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There are currently 16 member reviews
for Awake in the Floating City
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Laurie M.
Awake in the Floating City - beautiful!
Susanna Kwan brings the reader to a future San Francisco which has been sieged with years of continuous rainfall. This dystopian setting gives the novel a unique atmospheric quality. The author's descriptive prose will make you feel like you are there. However, the true brilliance of Awake in the Floating City is in the characters and their relationships.
This is a tale of family lost, and family found. Through the characters' histories and memories, the reader watches the story slowly and quietly unfold. So much here for the reader to reflect upon. This is a novel that will stay with you long after the last pages are read. I highly recommend it!
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Kathryn Z. (Brooklyn, NY)
Floating City
Though I am not a fan of dystopian books I thought this premise was beautifully written. It's a poignant story of list family, fading memories, stalked ambition revived by human connection. The main characters, Bo ,a young artist and Mia a 130( yes 130) year old living alone is a great story.
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Susan S. (Salida, CO)
Awake in the near future
Loved this one! Having lived in CA, I could instantly identify with location, politics, climate difficulties and more. The author put us in a not-far-distant future where all the current reality is suspended yet the people, their needs, their lives, are very much the same. I was totally pulled into this unique and fascinating world – touching on topics of aging, depression, catastrophe, change and personal needs as well as splendid insight to the mind of an artist. It would be a great choice for book clubs, particularly if you have aging concerns (your own or a parent), thoughts about climate change, discrimination, personal growth and development at any age. Lots of meat for discussion.
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Lauren C. (Los Angeles, CA)
Beautiful portrait of family, home, friendship, and art
I was expecting another post-apocalyptic book (which I enjoy), but this one was quite different. While it takes place in San Francisco where it has been raining for the past seven years, it isn't a survival story. The timeframe is a near future where medical science has many people living to 130, so that they spend half of their lives being what we now consider "old". The book explores why people stay or leave, how they view the past, and how families evolve when parents and children and grandchildren all have such long lives. The book is beautifully written so it isn't sad so much as floating through time.
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Deborah G. (Black Mountain, NC)
Post-Apocalyptic Possibilities?
Susanna Kwan's first novel, Awake in the Floating City, drew me into a post-apocalyptic San Francisco where survivors live in the top floors of flooded buildings where near-constant rains continue to wash away the remnants of civilization. At first, I was a reluctant witness to the main character Bo's hesitancy to leave this place. The pace seemed slow, and Bo's conflicted feelings made me impatient. Soon I appreciated the complexities of Bo's situation and her relationships with Eddie, her sometime lover; Mia, the elderly women she agrees to care for; and the relatives of each of these characters. Her efforts to resume her practice as an artist help her tie together past, present, and future, bringing the reader along to explore ways in which history, memory, and death and dying help us define and preserve the essence of humanity.
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Gloria M. (Los Gatos, CA)
Fascinating Debut!
Susanna Kwan has crafted a cleverly composed narrative. Set in a waterlogged San Francisco, the reader is instantly engaged and entangled in the thoughts and actions of the protagonist, Bo, who is reeling from the loss of her mother in a flood and currently wrestling with her pending decision to leave her beloved city.
Her friends and remaining family members have already fled to other parts of the world. Bo's artistic career has been virtually nonexistent for two long years and she has been making ends meet by working as a caregiver for the elderly.
When Mia, a neighbor with health issues, requests her services, Bo finds herself unable to refuse and their relationship becomes integral to both of them. Can Bo find her way back to her true self? Will she fail Mia? Will she ever be able to escape the hold San Francisco has on her?
With a richly drawn supporting cast, including a part-time boyfriend and various other residents struggling to survive every day, this is an intriguing tale that deserves a place on your TBR.
This one is for readers who are fans of dystopian fiction and also those who relish a great character study. Many thanks to BookBrowse and Pantheon Books for once again connecting me with an excellent debut novelist that I might have otherwise missed.
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Kathleen B. (Columbia, MO)
Intimate and Beautiful
In Awake in the Floating City, Susanna Kwan gives us a quiet, intimate story of a woman haunted by the loss of her mother as she cares for a 130-year old neighbor.
San Francisco, flooded by sea rise, comes to life in these pages, but so does San Francisco of the past. As Bo receives Mia's stories, she discovers within herself a desire to memorialize the people, places, and events now buried underwater. Reading along, we, too, are stirred by the awareness of human history upon which we stand.
This is a vivid portrait of a place, of the beauty and pain that come with the process of aging and death, and of the human spirit. Like Station Eleven, another book set in a post-apocalyptic world, Awake in the Floating City is a story of relationship, and, ultimately, of hope and beauty. Readers with an art background will find certain portions of this book particularly rewarding.
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