Grace by Elizabeth Scott

Release Date: September 16, 2010
Publisher: Dutton
Pages: 208
Review Source: Library

Synopsis: (from Goodreads)
Grace was raised to be an Angel, a herald of death by suicide bomb. But she refuses to die for the cause, and now Grace is on the run, daring to dream of freedom. In search of a border she may never reach, she travels among malevolent soldiers on a decrepit train crawling through the desert. Accompanied by the mysterious Kerr, Grace struggles to be invisible, but the fear of discovery looms large as she recalls the history and events that delivered her uncertain fate.

Told in spare, powerful prose by acclaimed author Elizabeth Scott, this tale of a dystopian near future will haunt readers long after they've reached the final page.

My Thoughts:
I absolutely love Elizabeth Scott’s contemporary/realistic books, so I was very excited to pick this one up. In the end, however, I was left a little confused. The book is very short, which I think is probably a good thing, because the narrative was quite poetic and meandering. I’m not totally sure how I feel about this book. Overall, it was good, but nothing especially unique or amazing. I felt thrown into a world that had a culture and background which I could recognize parts of, but not all of it.

I would have liked there to be a bit more background at the beginning of ‘Grace’ instead of having to read between the lines and think so hard about the political and cultural implications of what Scott was writing about. I think this is just my preference, so a lot of people might enjoy the slower feel and thinking necessary to fully understand the message of the book. Overall, this was an interesting book, and a worthwhile read, I think, but it felt more like a philosophical case study (an enjoyable one, none the less) than a novel.

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