April 23rd just came and went. Now, for me that
didn’t mean a whole lot – soccer practice for one kid, baseball for the other,
baked haddock for dinner in-between.
For Prenna James, however, April 23rd is a very
special anniversary. It marks the date she and her Postremo community traveled
back from the year 2098 to 2010 in an effort to fix whatever it is that goes
wrong in the time between that unleashes plagues unto the future.
The Here and Now
begins in 2014, with Prenna having had 4 years to adjust to her new time. And
adjust and learn to blend, she has, heavily incentivized by the knowledge of
the fate that will befall her at the hand of her groups’ leaders if she does
not. We learn their strict code of conduct as recited by Prenna’s peers at the
annual “anniversary ceremony,” which is not only a quite un-joyous occasion,
but it’s not even followed by a celebratory meal! Prenna and her friends are on
their own to grab dinner from a nearby Chipotle – again, normalcy by necessity.
But Prenna does remember a different sort of normal – she
even describes this solemn anniversary as kind
of like our Thanksgiving, but without the turkey and pumpkin pie. So we do
know that some holiday foods remain traditional in the future from which she
has escaped. Can we then assume all food in 2098 is essentially the same as we
know it now? Because this story is told in Prenna’s current present, we know
that take-out fried chicken with coleslaw is a common dinner for her and her
mother. What we do not know is if that’s the result of the 4-year adjustment,
or if such a period was never required culinary-wise.
So the scene I most want to see, of course, is Prenna’s first
food experience on the 2010 side of the time-travel path, but chronologically
that time has already passed. Or has it?
This is when Brashares shouts, “But wait!”* Because she’s
found a way to show me what I crave. J
By shuffling in short letters from Prenna to her deceased future brother that
date back to that April 23rd arrival, Brashares is indeed able to
share glimpses of that 4-year gap, including a first taste:
Dear Julius,
I ate a mango. It’s a
sticky orange fruit, sweet and sour, and it comes apart in threads, with a hard
little skull in the middle of it. It is so good. Even better than pineapple. I
think I would eat it even if you told me it was deadly poisonous.
Now I know one vital (to me, anyway) fact – there are
pineapples in 2098, but not mangoes. And why is that? Is there something
inherently different in the two plants? Or in the climes in which each grows?
Does it have anything to do with our current era’s mass canning of pineapples
but not mangoes? So that, in the bleak future that Prenna has seen, the only
surviving fruits are preserved ones?
One short paragraph – one bite of fruit – leads to so many
questions; imagine what the other 200+ pages stir up!
But before you start reading, you might want to go pick up
some mango…while you still can. ;)
* Or But WATE, if you
will. ;)
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