The Rending and the Nest

by Kaethe Schwehn

A chilling yet redemptive post-apocalyptic debut that examines community, motherhood, faith, and the importance of telling one's own story.

When 95 percent of the earth's population disappears for no apparent reason, Mira does what she can to create some semblance of a life: She cobbles together a haphazard community named Zion, scavenges the Piles for supplies they might need, and avoids loving anyone she can't afford to lose. She has everything under control. Almost.

Four years after the Rending, Mira's best friend, Lana, announces her pregnancy, the first since everything changed and a new source of hope for Mira. But when Lana gives birth to an inanimate object--and other women of Zion follow suit--the thin veil of normalcy Mira has thrown over her new life begins to fray. As the Zionites wrestle with the presence of these Babies, a confident outsider named Michael appears, proselytizing about the world beyond Zion. He lures Lana away and when she doesn't return, Mira must decide how much she's willing to let go in order to save her friend, her home, and her own fraught pregnancy.

Like California by Edan Lepucki and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, The Rending and the Nest uses a fantastical, post-apocalyptic landscape to ask decidedly human questions: How well do we know the people we love? What sustains us in the midst of suffering? How do we forgive the brokenness we find within others--and within ourselves?

• ISBN10: 163286973X
• ISBN13: 9781632869739
• Publish Date: 1 January 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic USA
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Language: English

Reviews

[kalventure]

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher, Bloomsbury USA, for the ARC and opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. Review published on Reader Voracious blog.

5 stars, fantastic sci-fi and speculative fiction for the adult reader.

The Rending and the Nest is one of the most compelling, unique, sad, and hopeful books that I have read. At its core this is a character-driven book set in a post-apocalyptic setting, using that setting to delve into topics of community and the human condition... when everything we knew from before is left behind, how do we persevere?

"The most dangerous thing of all is the absence of a story, a narrative to explain what is happening to you. A why with no edges. Because someone will always arrive to invent one."

This is a beautifully written novel about the creation of your own story in the wake of some kind of world event that eliminates 95% of the world's inhabitants. The narrator is Mira, who was 17 years old when the Rending happened and her tale describes the happenings of the six subsequent years. An explanation is never provided for what happened, but much like the characters in the book, that answer became less important to me as I continued to read - the Rending was a new birth for those that remained, a new beginning. The world they inhabit after allowed themselves distance from their past if they so chose. The world After was not necessarily better, just different. While the characters long for the Before as the greener pastures, their lost family and friends, there is some clarity in that people tend to always want something other than where they are - always wanting more, or different - and that was no different in the Before.

"You may have forgotten but I guarantee you were not happy with the world you were living in before the Rending. You were imagining an elsewhere then, too. But you've forgotten. The Before has become your Eden, the land to which you long to return."

This is an amazing book about the human condition and what drives each and every one of us. I cannot recommend this book enough.