A review by readundancies
Thrust by Lidia Yuknavitch

challenging hopeful mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

This book was kind of a trip. 

And by kind of, I mean, it was definitely a trip. 

A trippy, fever dream of absurdity and confusion and eroticism and I’m not gonna lie, it was not infrequently overwhelming. 

I was lostity lost lost for a good portion of my reading experience. The time jumping was really fucking with my flow but I also kind of liked it? Strange, I know. However, the writing and prose was just breathtaking. I love the way Lidia Yuknavitch writes; the stories woven with history, provocative yet merciful, compassionate but unrelenting. 

The fever dream vibes were a bit confusing. Like Alice in Wonderland confusing, in that you’re thrown into a situation with absolutely no frame of reference and are forced to survive despite your human fallacies. I haven’t decided if that’s a pro or a con yet because there was also a lot of metaphor embedded within it all, but the writing softens the more harrowing aspects of the novel. It was whimsy and absurdity all rolled into some rather pretty and poignant prose. Things seemed vague and without any sort of direct intent at times, but it was all tempered into manageable parts. 

There was a lot going on with the characters that we follow in the story but I want to focus specifically on Aurora and Laisvė. Aurora gives us discourse on humans being whittled down to their body parts and missing limbs surpassing the bodies they once made whole. We get an exploration of the erotic, the freedom of ecstasy and finding words to name that which you’ve always been seeking. We get feminism beyond reproduction, beyond and within motherhood and child birth as well as manhood without power. We get the past haunting the future as it’s own phantom limb and the pleasure found in pain alongside the pain that lies in pleasure. And we explore prostitution, sex work and the salvation that can be wrought from the human form. 

With Laisvė, we get my favourite character of the novel, a girl traversing the waters of time and weaving change into stitches. We observe how those who float do not always live. We observe the recycling of names, their turnabout nature, how they act as labels that are stuck and removed as if they are disposable. We observe the disjointed nature of connection; a tale of stories, of little known histories that have been birthed from the waters of life. 

Thrust is a tale that traverses beyond time and space, beyond night and day and life and death. It’s a tale that takes place where fever dreams are born and nightmares go to die, where animals speak their disdain of the destruction of humanity because we as a species are so lacking in intelligence and imagination. It’s a tale where drowning is a baptism and children hold all the knowledge that humans could ever know and slowly lose it all as their brains age and decompose. It’s a tale of history and geography, language and philosophy. Of biology and ecology. 

And it ends with History and Liberty discussing their mother’s choice of names, and a cranky little turtle demanding to be fed so that he can set their species straight on a path to a worthy future. 

Everything on the cover is relevant. 

Everything about the title is apropos. 

It is a story not about time-travel but rather a story which uses time-travel as a means to connect people in an additional way to how they are already connected. 

I didn’t always like the characters or the narrative and how fragmented it felt, but I found myself continually coming back to it and picking it up again because something about the writing just had this hold on me. 

It’s not a story that I know how to recommend or who to recommend it to, but it was definitely absorbing and intriguing. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings