Hunted (2012), by Cheryl Rainfield

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 17.5.

Hunted

While I was reading Cheryl Rainfield’s Hunted, I attended a lecture by Karen Armstrong, founder of the Charter for Compassion.  Listening to Armstrong, lines and scenes from Hunted repeatedly rose up in my mind, and I thought: this is more than a dystopic novel about oppression and intolerance (which it is); it is a powerful narrative example of the strength it takes, within an oppressive culture, to maintain one’s sense of humanity.

In Hunted, Caitlyn and her mother are continually running, changing names, schools, lives… because Caitlyn is a “Paranormal,” a telepathic who can read others’ thoughts and emotions: a power that frightens those without it. In Caitlyn’s world, Paranormals of all kinds must be registered, and once registered, are removed from society and tortured, sometimes forced to hunt other “Paras.” During the uprising that led to this abusive system, Caitlyn’s father was murdered and her brother Daniel taken away; she and her mother fled. After years of running, Caitlyn finally needs to stop, to rest, to blend in. Rejoining society—as much as she is able—is difficult, dangerous, and yet rewarding. Her two new “Normal” friends are similarly, if not equally outcast: Rachel is lesbian and Alex is black. While Rachel’s lesbianism is highlighted as a consideration in her relationship with Caitlyn, Alex’s race is not sufficiently apparent to the reader. When we meet him, we are told that “his skin contrasts with his crisp white shirt” (30), but that could make him Mediterranean, or even just well-tanned. Once, later, Caitlyn mentions his “springy black curls” (148), but no other mention is made until almost he end of the book, when the term “black” is finally used. In our white-washed world, a few more hints would be welcome.

The political aspects of the plot—too complicated to delineate but solidly structured and effective—lead to a crisis for which Caitlyn’s online avatar, Teen-Para, has been made the scapegoat. In the end, sacrifices are made by individuals on both sides, and readers are left with a strong message regarding blanket assumptions about good and evil. Caitlyn’s faith in the goodness, the inherent humanity, of “Normals” is justified, as is her wariness of belief in anyone merely because they are paranormal. There are hints here of Katniss’s response to the politics of Panem in the end of the Hunger Games trilogy: a group being oppressed and thus rebellious does not necessarily equate with that group being right or justified.  What Caitlyn and the reader have reinforced is a message of tolerance of difference, and a wariness of all individuals who seek power at the expense of others.

The Charter for Compassion expounds that “compassion is not an option; it is the key to our survival” (Alastair Smith, Greater Vancouver Compassion Network); faithful to this humanist tenet, Caitlyn strives to create the compassionate world her father envisioned: “Dad dreamed of a world where we could live freely—but he also taught me that all life is precious, Normal or Paranormal, and that we’re all in this together” (294). The power of Hunted is that by the end of the novel, the reader is sure that she is right.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), by Madeline L’Engle

A Wrinkle in Time (1962) is one of the classics of YA science fiction; in A Wind in the Door (1973), science fiction sits uncomfortably beside fantasy, injected with a hint of mysticism; A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978) has abandoned the science fiction genre entirely. It has “preciously little science in it” but blends fantasy and mysticism with the political fears of the moment: nuclear war. Like the source of the preceding quotation,¹ A Swiftly Tilting Planet is better for not subscribing even loosely to the parameters of the science fiction genre.

In this fantastic tale, 15-year-old Charles Wallace travels not through space but through time, on a wind-riding unicorn–pegasus named Gaudior (“more joyful” [46]). A pregnant Meg (now O’Keefe) lies in her attic bed (yes, again it is “a dark and stormy night”) and accompanies him through “kything,” communicating mind-to-mind.  She is strengthened in her abilities by a recently arrived replacement for the ever-vigilant Fortinbras: a stray dog, whom Charles Wallace tells us is named Ananda (“that joy in existence without which the universe will fall apart and collapse” [38]). As in A Wind in the Door, when we learn that Louise the Larger (the pet garden snake) is actually a “Teacher” in the greater universal community, animals have a strong mystical connection, used to support the Murry children in their attempts to save the world; also like A Wind in the Door, the narrative clues are not particularly subtle. But at least A Swiftly Tilting Planet has an interesting story to tell, and a mystery to solve, that keep the reader guessing well into the plot.

