Composite Creatures

Poet Hardaker (Bone Ovation) explores corporate greed, health-care inequality, and the limits of human relationships in her deliciously weird fiction debut. Recently engaged couple Norah and Art hope to carve out a spot for themselves in a perilous, disease-ridden near future. Survival isn’t easy, but health-care company Easton Grove helps its members prolong and augment their lives by harvesting strange creatures called ovum organi, though how exactly this treatment works is kept eerily vague. The lucky members of Easton Grove bring the ovum organi into their homes and treat them as a hybrid of children and pets, though they must frequently be replaced with fresh creatures. Norah and Art are initially excited to take theirs in, but as they navigate the joys and pitfalls of this odd parenthood, they uncover disturbing secrets about the state of the world and their relationship with both their ovum organi and Easton Grove. Hardaker’s nuanced prose and great sense of character ground the story as it delves unabashedly into the surreal, consistently catching the reader off guard with eerie imagery and delightful twists on expectations. Readers willing to work to unravel this strange dystopian world will be rewarded with a tale that is as thought-provoking as it is chilling. [em]Agent: Ed Wilson, Johnson & Alcock Literary. (Apr.) [/em]