Where the Soul Goes
Thank you, Strange Wilds Press, for the review copy of the audiobook of Katherine Silva’s Where the Soul Goes, narrated by Jess Wright.
This is the first Katherine Silva book I’ve read, though I’ve had several on my TBR for a while. I feel like her books are for smart people, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that kind of pressure.
After reading Where the Soul Goes…I still feel that way. But, it was also just a really good story. Sure, the whole time I was thinking, I really should be pondering about how this is a reflection of the world I’m living in and how it both reflects and inspects our current society and how we treat each other and ourselves, even though this is set in a dystopian version of the U.S. in the 1980s (which, having lived in the U.S. in the 1980’s…not that different.)
What I did instead was just enjoy the ride with Eliot, a middle-aged chef in a world where flooding and record rainfall have turned the whole U.S. into a “Waterworld” situation plus there’s a new degenerative disease called “The Ash” that erases people’s abilities to feel and taste, makes them lose their memory, and literally burns them from the inside out turning them into a shadow of themselves — and Eliot discovers he has it.
He ends up on a literal road trip, to see 4 chefs in 4 different cities who had impacted his life in some way, and a figurative road trip through his memories, from his childhood to the present day and the relationships along the way.
Where the Soul Goes is sad, funny, depressing, and hopeful at turns, and I recommend it for anyone who wants to be immersed in a world — in this case, the culinary arts world of an alternate 1980’s U.S. — and who love strong character building and beautifully constructed sentences.
I listened to this on audiobook, and Jess Wright’s narration is impeccable. She is a voice actor as much as a narrator, and her dialogue hit the right emphases and the appropriate emotional tones which is less common than you would think in audiobooks (and I listen to a lot of audiobooks).
Randomlings:
The description of the food in this! Do not read while hungry.
The music references — Music is so prevalent in my life and many people’s, I think (especially on roadtrips), and I love when a book world honors that.
