The Marrow Thieves

by Cherie Dimaline

Paperback, 2017

Status

Available

Series

The Marrow Thieves (1)

Collection

Publication

DCB (2017), 260 pages

Description

"In a future world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's indigenous population - and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow - and dreams - means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a 15-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones, and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing 'factories.'"--

User reviews

LibraryThing member LynnB

Distopian futuristic books are not something I normally read; in fact, I wouldn't have read this at all had it not been a Canada Reads finalist. That said, I enjoyed the story and found lots of meat for discussion and contemplation within it.

This is the story of Frenchie, who enters the story

around age 11 and we follow him for about 5 years. He lives in a world where environmental damage has devastated the earth. White people have lost the ability to dream and this is having serious implications for them. Aboriginal people, though, continue to dream and harvesting their bone marrow cures the white majority. Therefore, the government hires "recruiters" who capture Aboriginals and take them to "schools" where they die as a result of the harvesting process.

As the story opens, Frenchie has already lost both his parents and is about to lose his only sibling. He meets up with a group of Aboriginal people who are travelling to the (relative) safety of the North. The story tells of their challenges, the ever-present danger of recruiters, the lack of food, water, clothing, and their back-stories.

The book raises awareness of the evil of racism, both present and historical (i.e., the residential school system). We learn about the importance of Aboriginal traditions and history in keeping people strong. There are serious issues presented such as what would you do to protect your family? What are you capable of doing?

While not my favourite type of book, I think it's a good choice for Canada Reads because of the universal themes and messages set in a context of racism and environmental damage which are relevant today.

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LibraryThing member eldang

An astonishing book. Every bit as brutal as I'd expect from an indigenous-focussed post-apocalyptic story, and yet there's a surprising core of hopefulness in it. And all the way through it's thoroughly human, often quite tender, in ways that post-apocalyptic stories sometimes forget to be.

LibraryThing member rgruberhighschool

RGG: The mood is reminiscent of Yancey's The Fifth Wave--maybe it's the journey through the wilderness while being hunted by society. A quiet science fiction re-telling of Native American history. Reading Interest: 14-YA.

LibraryThing member pwaites

This YA dystopia is pretty different from the rest of its subgenre, in a good way.

Frenchie is on the run. His parents and brother have already been taken, grabbed by government agents, shoved in a white van, and driven off to the schools. After years of ecological devastation, a new disaster

struck: the majority of the population became unable to dream with terrible results. The only ones who can still dream are Native Americans, and their bone marrow holds the cure for the dreamless. And so the Canadian government authorizes their unwilling sacrifice, turning people into parts to be harvested. Frenchie’s survived, but survival is always in doubt. He’s found a group of other Indigenous people, all on the run from the “recruiters.” Each of them has their own story of loss, but their futures are not without hope.

The Marrow Thieves has an unconventional structure. While the main story is Frenchie and his found family trekking through the woods, The Marrow Thieves also contains stories within stories, detailing the pasts of different group members. There’s Miig, a man whose husband was kidnapped by recruiters. Wab, who has been victim to some brutal violence. Minerva, the eldest member of their group. Also unlike the majority of YA dystopian novels, it’s not action packed. It was interesting to read something of this genre with a slower, more reflective pace. It just goes to show how it can be good to break the mold.

The Marrow Thieves shows the importance of the characters’ specific connections to their Native heritage and legacy of survival. Frenchie and his family might be living in a hellish dystopia, but his people’s pasts have been dystopic too. Thus, the horrors of The Marrow Thieves are grounded in a long history of racial and cultural violence and the inequities of our present.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the romantic subplot, which is with a girl named Rose. Look, it takes a lot to sell me on a romantic subplot, and this one doesn’t cut it. I found it hard to buy into the connection between Frenchie and Rose, since it sort of felt like the reason he was interested in her was because she was the only girl his age. I can see it as a crush, but not much more than that. Then again, the overhyped drama of a first crush is probably accurate for a lot of teenagers. It’s just not my cup of tea.

