Harare Review of Books

320 pages.

Expected publication date: May 9, 2023 (Flame Tree Press)

SFF.

The Roamers is a book of grand ideas, exploring Maslow’s hierarchy and asking what would happen if we didn’t ever need to eat again. Maybe a sciencey thing could be made that would change our biology? And maybe eating is only a biological imperative, rather than something we also do for pleasure? I do not agree with that last premise, something the author proposes pretty early on, but I still read the whole book.

This is an interesting novel that touches on the current and possible future science of bodies, and how bodies can shape politics. The concept of a community based on this, a kind of Occupy movement, is really well done, and I enjoyed the setting of near-future Rome.

However, among the thoughtful things in the novel, there are things I didn’t like. At least three quarters of the book is telling, from how the science might work, to biology, chemistry, the philosophy of food, bodies, politics, people, chosen and inherited families, the layout of Rome, and a million things besides. This would be bearable in small doses, but what we get is a firehose. The thing that reliably put me off, though, was the exploration of the character Nicholas, who is a rich, overweight man. What felt like the author’s disgust with bodies and/or fat people comes through in his treatment of Nicholas’s own disgust with his body, and in other people’s perception of it. This goes on from around the middle of the book, when Nicholas is introduced, right through to the end, making it quite central to the story. It feels like a harmful and quite unpleasant portrayal of fat people, and I couldn’t get past it. We are not, in fact, just flesh envelopes, which I feel is the foundational theory of the story.

Still, a fun read. Its very cool futuristic concepts are already shaping some of the ways I think—although, relating to bodies, perhaps not in ways the author intended.

Thank you to Flame Tree Press and to NetGalley for the ARC.

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