Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future by A. S. King

Glory can’t see a future for herself.  She has no plans once she graduates from high school, not applying to any colleges.  Perhaps she is just like her dead mother, who committed suicide four years ago.  It’s the reason that Glory has only eaten microwaved food years, since her father won’t replace the oven her mother used to kill herself.  Glory can’t even seem to get along with her best friend who lives across the road in a commune.  It was there that they found the desiccated bat that they mixed with water and drank.  It was a decision that changed Glory’s life because now when she looks at other people she can see their future, and it’s a future that is filled with civil war, hate of women, and horror.  As Glory sees everyone’s future but her own, she starts to slowly explore the family secrets that surround her and even her own way forward.

King is amazing.  While the cover may compare her to John Green, she is has a voice that is entirely unique and her own.  King has created here a book that mixes photography with philosophy.  Glory speaks the language of film, pre-digital and more physical and tangible.  She uses light meters and ties the numbers she uses directly to her life:  “By shooting the darkest areas three zones lighter, you turned a black, lifeless max black zone 0 into a zone 3.  I think, in life, most of us did this all the time.”  King also embraces a fierce and beautiful feminism in this book.  It’s the feminism that we all viscerally crave, one that speaks to the power of girls and women, a feminism that can save us from ovens.

Glory is such a strong character.  I love that she is cool and real, and yet she feels that she is the most awkward, unsexy and unreal person in the world.  That is such a teen feeling, a feeling of hiding and being masked and fake.  King captures it beautifully.  Glory grows throughout the book, emerging from behind all of the barriers that she has set up for others before they can meet who she really is.  The problem is that she is also hiding from herself. 

Strong, beautiful, feminist and fierce, this book is one inspiring read for all of us who hide and need to be found by ourselves.  Appropriate for ages 15-18.

Reviewed from library copy.