I occasionally found the writing style clunky. Some other reviewers have mentioned how The Marrow Thieves forshadows by outright telling you something important is about to happen. Multiple times. Yeah, I noticed that as well, and while it did make me wonder what was going to happen, it also threw me out of the story.

The Marrow Thieves is a dark, intelligent novel and an important addition to young adult literature. At the same time, I’m not sure I’d be interested in reading any possible sequels. While I liked how it departed from some genre tropes, why did it have to keep the half baked romance sub-plot? Oh, well. It may not have appealed to me as a reader, but I’m sure it’ll find its fans.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

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LibraryThing member rosalita

What happens when we stop dreaming? And what if we could steal the dreams of someone else and take them for our own? Would we do it, even if it meant the destruction of the people we’re stealing from? That question is at the heart of this Young Adult novel (which even adult readers will find

compelling) by Cherie Dimaline. It centers the historical experience of indigenous nations in an imagined future where, sadly, not much has changed from the racist past and present.

In that not-so-distant future, rampant climate change has wreaked havoc on the Earth. Coastal regions of North America have fallen prey to the rising seas, and the seismic shifts have ruptured pipelines and sent pollution spilling across the landscape. The resulting hordes of refugees have strained resources in the habitable areas that remain and sparked wars and societal disruption.

All of the chaos has also caused a less obvious problem: People have lost the ability to dream, causing emotional and physical stress to build. It seems only one group has escaped the dreamless void: Indigenous people, perhaps because of their ancestral ties to and respect for the land, continue to experience normal dreaming. But what at first seems like a blessing quickly becomes a nightmare, as white scientists develop a way to extract dreams from indigenous individuals and implant them in the dreamless people. No one seems to care that the restoration of health to whites means the death of the expendable indigenous people.

Frenchie is a 15-year-old indigenous boy when [The Marrow Thieves] starts. He and his brother Mitch have lost both their parents and are on the run, in hiding from the Recruiters who round up indigenous people and take them to facilities modeled on the 19th century residential boarding schools where native children in both the US and Canada were sent to “cure” them of their native culture. The new versions dispense with the re-education and simply “harvest” dreams from their captives, consigning them to a death sentence. The two brothers are separated, and just when things look most dire for Frenchie he meets up with another group of indigenous people who are also fleeing the white Recruiters. Together this ragtag band of strangers makes its way north, where they hope to find safety in a place where few or no white people, the land is less polluted and they will be able to once again pass on their ancient cultural traditions to their children.

Dimaline doles out the backstory for Frenchie and his companions sparingly, alternating flashbacks into each one’s past life with the perilous day-to-day existence they are sharing in the present. The flashbacks aren’t intrusive and they bring the characters to life in a way that simply expositing their backgrounds would not. By the end, readers will celebrate and mourn alongside the characters we’ve come to know.

Really, the only flaw I could find won’t necessarily be a dealbreaker for everyone (or even anyone) else. Because this is a YA novel, narrated by a teenage (though appealing) character, there’s a bit too much self-absorption and time spent on a secondary romance that distracts from the tension of the main plot line. But even those elements are fairly muted compared to some YA I’ve read, and I have no reservations (no pun intended) about recommending this book to readers of all ages. It’s a wonderful book that shines a welcome spotlight on indigenous culture and people.

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LibraryThing member bobbybslax

Dimaline makes an interesting world with a group of interesting characters, none of which are particularly fleshed out but likeable nevertheless.

LibraryThing member jennybeast

Powerful book, about running and surviving and about the connections and heritage that are more important than anything else.

LibraryThing member juniperSun

So much of this book contains hurt, fear, internal pain, loneliness, but the ending is so rightfully redemptive. A coming-of-age of French, a young First Nations boy who slowly loses his family as all those working for the dominant society hunt all Native peoples down in their attempt to develop a

quick fix for all the destruction their own technology has wreaked on this planet and on their own selves. Frenchy does soon connect up with other Natives as they flee, all holding memories of loss, all working to keep each other alive--even their elder who seems quite senile, all hoping to reach a rumored guerilla resistance.
When I finished this book, I thought of how powerful the Native languages are, and how important it must have been to the author to assert this. I also realized that their is no exclusion in this: that any of us who can dream our roots down into the earth are connected, tho it may take the True Words to bring down the web of technology that currently has us snared.

