Goodreads Review: The House of the Scorpion
The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
In The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer slowly weaves the tale of Matt, a clone of the drug lord Matteo Alacron. Alternately pampered and tortured throughout his childhood (he slightly unbelievably goes from being kept in a pen of chicken litter to being given private piano lessons and tutoring in a few years’ time), Matt grows up with a strong moral compass thanks only to his caretakers. Farmer does a good job of developing this bildungsroman–by the novel’s end, Matt is a fairly complex character. Likewise, she builds her futuristic universe slowly: in the first several chapters, it largely resembles our own, but by the novel’s conclusion we come to realize that this is a very different world, both in terms of technology and politics.
But something intangible was lacking here. There’s something perfunctory about Farmer’s prose, and the characters who surround Matt feel flat. And, while the actual plot of the book is fairly interesting, Matt’s movement from episode to episode feels disjointed, as if Farmer was keeping her characters at arms’ length. Nevertheless, she raises some interesting questions here, not only about cloning but also about power and our genetic destinies.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
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