Tuesday, April 12, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

 




Goliath is the newest book by Nigerian-American author Tochi Onyebuchi - known for his YA Fantasy science fiction/fantasy novels as well as a number of short fiction works, including the novella Riot Baby, which won a bunch of awards last year.  I didn't love Onyebuchi's debut novel (a 2nd world fantasy novel that was the first in a duology) but really loved his second "YA" duology, the "War Girls" duology, a sci-fi re-imagining of the horrors of the Nigerian Civil War, which was horrifying and brutal but damn powerful, and Riot Baby of course was a tremendous tale of two black siblings growing up in Racist America until one had enough and decided it all had to be burned down.  Themes of oppression and injustice and systems utterly broken to their core are common in Onyebuchi's work, and I expected to find them again here, in this book, which is advertised as his "Adult Debut Novel".  

And I was not mistaken - Goliath is a novel without really a plot, but is instead a character study of a plethora of characters, dealing with a not too distant future in which rich - and generally White - people have fled the world, suffering from damage caused by pollution and radiation and mistreatment, onto orbiting colonies, leaving behind the less fortunate, and generally the people of color, especially in America.  The story jumps between the stories and perspectives of a number of characters, showing how they've struggled to survive and find something in this left behind world...especially as the rich white folks start to come back and take back the land they left, returning ala gentrifiers to push out those who have scrambled together lives of their own down there.  The result is a book that's hard to read and full of power, even as I do think it probably spreads itself a bit too thin, making some stories hard to really understand or hit as strongly as they should.  

Disclaimer: As noted above and below, this is very much a book about people of color (largely black people but also Hispanics and others) dealing with oppression, gentrification, being left behind and then discarded.  And as a reviewer, I'm a white dude, whose only claim to being out of the majority (being Jewish) isn't really relevant to this book...if anything the lack of my knowledge of Christian references only makes me more out of touch with what this book is doing.  So take that into account when reading this review, and I encourage you to check out reviews from people who are actual black reviewers in addition to this review to see that perspective if you're curious about this book.  

More specifics after the jump:  

Normally I begin these reviews with my attempt at a plot summary of the book, both because I often think publishers often do a terrible job at describing their books on bookseller web pages (which to be fair, can sometimes be the result of last minute changes to the book rather than the publisher being deliberately misleading) and because I find putting together a summary of what I just read helps me form my opinion.  But in this case, I'm going to skip that here, because Goliath doesn't really have a cohesive plot.  It has a setting:

The past and present of a near-future America, which has been abandoned by the rich, the wealthy, and the vast majority White populace for orbiting space colonies, leaving behind the poor, the Black, and other people of color on a country that is increasingly hazardous to live in due to air pollution and radiation making it slowly deadly to live outside without an air mask or mechanical augmentation that only the rich can afford.  

But while the book has that setting, it doesn't really have a single arc in that setting, as it instead jumps frequently between characters' perspectives and stories to tell how they've lived their lives in this setting and are still trying to do so.  So we frequently bounce between a crew of brick stackers in New Haven, a group of black men and women led by a preacher named Bishop, as they try to make a life there, we see a pair of white lovers, Jonathan and David, who come back from misery in the colonies to New Haven to restart their lives, and find things aren't much better here (and David recognizes how wrong things are); and in the book's third act, we leave the largely New Haven based setting to follow two new characters across the United States - First, a black Marshal in a southern US that is split up into territories that basically have returned to slavery and who is now pushing a white racist murderer to reveal where he buried a black kid he killed (and the story of this is told largely from the perspective of the racist white guy) and second, a well educated black man who finds himself wandering until he gets imprisoned and part of a revolution in a prison of the prisoners before things grow disastrous.  The result is a story that is not chronological in its telling, bouncing between the past and present (the book is split up into seasons but season 3, Winter, is largely told prior to the prior two acts and then finishes after the last act) and doesn't spend too much time outside of the third act with any single character for a long period of time.  

The result is a story that is often heartbreaking, and is generally pretty powerful, as we meet character after character who has suffered as a result of what has been left behind on Earth, with most of them winding up congregating and coming together around New Haven as they try to find some joy in life (in the most prominent example, in the finding and caring for stray horses they finds lying around and take back to the City).  These are black and latinx people who have lost their families and had to run from place to place just to get to New Haven, losing those they cared about except for the few who came with them, and who have had to brave toxic air and radiation just to survive....while the wealthier colonists or occasional rich Earth person survives in wealth in domes that protect them from the atmosphere or have mechanical augmentations that  make things easier for them.  These are lives that even the best-hearted White people cannot understand - from the journalist who is trying to document their lives to show others who they are displacing by coming back....but who really is just trying to make herself feel better as nothing she does makes any difference (and can be argued is counterproductive by revealing to those far away that there are other people's lives to take), to the pair of White lovers from the colonies who come back down to try to make something after they lose all they care about up there, and who realize what's going on to the poor PoC on the ground...but can do nothing to stop it.  And so when the colonists return to Earth and bring back police and oppression, and the poor black and latinx characters suffer the brunt, it hurts because it feels inevitable and so so real.  

Goliath is sometimes held back by its own ambitions - the story covers so many characters, and is filled with so much description (a style of writing that I struggle with admittedly), that is sometimes hard to hold onto who everyone is and to care about them quite as much as I wanted to.  The two white lover colonists Jonathan and David are almost superfluous at times and disappear completely like after the second act, and there are just so many others that I kind of wondered if the book could be better cutting 1-2 characters.  Similarly, while the book's third act is its most cohesive by far, and is incredibly strong, it does kind of kill the momentum of the larger New Haven arc of the other characters, which is a bit jarring (Onyebuchi's time jumping also doesn't help here).  Onyebuchi is trying to make a lot of points here about oppression, gentrification, and more, and well while it all hits hard, sometimes it feels more like an "oh of course that happened" than a truly impactful moment. 

But when Goliath lands, it lands, like one truly depressing moment around the end when one character gives in to despair at something that happened, and commits a symbolic act that is truly horrifying...and incredibly poignant.  It hurts because it's so monstrous and because it's so justified, and that's the feeling that makes Goliath very very powerful and well worth your time.   

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