Book Description Review “Cutting satire . . . . A compelling narrative with unexpected twists and darkly comic turns.” (New York Times Book Review)“Like Snowpiercer‘s train, a George Saunders amusement park, or the fractured cityscape from a Donald Barthelme story, The Heap‘s Los Verticalés is a sardonic monument to our decadent culture teetering on the brink of collapse. A wry, inventive, and highly original debut.” (Chandler Klang Smith, author of The Sky Is Yours)“The Heap is dizzying in scale, but at its heart it’s an endearing and downright fun story about a man who defies all odds to reestablish a familial link that’s been sundered by technology, catastrophe and commerce. . . . The first great science fiction novel of 2020, The Heap is sharp, acidic and sweet.” (NPR)“As intellectually playful as the best of Thomas Pynchon and as sardonically warm as the best of Kurt Vonnegut, The Heap is both a hilarious send-up of life under late capitalism and a moving exploration of the peculiar loneliness of the early 21st century. A masterful and humane gem of a novel.” (Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of Monsters)“Somehow both timely and timeless, The Heap explores with heart what it means to live in the wake of strange new kinds of catastrophe.” (Seth Fried, author of The Municipalists)“An incandescent, melancholy satire. . . . Fans of Borges and other inventive but piercing stories will revel in this offbeat novel.” (Publishers Weekly)”A sharp, evocative look at human arrogance and the sense of community we build after tragedy.” (Library Journal)“[The Heap] recalls elaborate dystopian scenes found in Terry Gillam films. . . . Irresistibly clever commentary steeped in wit and secrets.” (Booklist)“A dystopian nightmare that is metaphorical in nature but has a compelling story. . . . A vision of the future that gives the working class a chance to get even.” (Kirkus Reviews)”Darkly funny and dystopian.” (New York Post) Read more About the Author Sean Adams is a graduate of Bennington College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His fiction has appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Normal School, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Arkansas International, and elsewhere. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa with his wife, Emma, and their various pets. Read more Customers Review: I wasn’t sure what to expect after reading the first few pages, and the ensuing twists and turns were almost all unanticipated. Found the characters endearing, cheered very time good triumphed over evil. Sean Adams must be hiding behind the furniture at my condo Board meetings to get the dynamics so right at The Heap. Looking forward to his next one…
Excellent and entertaining. Hard to put down.
Amazing all around. Highly recommend.
Super clever and engaging – a delight to read. The world building is wonderful and characters are quirky. 10/10 recommend.
Strong sense of world-building, however plot slightly depletes. Character development is a medium.
The Heap by Sean Adams is a highly recommended dystopian novel chronicling the rise, fall, and recovery effort of a massive high rise complex.Los Verticalés was a massive high rise housing complex in the desert. Towering nearly 500 stories tall, the complex collapsed into what is called “the Heap,” a pile of rubble covering 20 acres. A community of Dig Hands now live nearby in CamperTown. In exchange for digging gear, a rehabilitated bicycle, a tiny trailer, and a small living stipend, Dig Hands spend their days removing debris, trash, and bodies from the building’s mountainous remains. Orville Anders is a dig hand who, along with his co-worker Lydia, and many others, is looking for his brother, Bernard. Miraculously Bernard has survived the collapse and is broadcasting his radio show from somewhere in the Heap. Orville calls in to Bernard’s show every night after work and talks to him on air.Chapters in this debut novel feature chapters from the present day life in the community of Dig Hands in CamperTown after the collapse and glimpses into life in Los Verticalés and the residents before the collapse. Life in the tower beforehand had two very different groups of inner and outer residents – those who could still see natural light through their apartment windows, and the rest who had to rely on images on UV screens. Life in CamperTown is a third very different community with its own set of rules and a social atmosphere. All parts of the novel become increasingly disjointed and menacing, especially when a cartel comes into the story.The Heap is an entertaining novel with some interesting world building and unique aspects in the society. While the writing could use some assistance in a few areas, the idea behind the novel and the plot help to overcome the parts that are lacking or a bit slow moving. The addition of the weird and absurd, but menacing, cartel, and the rather heedless, nonsensical and peculiar activities of the characters added a quirky, intriguing aspect to the inventive plot.Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
This has an interesting concept- a community of people digging out the remains of a 500 story building – Los Verticales- which has collapsed in the desert. One of them, Orville, is trying to get to his brother Bernard who is improbably broadcasting from underneath the heap. Interspersed in the “present” day are chapters about the people who lived in there. There are issues of class, privilege, and so on which could have been more deeply examined (and characters, including, btw, Orville and Bernard) who could have been more sympathetic. There’s also a cartel which shows up – and no spoilers on that! Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. It’s an unusual read for fans of dystopian novels.
It’s confusing. When you read the jacket of this book, you get the impression that it will be a sort of character study about a brother digging endlessly at the toppled remains of a giant residential structure to get to his brother — far below and broadcasting 24/7 as the only survivor of the tragedy. That’s what you’re more or less promised, anyway.Going into this book with that mindset is stressful. Not only are conversations between the brothers the least played out mechanism in the book, but the introduction of a conspiracy and cartel in the first 100 pages is somewhat of a head-scratcher. Add to that the insanely tired trope of “an enemy who’s smarter and stronger in every way that you can stop until they outsmart you” villain (or, in this case, shadow organization) that makes your protagonist seem weak in every conceivable way, and you’ve got yourself a book worth putting down halfway through.Why the 4 stars then? Well, let me say that I read this book in a little over a day. I like to read books as fast as possible so I can be engrossed in all the details and not forget pertinents along the way. As such, I read over the chapters in full italics illustrating the community characterized in “Los Verticales” as a sort of set up for the characters. This was a mistake on my part. If you step back and look at the whole picture as a sort of almost satirical sociological commentary, the book suddenly becomes much more interesting.With that, I embarked on the rest of the book and laughed at the reflection of the good and not so good in us all and what truly makes communities feel “special.” All in all a great book, but I’d recommend exercising caution when reading the inside flap as it’s a little misleading. |
15 reviews