The pervasive theme in this novel is the archetype most often represented by Cain and Abel. L’Engle takes for the basis of her version the Welsh legend of Madoc, published in epic poetic form by Robert Southey in 1805. The original had only the youngest Welsh prince, Madoc, fleeing internecine strife to found a new, more peaceful life in America (although in Southey’s poem he ends up waging religious war on the Aztecs, and converting them, and ultimately founding a colony). In L’Engle’s version, he and an older brother, Gwydyr, cross the waters: like Cain and Abel, one is peace-loving, one is full of a greed for power. Charles Wallace, sent to alter history and thus prevent nuclear annihilation at the hands of a South American despot, enters “Within” the peaceful Madoc, as he does a number of subsequent characters, and begins to learn the long and complicated history of Madoc’s and Gwydyr’s decedents, intertwined as it is with the history of Calvin O’Keefe’s forebears as well as the Southey poem. And yes, the plot is presented in as complicated a manner as this sounds, even moreso.  Young readers will actually enjoy the historical puzzle L’Engle builds for us, even if to the adult reader it seems somewhat contrived.  Charles Wallace visits some interesting moments in history: prehistoric Native America, first contact with the indigenous peoples, the Salem witch trials, the Civil War. These are combined with more recent fictional moments that will similarly interest readers: namely, the early life of Calvin’s seemingly unimportant and ineffectual mother. There is “more to her than meets the eye” (24, 278), certainly, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet shows characters and readers alike how wrong it is to judge a person without knowing the full story.

Where A Wind in the Door felt uncertain of its genre, and did not really beg continuation, A Swiftly Tilting Planet brings the reader back into the Murry–O’Keefe families’ lives and leaves us wondering where their stories will go from here.

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¹   James DeMille, A Strange Manuscript Found in Copper Cylinder, 1888 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2000) 226.

Red Riding Hood (2011), by Sarah Blakey-Cartwright and David Leslie Johnson

A novelization of a new movie directed by Catherine Hardwick (Twilight saga), Red Riding Hood presents a collage of modern sensibilities and traditional fairy-tale tropes and setting.  Valerie, the protagonist, is a loner, Grandmother lives in a treehouse in the forest, apart from the rest of the village, and the two young men who vie for Valerie’s hand—Henry and Peter—represent stereotypic male types: the physically strong but psychologically weak, and the tall dark handsome “stranger.”  The plot is one of medieval persecution of the witch-hunt variety, but quite well written and engaging.  The blend of modern psychological knowledge (of Claude, the simpleton, being merely different, not cursed) with Father Solomon’s combination of righteousness and superstition creates a conflict for Valerie—and the reader—on a number of levels.  In the end, we do not know, really, who the wolf is.  Or how long it has been haunting the village. I think this was the greatest flaw in the text, for me: the werewolf story genre necessitates some sort of underlying moral, ethical, or social message, and I find this element completely lacking.  Its absence is not obvious, though, until the final pages, and throughout the text the wondering continues, as we do bond with the characters (interestingly, all of the main players).  In the end, we are left wondering how things stand to too great a degree.  I prefer a text that allows the reader to think, but arrive at a solid conclusion—even if this seems to be authorial manipulation—rather than ending the reading experience feeling that I don’t have sufficient knowledge to extrapolate into the phase space of the narrative.

I think I need to see the movie, which I suspect will lead the viewer more solidly towards an unequivocal position.

Addendum (and spoiler alert):  Having seen the movie, I am not more impressed with this interpretation of that narrative. We do discover who the werewolf is: Valerie’s father.  In saving Valerie, Peter is bitten. He leaves the community while he learns to deal with his condition, and the final sense is his return, in werewolf form, with Valerie welcoming him with an overtly sexual gaze.  The moral seems to be: no matter how violent your lover becomes, no matter what he does to others, even the werewolf can be tolerated for “love.”