Élisabeth Vonarburg

I picked this book up at a supermarket bookshelf, mostly to piss off my mom who thought the amount of books I bought was scandalous. It was also one of the very first books I read that I would classify as Adult - I then read it, and read it again, and again. I think I read this book at least two or three times a year for a period of about 4 years. The story of the little girl on the outside trying to get accepted really spoke to me in my teens. As a result, my copy is much battered, has show more pages falling out, and is very sad state.

I haven't read it since I grew out of the teenage phase so I don't know if its as well written as I remember it. I'm a bit afraid to try - what if its not up to how I remember it? show less

“The Silent City” is set in a dystopian future in which the sealed off Cities were created as refuges for society’s leading thinkers, scientists, artists (and of course politicians and the very wealthy who wormed their way in) while the outside world collapsed into disease and chaos. In the City of the story, few residents remain, but they have managed to extend their lives through biological rejuvenation processes and controlled mechanical substitutes—ommachs. One such long-lived show more individual has been sequestering mutants from the Outside and has created a genetically modified child—Elisa. Elisa can self-heal (rejuvenate) and grows up in this enclosed environment among a few humans and the ommachs. Eventually she realizes she must leave— her own creator is unstable and may destroy her. Before she leaves, she learns she can manipulate her body to the extent that she can change her sex, an important transition for life in the outside world, where a virus skews the sex ratio in favor of females but males still dominate the social structure. As her life outside the City unfolds, Elisa struggles between fulfilling the ambitions of her creator and caretaker and finding her own role in the Outside. Without my being wide read in the world of scifi, I am not sure to what extent this genre deals with gender fluidity, but it is an important conceptual component of this novel. In part, living as both a female and a male Elisa better understands the perspective of both. An interesting read. show less

I'd been chipping away at this book of short stories for many months and finally chipped through to the end. Maybe my French is rusty, but many of the stories made little sense. The ones that did, however, left impressions. Ex lovers watch an extreme display of performance art together, a story from the point of view of lab creatures, a cyborg girl decides to induce total sensory deprivation... (August 19, 2005)

Vonarburg is my favourite French sci-fi/fantasy author.

This book brings back the themes she has used her readers to get in her novels: gender issues, the genesis of religions and variations on Roman Catholicism, supernatural powers that are not that supernatural after all... it is refreshing however to see them through the eyes of children; it is as if you were discovering their world with their constantly curious and amazed eyes.