A refreshingly
original piece of literature, The Miracle Inspector will spur you to think in
new ways. Helen Smith has created a world where women are so
marginalized in futuristic London that they cannot leave their homes without
full body coverings. Although the setting is in the future, the
story is not set so far in the future as to be unbelievable or unrecognizable
which only serves to further invest the reader in the journey.
While weaving the separate strands of this story into a cohesive
tapestry Smith endears us to the main couple through her descriptions of their
everyday lives, thoughts, and dreams. Simultaneously, an
understanding of Lucas’s family history evolves among the pages revealing a
tumultuous, if slightly scandalous, past. The details of Lucas and
Angela’s planned escape from this new London smacks of accounts of refugee
outflows from war torn third world countries. It is this rendering
of a modern western society reduced to “an oppressive place where poetry has
been forced underground, theatres and schools are shut, and women are not
allowed to work outside the home” which spurs thoughts on how life could change
in an instant if we allow fear to overcome rationality.
Smith has won a
well-deserved Arts Council Award for The Miracle Inspector. I
would recommend this book to readers looking for an unconventional love story,
or those interested in themes about overcoming oppression. Also,
for the descriptions of poetry and art, this book would appeal to those with an
interested in performing and activist arts.
Brandy Strake
Layered Pages Review Team Member
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