an observable critique on the Soviet Union, in which millions of people were killed or executed in the name of its progress and ideology. (You hear more about Nazi Germany than the Soviet Union, dont you? Food for thought.) 1984 is a possible, realistic, educated answer (and probably not even that exaggeratedconsidering 2020s censorship) to the question: what happens if a government becomes too big, too powerful? Its inherently true, whether the governmental force is far-right or far-left. Thats why the anti-masculine satire in Foe feels insincere. Its a similar reason why I didnt like Matt Ruffs Lovecraft Country. It feels too much like a white person virtue signaling, telling the readers other white people are pieces of racist crap, but Im writing this book, so forgive me; in Reids case, a male asking to be saved from cultural judgementnot by putting the blame on himself for his own failed relationships, but by blaming traditional masculinity. That men are programmed to be pigs. But we should strive to be more…feminine (?yeah, Im not quite sure the moral of the story). I hate virtue signaling. Its not inherently true. Its not genuine. Doesnt inspire real change. Its only a form of selfish, cultural Passover. That being said, while I hated the first person-present tense, it at least tried to be poetic. I did notice that the first chapters prose was superior to the rest, which felt more akin to a high schoolers private journal (well edited, obvi). Story: /5 Prose: /5 Dialogue: /5 Overall: /5 Political meter: /10

I gave the book five stars because I have not read anything like it except his other book, I\’m Thinking of Ending Things. I\’m not even sure I understand what happened in this book, but it is still so captivating. I read both of these books in very short periods of time. I\’m going to look up other people\’s opinions on the story. Please keep writing, Iain!

Foe, the second novel by Canadian author Iain Reid, begins with a car pulling up at an remote rural farmhouse. Junior and his wife Hen don\’t get many visitors, and the arrival of Terrance feels slightly ominous. Even more ominous, then, is the purpose of Terrance\’s visit. He\’s come to tell them that Junior has been shortlisted for a government programme, run by a company called OuterMore, that will see him sent away to spend a couple of years in space, during which Hen will be left alone in the farm house. What\’s even more strange, though, is how OuterMore propose to compensate Hen for Junior\’s absence. Let\’s not beat about the bush: like Reid\’s previous novel, I\’m Thinking Of Ending Things, Foe is a novel about denial, isolation, fractured relationships and existential dread. It\’s set some time in the nearish future during a hot, flat, featureless summer, and despite the setting\’s vast, empty agricultural landscape of endless rapeseed fields, there\’s a strong sense of claustrophobia. Junior and Hen don\’t socialise or go out for any other reason than work (there is a reference to grocery shopping, but we never actually see it happen) and even that work is dull and dystopian, with Junior filling and moving grain bags all day at a vast feed mill. They rarely speak to anyone but each other. For reasons left ominously unclear, there is a ban on keeping livestock, so the couple don\’t even have any pets except some chickens that Junior keeps concealed in a barn. Junior, however, is seemingly content with this arrangement, and when Terrance arrives the couple seem to be doing perfectly well in their seclusion. If anything, the thing that\’s most unsettling at this point in the novel is the strange passivity with which Junior, in particular, accepts Terrance\’s presence in their home and the news that he brings. There is something unnerving and off-kilter about people who react with calm acceptance to shocking news and never challenge what are clearly major impositions. Instead, for the most part Junior and Hen quietly get on with things, despite the undercurrent of unease and resentment which starts to permeate their lives and the questions raised about their relationship. This is one of those books that can\’t be discussed in too much detail without spoiling the plot, but it\’s enough to say that Foe is a chilling read, a slow-burning anxiety dream in which every word and every moment has a significance. It\’s a short but intense book, perfectly crafted in every detail, and an uncomfortably thought-provoking novel whose ending – or, perhaps, endings – can\’t fail to unsettle the reader.

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