The Rending and the Nest

December 18, 2017
Schwehn’s bizarre novel blends seamless storytelling with the raw emotion of a world suddenly turned on its head. After an unexplained “Rending” causes 95 percent of the world’s population to disappear, 20-year-old Mira is living in a Midwestern refugee settlement called Zion. A temperate climate, grey skies, and huge piles of objects that people scavenge for supplies replace the world they knew. Mira’s friend Lana is the first pregnant resident, and when her baby is born a doll rather than a human, the community is disturbed. More pregnant women give birth to more objects (birds, chopsticks), which provoke conflicted feelings of attachment and revulsion in them. It’s only when Mira makes a place for the objects to rest, a Nest for each, that the mothers snap out of their attachments to the objects. At the end of their fifth year in Zion, a visitor named Michael arrives, bringing with him a mysterious confidence that hypnotizes many Zionites, especially Lana. The story culminates in a riveting rescue mission. Schwehn’s novel is nerve-wracking in the most satisfying way, and the characters are vivid enough to elevate this story above the well-traveled terrain of postapocalyptic fiction.

December 15, 2017
In this absorbing debut novel, 95 percent of the world's population has disappeared without explanation. Those who remain call this event the Rending and struggle to eke out an existence without knowing what has happened or why.Schwehn (Tailings: A Memoir, 2014) offers a world that is intensely familiar yet strange: she uses real locations with telling details, like a deserted Barnes & Noble and the amusement park at the Mall of America. The environment she creates is eerie and gloomy: the sun is gone and the sky is perpetually gray. Weather has ceased to exist (it's a slightly chilly 55 degrees all the time), and the Earth is periodically saturated from within. Our narrator, Mira, is melancholy, missing her parents and especially her younger brother, Bim, but also intrepid and strong. Her job in Zion, the hardscrabble community she lives in, is to climb the Piles, large mountains of junk from the world Before that appeared during the Rending, looking for useful items--a piece of flexible tubing here, a plastic tub there. When Mira's best friend, Lana, gets pregnant--a first since the Rending--and then gives birth to an inanimate object, and when other women in Zion follow suit, Mira and her companions must reimagine their existence again and again, searching for meaning without ever really finding answers. The arrival of a charismatic yet sinister leader named Michael further complicates matters, especially when he endeavors to take Lana to the Zoo, where he's the keeper of human Inhabitants he insists aren't captives.Schwehn's narrator establishes her place among post-apocalyptic heroines through her willingness to remake the world from what she has left and her unlikely arrival at hope.

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November 15, 2017
In Schwehn's unsettling, postapocalyptic page-turner, Mira is 17 years old when the Rending happens and 95 percent of the world's population disappears with no explanation. Four years later, she has helped cobble together a semblance of normalcy in a community known as Zion, where she works as a scavenger of the Piles, looking for supplies. When Mira's best friend, Lana, gives birth to an inanimate object, any facade of normalcy falls away and is further disrupted by the appearance of a manipulative outsider who convinces Lana to return to his home, the Zoo, where people, not animals, now live in the enclosures, and others obsessively monitor them for signs about the Rending. Schwehn has created an intriguing and bizarre world where there are no easy answers. Because so much is unknown, readers will race to find out just what is happening and what it all means. Though the ending is a bit abrupt and characters could be better developed, the entertainment value is high, and those looking for a new dystopian world will be pleased.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from January 1, 2018

In an instant, a single moment in an ordinary day, The Rending changed the world. Most of Earth's people and animals vanished, buildings lacked walls or windows, and only a random lack of order remained. Three years later, the people of Zion have formed a stable community with both freedom and boundaries but little hope. Mira scavenges The Piles, giant mounds of material possessions that appeared across the landscape after The Rending, doing her best to support her community. She has friends in Zion but keeps an emotional distance from everyone, including Rodney, her secret love. Life becomes a tolerable routine, until Mira's friend Lana becomes pregnant and gives birth to a plastic doll. Soon other women in Zion give birth to inanimate objects, marking the first significant change since The Rending. Once word of the births spreads, outsider Michael appears in Zion and lures Lana away, bringing an end to Mira's tenuously held normalcy. VERDICT Schwehn (Tailings: A Memoir) has created a postapocalyptic world in which why is not the main question. The Rending happened; accepting that is the first step toward recovery for the novel's multidimensional characters. This beautifully written story begs to be read again.--Jennifer Beach, Longwood Univ. Lib., Farmville, VA

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