July is for the Ladies: "The House of the Scorpion"

Book: The House of the Scorpion
Author: Nancy Farmer
Pages: 380
Copy: Mine; see Librarything
Read: 1 July 2012; read it as soon as I bought it at Green Hand Bookstore in Portland, Maine.
Spoilers: a few, but none that should cause problems

So this was unexpectedly amazing. I don’t know why it should have been amazing--after all Nancy Farmer is pretty awesome and this thing is plastered with awards. I guess the amazing part was the fact that I hadn’t read it before. I actually even recall rejecting it! Rejecting a futuristic sci-fi young adult book with clones and zombies? Why?

Because the main character is a boy, of course. There were so many futuristic sci-fi or classic fantasy young adult books (though none with clones) with girl characters to read, why read this one?

This is something of a shame. The House of the Scorpion has combined the huge scientific morality questions--are clones an ethical means of medical research? what happens when science and technology begin to destroy humanity?--with the simplicity and grace of language that examines the human condition without being obnoxiously philosophical. This is a novel about science and drugs and politics, but it is also a novel about families and human relationships.

In The House of the Scorpion, Farmer creates a new country out of the borders of the US and Mexico, a country that has existed under the power of an ancient despot, El Patrón. Matteo Alacrán is his clone, grown from skin cells and harvested from a cow. Matt is the child of technology, but he is more human than the Alacrán family that surrounds him. Matt’s self-discovery guides the reader through a book half fairy-tale and half sci-fi.

This is pretty nearly a perfect book. My only regret is not reading it when I was younger. Please, please read it, so I can talk about the ending!

-Mercutia