The demagoguery of the President and his faction-especially in the constant vacuous demonstrations held in his honor and the way that “Easterners” (meaning, of course, people from the East Coast of the United States) are blamed, constantly and nonsensically, for the water shortage-is deeply reminiscent of contemporary politics. Of course, bread-and-circuses (light on the bread) surveillance dystopias are not new, but these and other details speak to a distinctively post-2016 version of the United States. Constantly surveilled by animatronic heads of the President (who has no other name), characters are accosted, asked if they are “Better than they were,” then asked for campaign donations and to report on their dissatisfied friends and neighbors. Water is heavily rationed-despite the moat outside the President’s palace-and its price changes constantly, while the water itself can be turned on and off with the finest of control on a day-to-day and hour-to-hour basis.

Liberty itself is a dystopian fever-dream where “messengers”-vans that ring bells and have chickens with frying pans painted on the sides-careen down the streets, giving people items of great value and snatching citizens off the sidewalk, seemingly at random, all while strewing along it nougats of unspecified flavor and origin.

These are heavy-hitting antecedents, but this book earns them, going all-in on its playful surreality and satirical teeth.Įleanor, a witch from New York, and Stan, her social-media-troll coworker whom she transformed into a cat, have been sent to Liberty (formerly Texas) to think about their mistakes and investigate the disappearance of a witch named Daria. Whimsical and biting, it reads a little bit like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and “A Modest Proposal” (1729) had a baby and then sent it to a seminar on Dadaism.

When I started The Splendid City by Karen Heuler, I was struck, first and foremost, by its tone.

The splendid city by karen heuler