Monday, September 27, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Summer in the City of Roses by Michelle Ruiz Keil

 




Summer in the City of Roses is a YA/Magical Realism novel from author Michell Ruiz Keil.  It's her second novel, and I'd honestly never heard of it until Tor.com posted a glowing review that really caught my interest.  The novel features a take on 90s or early 00s Portland and is advertised as taking inspiration from the Greek myths of Iphigenia and Orestes, as well as the Grimm fairy tale of "Brother and Sister"....although honestly, it is very much its own story, that outshines those tales that influenced it.  

Which is to say that I loved Summer in the City of Roses for the most part, as a fantastic book exploring the side of Portland and the world that is often overlooked - the PoC, the poor and homeless, the queer, the sex workers, and those who don't fit the standard well off white (if liberal) majority populace of the city.  And it does so in a way that is optimistic but fair, resulting in a story that reminded me a lot of books like the Wayfarer books of Becky Chambers or even Pat Murphy's The City, Not Long After.  And its a story that surprises in its many turns, never taking the obvious or easy path forwards, just like its characters.  This is a really good book that deserves far more attention than I've seen it recieve.  
----------------------------------------------Book Summary--------------------------------------------------
17 Year old Iph has always protected her younger brother from both society and her well meaning parents - her dancer Mom and her architect Dad - who aren't quite sure what to do with him.  Orr has panic attacks, doesn't react well to people at times, and doesn't know what he wants exactly at any given time and doesn't really fit into any of his parents' ideas of what a boy should be.  And so Iph, who doesn't even know what she wants with her own life - since her dream of acting seems unattainable for someone with her body type - has taken to protecting him.  

And then, with their mom away at a 3 month dance residency, their father has Orr taken to a fascist wilderness camp meant to force boys into learning "toughness" - with the camp literally putting a bag over Orr's head and kidnapping him from their home.  When Iph finds out, she runs out on their father into the middle of Portland, only to find she has no clue where she is or what she can do to get back her brother.  There on the street she meets George, a genderqueer teen living secretly in their nana's house who goes around trying to help people on the street.  As George helps Iph with her search for her brother, Iph begins to meet others on the streets of Portland - the homeless, the addicts, the sex workers, and just those trying to survive anyway they can - and sees how they struggle and persevere, and begins to find herself in the process.  

Meanwhile, with the seeming help of some wild animals, Orr escapes the camp and wanders down a road until he falls in with an all-girl punk band, who takes sympathy to his plight.  There Orr struggles with his own issues and wants, and begins to transform, in ways no one could possibly have imagined....
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Summer in the City of Roses is very much a book that another author could have taken in very different, often darker directions.  Another author would have Orr struggle in the fascist homophobic/racist camp, but here Orr breaks out immediately.  Another author would make the dad who set Orr up for this fate into a clear villain, who would attempt to ensure control over his children once they get loose - Keil isn't interested in doing that either.  This is a story about people who are struggling to balance their own wants, desires, and very beings with the difficulties of living in this world, and these struggles are messy and filled with mistakes.  And so there are basically no direct antagonists here (the closest we get is an abusive boyfriend and a side character's parent who is harmful to their kid, but such characters are ancillary and only have small scenes which end in optimistic fashion) - because well again people are messy.  

But while people are messy, Summer in the City of Roses is optimistic about their intentions, and about how with help and support from one another, they can make something of themselves.  A lot of that is demonstrated by Iph, who is an absolutely phenomenal character, in the girl who doesn't really know what they want, but is always open and understanding about everyone, and approaches the street of Portland with an open and unjudging eye.  Sure, she's human and a teen and has normal emotions of lust, jealousy, and fear, but she also cares and wants to understand more and to help people, even more so than the robin-hood like character who becomes her partner, the non-binary George.* 

*As explained in an author's note at the end of the book, this book takes place in a Portland just a few years before there were widely known words for being genderqueer or using they/them pronouns, and so George struggles to explain who they are and the book never uses pronouns for them out of accuracy to the time period.*

And so through Iph we see a girl who becomes a stripper because she likes it and it allows her to make money on her own terms, we see addicts who use a needle exchange and need help to deal with the costs of addiction - which they try to shake but can't always quite do so - we see a panhandler who will happily work with a stranger to try and do something new which can result in more earnings, etc. etc.  Not all of these side characters we meet get many pages and some of them are more memorable than others, but Keil paints them with tremendous depth through Iph and Orr's eyes (one of Orr's major characters deals with the abusive boyfriend from her past she just can't quite, and its similarly very understandable through the confused Orr's eyes).  

And then there's Orr, a boy who would very much be called neurodivergent and be considered on the autism spectrum these days, and thus has difficulty fitting in in any role his parents - both his dad and his mom - can fit him in.  And so the book's fantastical elements - the magical realism - deal with him, as he starts transforming literally into something new as he encounters first a punk all girl rock band who are willing to help, and then their friend, an alternative girl with a knack for foresight, to whom he finds himself attracted and confused.  Again, it's a love that you'd expect to develop and change Orr in certain ways, and Keil instead takes a very different direction with it, leading to the story to conclude in an incredibly fantastical conclusion.  

Again, I can't stress this enough, Keil manages to do all this in a way that emphasizes everyone's messyness while also emphasizing that they are, in their own ways - no matter how thrown away they are by the system - trying to do the right thing.  This is even true of Iph/Orr's parents - for example, the father who sent Orr to the fascist camp is just trying to figure out some way to help his children since it seems everything else he's tried has failed, and is horrified when confronted with the reality of what that camp tried to do; their mother is in her own way just as lost, as she tries to navigate her past she's ashamed of, her aspirations as a dancer, and handling two kids who don't quite fit the norm.  And it's more true of the people who are often forgotten in Portland, those who aren't the wealthy white cis people who first made Oregon the state where PoC were outlawed.  

If the book has a flaw, it's that the final act which delves deeply into the fantastical (after the magical realism elements were mainly hinted out previously) is a bit more confusing than is probably necessary, and involves a few characters the book hasn't shown for 200 pages to the point I completely forgot anything about them.  But its portrayal of these forgotten parts of Portland, and of people just trying to make things work, is so good, that it's hard to care too much.  Just a tremendous work.  

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