The House of the Scorpion

Nancy Farmer's "The House of the Scorpion"

This week's assignment -- Fantasy.  Initially I chose Shannon Hale but several other classmates chose her so I went with Nancy Farmer who writes both Fantasy and Science Fiction, and even dystopian SciFi, which all fall under this genre.   

This is her official website -  

http://www.nancyfarmerwebsite.com/index.html

She is a very interesting person!  If you have ever read anything by her, I highly recommend taking a peek.  I’m really glad that I read through her biography because it helped explain a bit of her writing.  On her website she states, “One of my main themes is self-reliance, the ability to compete against odds and to beat them. A lot of kids' books have somebody who learns to come to terms with some dreadful situation, and it's all about them continuing to suffer at the end of the book. I don't want to write 'victim' books. I want a triumph, a hero or a heroine, and that's what I write about.”

She also talked about growing up in Yuma AZ (her childhood was a bit bizarre!) and playing hooky from school.  She would sometimes sneak into the gardens of a mansion called The Sanguinetti House. It had green grass, peacocks, parrots, flowers and fountains.  This was the basis for El Patrón’s mansion in “The House of the Scorpion”. She even revisited it as an adult to check the accuracy of her description and found it was exactly as she remembered except smaller.  

Also, this is a Q&A from Publishers Weekly about “The Lord of Opium” - it’s only a month old so it contains up to date info.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/58783-q-a-with-nancy-farmer.html

So the book I chose to read is “The House of the Scorpion”.  This is a book I read several years ago shortly after it was first published but I wanted to re-read it before digging into the sequel “The Lord of Opium”. “Scorpion” is a work of dystopian science fiction.  It was awarded the National Book Award, and named a Newbery Honor Book and a Printz Honor Book. It is set in North America in the not-too-distant future.  In an attempt to solve the escalating problems of violence and illegal immigration, the United States and Mexico (now called Aztlán) have created a country that lies on the border of the two countries.  It is called Opium and it is run by drug lords (who were the ones who originally came up with the idea).  They use the land to grow huge fields of poppies which they turn into opium which is then sold in Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Supposedly everywhere but the US and Aztlán.  Their work force is made up of “eejits”.  These are people who have been caught in some kind of crime or who are trying to move from one country to another.  When they are captured, they are enslaved by planting a chip in their head.  The chip prevents them from thinking for themselves.  They respond only to direct commands and will starve to death if not ordered to eat or drink.  It’s a bleak existence.  

Cloning has become rather commonplace - another method of producing the “eejits” that work the opium fields.  The protagonist of our story is Matt Alacrán, a clone of one of the more powerful drug lords in Opium - Matteo Alacrán, referred to in the book as El Patrón.  Clones are not considered to be real people; the belief is that they have no soul and feelings about them range from abhorrence to treating them like pets.  The only reason Matt is not an “eejit” is because he is a replacement for El Patrón, who is almost 150 years old.  Matt is ostracized by almost the entire human world but is feared because of his status in the household. He has three friends - Lucia, a cook in El Patrón’s house (also known as The Big House) who has taken care of him since he was born; Tam Lin, one of El Patrón’s bodyguards who has been specifically assigned to look out for Matt; and Maria, the daughter of a powerful senator named Mendoza.  María and her sister Emilia spend holidays at the Big House and she and Matt become friends at first and then eventually fall in love.  The book is formatted into sections pertaining to Matt’s life.  These are entitled Youth: 0-6; Middle Age: 7-11; Old Age: 12-14; Age 14 and then La Vida Nueva.  I cannot really say much more without spoiling the read for others.

Except to say - this is an excellent book!  It deals with serious topics of self-worth, what gives life value, medical ethics, and politicians abusing their power. If you have a high school student who enjoyed the Hunger Games trilogy or Lois Lowry’s Giver series, I would recommend this.  It is dark and it paints a bleak picture of the future but it's still a fascinating book.  I am looking forward to reading the sequel, which picks up just a few months after Scorpion ends.  Alacrán, by the way, is Spanish for scorpion.