In the Heart of the Valley of Love [Mass Market Paperback]

Cynthia Kadohata (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1995

"An apocalyptic picture of America on the brink of civil disorder and social collapse" (New York Times). In the deteriorating LA of 2052, a young girl is forced by tragedy to venture from her secure environs into a world where survival takes precedence over all else.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Confirming the talent she demonstrated in her praised first novel, The Floating World , Kadohata's new book is a chilling vision of the 21st century, conceived with prescient imagination and rendered in lean, evocative prose that blossoms into stunning images. The book's narrator is 19-year-old Francie, who lives in a futuristic Los Angeles divided into "richtown," where the white people have virtually barricaded themselves, and the slums where the nonwhites who make up the majority of the population attempt to avoid starvation and disease. This is a world where the government is repressive but ineffective, where violence is endemic, where people "had long ago stopped rioting for change. Now they rioted for destruction." Everyone carries a gun; water and gas are rationed; "the stars are faded by pollution"; and morality has given way to a mixture of fear, numbness and cynical self-protection. Francie, whose dead parents were Chinese, Japanese, and black, is part of the ethnic underclass. She shares a small house with her Auntie Annie and her aunt's lover, Rohn; the latter, however, mysteriously disappears as the book begins--undoubtedly arrested for engaging in the illegal "delivery" trade of black-market merchandise. Kadohata creates a coherent picture of a deteriorating society on a dying planet through a mosaic of quotidian details, delivered by Francie in the passive, detached manner of one who has become accustomed to a meaningless existence. Yet when Francie falls in love with Mark, like herself a college student, she gradually recovers the sense of possibility in her life, and begins to understand love's power to redeem and engender hope. As timely as this week's news, yet with the enduring value of literature, this novel speaks simply but eloquently of the human spirit's capacity to survive.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Best-selling author Kadohata here presents an even less stable world than she did in her first novel, The Floating World (Viking, 1989). Her protagonist, Francie, searches for love and meaning amid the breakdown of social and moral order in a 21st-century Los Angeles dominated by riots, smog, gun-toting young men, and an oppressive, authoritarian government. It is particularly disturbing to read this novel in the aftermath of the rioting that followed acquittal in the Rodney King case, for clearly all the elements of Kadohata's chillingly evoked Los Angeles are already in place. The evocation of place aside, the novel doesn't have much "heart" to it. The characters are sometimes flat, and the plot development is a little on the drab side. Still, this is recommended as an effective depiction of what the future might hold. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/1/92.
-Cherry W. Li, Dickinson Coll. Lib . , Carlisle, Pa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140134492
• ISBN-13: 978-0140134490
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,357,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cynthia Kadohata is the author of the Newbery Medal-winning book Kira-Kira, Weedflower, and several critically acclaimed adult novels, including The Floating World. She has published numerous short stories in such literary journals as the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Grand Street, and the Mississippi Review. She lives with her son and dog in West Covina, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only *realistic* futuristic novel I've read, March 21, 2001

By 

Colin (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Heart of the Valley of Love (California Fiction) (Paperback)

Most sci-fi books seem to re-hash the same stuff that's been around since the 30s: robots, colonizing other planets, alien invaders, etc. Sometimes that can still make for a good book-- I liked most of Isaac Asimov's robot books for instance-- but usually they just end up resembling mediocre Star Trek episodes. William Gibson injected a little newness with his focus on computers, but there's only so much cyber-slang I can take before it too dissolves into standard sci-fi fare; concerned more with the gadgets and psuedo-science than with any of the characters or storyline.

"In the Heart of the Valley of Love" falls into none of these traps. It's really much more of a regular novel than anything you'd find sitting in the Science Fiction/Fantasy rack. It's set in LA in the second half of the 21st century-- a "dystopian" LA if you really want-- but even though this may sound a lot like Blade Runner and it's many clones, the author avoids stocking her LA with flying cars, androids, or spaceships. The technology isn't really any further along than it is today actually, and because of this Cynthia Kadohata earns my eternal respect. I don't know why it's so hard for sci-fi authors to restrain themselves when they try to imagine what we'll all be using in the future, but I guess that's what the customers pay for. Everyone wants the flying cars and warp travel, but here we are in 2001 and I still drive to work.

Maybe it's closer to the Mad Max movies than anything else, but instead of a world blasted back into the Stone Age, it's more of a portrait of a society that's going downhill. Her understated style of prose brings far more of a sense of dread and paranoia than anything Stephen King tries to shock you with. It really feels like the main character is a product of her decaying society, that she keeps her sentences short and to the point so as not to make any trouble, to keep a low profile. Most of the characters talk and act like they have a protective wall around them, that they've been dulled to the misery around them, too scared to show any true feelings. One of the best parts of the book are these people sarcastically referred to as "chirps" who try to compensate by trying to be sunshine happy all the time.

I highly recommend giving "In the Heart of the Valley of Love" a look.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like Riddley Walker, this is a book for our century., December 1, 2001

By 

"the_last_naiad" (Dunedin, New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Heart of the Valley of Love (Hardcover)

Except it has a much quieter voice.

This isn't your usual post-disaster novel. I wouldn't even call it science fiction. There's no enabling device or novum or whatever Darko Suvin calls it. I suppose it is what I would term 'speculative' fiction. What I would call it is beautiful.

Francie is a Japanese-American girl drifting pretty aimlessly in 2052. She lives in Los Angeles, quite frequently she goes out into the desert with her aunt's boyfriend on a semi-legit trading trip.

The government sounds like it's in trouble, there are rich parts of town where life is continuing pretty much as normal, but most people live in cramped apartments and make do with semi-legit work and collecting and selling whatever they can find: sliding doors, clothes, plants. Someone's going to want it. You are allocated water and gas chits, anyone can go to college, it's something that you do more to give you something to do than anything else, a community center of sorts.

Everyone feels aimless, like something's just happened or someone's just died and you're in shock and don't know what to do about it. The thing that makes this book so wonderful is the depth of Francies voice and the observations she makes. Francie's narrative is detached... but she and the reader both know that she's looking for something, that there must be something that means something, for her to find.

I devoured this book because I loved the simplicity and subjectivity of Francie's voice... such an quiet and individual view of the destination our century is taking us toward is rare. Most speculative fiction that deals with a post-distaster or post-government theme is fairly didactic. There are things to be said and points to be made and people to be convinced. Kadahota's not interested in any of that. She's just written a story about a young woman in the city and the desert who's trying to make sense of her life, but the subjectivity of the narrative reveals the political and social upheaval of Francie's world in such a subtle and believable way that this book convinced me of many things when other, more didactic fiction has failed me.

If there are three things I'm interested in they are: People's responses to their landscapes, coming of age stories and post-disaster fiction. This book fulfullied all those needs as if I'd written it myself, or willed it into existence upon the shelf of my local library. The book is tied together well with a more central purpose for Francie than just finding 'meaning'. Her uncle goes missing in the desert, perhaps he has been arrested maybe he just disappeared, and Francie's narrative and coming of age experience seem to have been sparked by this event, it becomes a central concern.

The thing that made me laugh and cry the most in this book was how superstitious Francie is, she thinks plants have feelings, she carries a twig and stone around in her pocket to represent her dead parents, she writes her name on pieces of paper and throws them into the wind on the side of the highway. Just to let the world know she's there.

We all find ways of coping. But few are as telling and touching as Francie's in In the Heart Of the Valley of Love. I've only just found it and already, it's out of print.