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LibraryThing member fionaanne

The prose is sparser than I would have liked; honestly, this could have been a hundred pages longer and I wouldn't have objected in the least.

LibraryThing member emma_mc

I loved this book. Quick read, great writing, incredible story. Traumatic and heartbreaking, too.

LibraryThing member LibraryCin

3.5 stars

It’s sometime in the future, and Indigenous people are being hunted by non-Indigenous for their bone marrow, as there is something in it that helps people dream, and Indigenous are the only ones who are now able to dream. Frenchie, a 16-year old(?) Metis boy, has lost both his parents

and his older brother, so he’s on his own until he comes across a group of Indigenous people travelling north.

This was good. I had a bit of trouble getting into it at the very start, but it only took a couple of chapters. I didn’t like one of the decisions Frenchie made near the end of the book, but that ended up working out better than I’d expected. I also thought the very end was unrealistic, but it was good up to that point. It’s a pretty fast read.

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LibraryThing member jakecasella

YA, dystopian, quite good. Near-future where most people have lost the ability to dream, leading to widespread (if thinly-sketched) societal breakdown. Indigenous peoples can still dream, and are being hunted. This book had some issues at plot-logistic levels, but was very enjoyable the closer it

hewed to its YA protagonists; has some elements of both climate disaster and magic mixed in. Grimly plausible at some levels, and specifically called out the Canadian Indian residential school history.

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LibraryThing member DrFuriosa

This book is a slow burn of inconsistent pace but a persistent return to themes of loss and mourning. Dystopian on its face, the book is a much more complicated examination of family and loss in an age of crisis. The ending is perhaps too convenient, but I don't care. I still cried. It reminded me

in many ways of Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God, although with intentional focus on First Nations cultures and languages.

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LibraryThing member SheilaCornelisse

A group of indigenous people living in a dystopian Canada are hiding and fleeing from a government organization who are hunting down and killing "Indians" in order to extract their ability to dream. This is a story that makes you think about how many ways the "white" man has abused their indigenous

neighbours and how this may never change. Although a recommended read, the story could have gone deeper and darker into the exploitation.

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LibraryThing member elenaj

This book is excellent. It took me a little while to get into it, but it built steam as it went and by the end I was captivated. The nonlinear narrative is at times slightly confusing but adds to the power of the story. Highly recommended.

LibraryThing member acargile

Marrow Thieves drops the reader into the dystopian future of America. We are slowly told what happened, leading to this present life.

French loses the last of his family as the novel begins. They stayed too long. They knew to keep moving, but the tree house was so nice; such a great place to get out

of the elements and even find some food. Someone revealed their presence and the "recruiters" have shown up. French's brother tells him to run. He does as his brother makes enough noise to cover French's escape. He's now on his own. He knows to go north. These lands belong to his people--they, the indigenous people, were stewards of it and know how to repair the earth. He finds others like him and they become his new family and teach him the old ways.

As they travel North, they have to be careful to be watchful of recruiters because they are hunting for his people. The indigenous people have what everyone needs; they must be sacrificed to gain the commodity. French learns to hunt and he learns about love with Rose. He also sees evil first hand that leads to loss. Surprises also occur. What will not happen is finding out what happens. The novel just ends. The reader is dropped in to a tense moment of escape at the beginning and then you join French in his journey, and then nothing. It just ends. There's no resolution to the plot itself. The novel is not about plot. Ultimately, it's about caring for the earth and caring for each other. This is the "end" of the novel, for it's the end of all of our lives, so take effort to care, to eschew selfishness which only leads to destruction and dystopia.

