Border Run depicts love and politics in an unfree world
I love a revolution, the thought of people rising above and going against majority rule. Because it is true, change only comes when we fight for it, when we force it and are prepared for what comes during and afterward. In America there are so many injustices that need fighting currently. Shya Scanlon took on one of the major topics, the Mexican border, and created his Handmaid’s Tale of what our future could look like, and the fight we still have coming.
His novel, Border Run (Artistically Declined Press), takes a very Atwood-ien approach to current affairs. It is a warning. Take it as such. Learn from the freak show that could occur. Border Run in the novel is a theme park essentially. It is a historical experience. It is the Plymouth Rock of the West. Except there aren’t any fake pilgrims and Native Americans, there are false illegals reenacting what used to occur on theAmerican-Mexican border before a giant wall was constructed to completely block off all and any entry.
Jack, the owner of Border Run, the last non-government owned land near the border, begins with a quiet fight of his own, a whisper of revolution. He holds onto his land and Border Run, but obeys the lies that have been placed upon the stories of what happened on the border, and what the wall truly means. He is the novel’s Offred. As the novel’s momentum grows so does Jack’s intentions and thoughts about Border Run.
The political side of this novel holds the science fiction aspects. It is futuristic, dystopian. There is cloning and obviously large feats of isolation. Scanlon has a way of writing that allows the reader to fill in holes. There’s a bit of assumption and guessing, you, the reader, are figuring out what this American culture is now like with little hints dropped along the way. It is as if you are already living in it, and essentially you are, except in a less exaggerated form. Government has changed completely. There isn’t really a government, but still a ruling force. The changes are supposed to make you feel safer, better, freer. Much like in Atwood’s depiction of extreme religion and feminism, though, what is meant to happen with these new changes, doesn’t translate.
Like with Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, there is also a love story. A forbidden fruit of sorts, something to keep the Offreds of this world going. In the beginning of the novel, Jack is purely focused on Border Run, it is clear that he has been decimated into a man of little feeling. But the one who did this, his ex, returns, causing Jack to leave his comfortable, stable, and controlled environment and remember what it means to be human again. His heart returns and the revolution begins.
There is threat of betrayal, of losing it all, suspense of what is to come. If you love a revolution as much I, and crave a those moments of needing to know what happens to these people you are rooting for, read Scanlon’s Border Run: A love story thrown into current affairs pushed to the max.
