Day 1,575, Quasi-Quarantine: Unlikeable Narrator Causes Dystopian "World Made By Hand" To Miss The Mark

 

“‘It’s not all bad now,’ I said.
‘We’ve lost our world.’
‘Only the part that the machines lived in.’”

Imagining a world devastated by environmental scarcity and the breakdown of social systems as a result, "World Made by Hand" is a work of speculative dystopian fiction that struggles against its own constraints. James Howard Kunstler's prose is a little flat, which allows tone to be lost in the dialogue.

The first-person narrator, Robert, is a challenging prism to view this new world through. He can be submissive, selfish, blameworthy, irrational, and even aimless as he navigates his community. His complex relationship with the mysterious Brother Jobe permeates most of the story, but few answers are revealed as to the religious mysticism that adheres to Jobe's group.

“It was hard with Brother Jobe to tell where metaphor left off and something uncomfortably like hyperreality began.”

The book presents more as a MAGA apocalypse fantasy than the dystopian tale it aspires to be -- which perhaps leads to the overarching disjointed feel of the work.

“She assisted me insider her, and I felt as though I was crossing a frontier into a dangerous wilderness where the animals would never learn to speak and might not be so friendly.”

Perhaps the three sequels lend more nuance and context to the many questions that "World Made by Hand" pose. However, as a standlone book, it works as a poignant look at coming challenges, but fails to cohere as a narrative.

“And that is the end of the story of that particular summer when we had so much trouble and so much good fortune in the world we were making by hand.”