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LibraryThing member lydia1879

I struggle with young adult as a genre. I have always struggled with young adult as a genre. I didn’t like young adult when I was a teen and instead stuck to modern classics, crime by Agatha Christie and comics. I always tried to read what everyone else was reading — it always ended the same,

with a bookmark stuck 30 pages in and my returning it to the library to be forgotten about.

There’s just something in young adult that doesn’t feel genuine to me. Much like when you’re a child and you realise there’s an educational aspect to a favourite game, it often isn’t a favourite game anymore, because of its deception. I wanted to love young adult for years and still do, but the disappointment was just too much to take, so I stopped reading young adult altogether.

Until now.

Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves is short-listed to win the Canada Reads Prize for 2018 and it’ll win. I don’t think it’ll win, I know it will. I’ve read quite a few other candidates from the long list and though I love them, and some of them were five star reads, this one will win.

The Marrow Thieves is about a teenager named Frenchie who identifies as First Nations (Metis, specifically) in a post-apocalyptic world where people have gone mad, the planet is ruined and the only people who can dream are First Nations people. So they’re farmed, for their bone marrow, so that white people can dream, at the expense of their own lives.

… that’s something else that I forgot to mention.

Not only do I struggle with Young Adult as a genre, I don’t like dystopian fiction. I don’t like caste systems or blood magic or world-building with three levels and whatever other shallow representations of culture so much young adult fiction seems to come out with.

… but this feels so real. I love dystopian fiction when it’s done well — frighteningly similar to our own world, where it makes me ask questions about who I am, what I’d do if I were in that situation and how I’d survive.

THEN there’s the representation in this book. The main characters in the Marrow Thieves are a motley crew of young people and adults that Frenchie eventually finds himself with. No spoilers, but Dimaline takes time to craft each person individually. Although, with so many people, there were times when it did feel a little crowded. I wanted a book on each person in the group and so I understand if that is a drawback for some people. Frenchie meets people who are Anishnaabe, Cree, Inuit and I adore that she reiterates again and again that identity has nothing to do with blood quantum. She discusses the importance of learning language, and in each interaction between characters there lies a message for a young First Nations person reading it.

And if I think about a young First Nations person reading it, seeing smatterings of their language, talk of braids, of ceremonies, of sweetgrass written on the page, I tear up.

There’s also queer representation and a sweet, sweet romance (with no love triangles in sight thANK THE LORD) and this book feels like it came from a place of love. This novel is full of so much hope and is layered with so much story-telling. Between these pages lay thousands of promises Dimaline has crafted, for the generations present, past and future.

It had one of my FAVOURITE TYPE of endings ever! There's a queer happy ending. No queer people die in the making of this book I literally gasped with joy and my wife messaged me from the other room and was like "Are you okay?" and I was not okay, but it was the BEST kind of not okay.

Thank you Cherie Dimaline. I want to hug her.

EVERYONE: The Canada Reads 2018 WINNER.

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LibraryThing member BDartnall

Wonderfully written dystopian novel focusing on the Indigenous peoples in Canadian/north U.S. who are trying to keep ahead of the "Recruiters" -authorized scientists/bounty hunters who are hunting them for their bone marrow. Somehow, amongst all the other environmental disasters, the rest of the

North American population has lost their ability to dream, and the subsequent mental shifts incurred is so life changing, it encourages the authorities to experiment with and "harvest" Indigenous peoples' bone marrow, among other experiments, to see if they can regain it. While the setting and present conflict sounds far-fetched, Dimaline does a masterful job of characterization, of a group on the run, of the poignant moments eventually told by each one as they share their "coming to story" and the emergence of the main protagonist, Francis, to manhood as he tries to accept the new world without his family, and his role as a protector and survivor. Critics are right to focus on the "emotional depth and tenderness, connecting readers with the complexity and compassion of Indigenous people" (Kirkus review). A Global Read Aloud selection for 2019 - I can see why!

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LibraryThing member tldegray

This book is about dreaming and surviving and hoping. It's beautifully written, with devastating lows and, something I did not expect, highs that make your heart soar.

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