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    The Completionist
    The Completionist
    The Completionist
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Completionist

    Written by Siobhan Adcock

    Narrated by Jacques Roy

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    One of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 prescient new feminist dystopias to read after The Handmaid’s Tale”; one of the “11 Best Summer Books Of 2018” by Women's Health; this “perfect beach book” (Entertainment Report) follows the search for a missing sister in a near-future world where infertility has produced a dangerous underground.

    “Find her. You need to keep looking, no matter what. I’m afraid of what might’ve happened to her. You be afraid too.” After months of disturbing behavior, Gardner Quinn has vanished. Her older sister Fredericka is desperate to find her, but Fred is also pregnant—miraculously so, in a near-future America struggling with infertility. So she entrusts the job to their brother, Carter.

    Carter, young but jaded, is in need of an assignment. Just home from war, his search for his sister is a welcome distraction from mysterious physical symptoms he can’t ignore, not to mention his increasing escape into the bottom of a glass.

    Carter’s efforts to find Gardner lead him into a desperate underworld, where he begins to grasp the risks she took on as a Nurse Completionist. But his investigation also leads back to their father, a veteran of a decades-long war just like Carter himself, who may be concealing a painful truth, one that neither Carter nor Fredericka is ready to face.

    “Fans of dystopian novels will love Siobhan Adcock’s disturbing speculation on just how bad things can get when resources are rare and personal lives are heavily policed” (Booklist). In the tradition of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Completionist is speculative fiction at its very best: it will “transport you to an entirely new world” (PopSugar) while revealing our own world in bold and unexpected ways.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJun 19, 2018
    ISBN9781508257110
    Author

    Siobhan Adcock

    Siobhan Adcock is the author of the novels, The Barter and The Completionist. Her short fiction has been published in Triquarterly and The Massachusetts Review, and her essays and humor writing have appeared in Salon, The Daily Beast, and Huffington Post. She lives with her husband and daughter in Brooklyn.

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    Reviews for The Completionist

    3/5

    13 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Rating: 3.5/5

      This was a good book. A dystopian look into the not-so-distant future, it follows a Marine suffering from PTSD who is searching for his sister who disappeared while working for a quasi-legal clinic helping women get through the draconian motherhood requirements placed on them by a society with declining fertility rates. Bleak, though somehow also uplifting, this book is a well-written and quick read that keeps the reader turning pages until the end. The issues it raises are a bit vague, but it also makes you think, which is something I like in a book.
    • 3/5
      The Completionist takes place in 22nd century New Chicago--a city reclaimed after climate change has shrunken the lake. The west coast has been largely abandoned for residents, but water is engineered there and shipped east. Twenty-plus years of war have been fight by men like Carter Quinn and his father, defending the trains of water heading east. The last western inhabitabts--the "terrorists", need that water too. And that engineered water is what is causing the infertility epidemic.Carter is back from the wars, his oldest sister is miraculously pregnant and his other sister has disappeared. Gardner worked as a nurse completionist, and it is only through Fred's pregnancy do Fred and Carter learn what that means. Given the fertility issues, Care Hours and penalties have been mandated, making them virtually impossible to meet for most women--and mathematically impossible for many. Where has Garnder gone? Was it by choice? And what does it have to do with her work as a completionist?I found the world building to be promising and interesting, but there were so many holes--or, at least, questions I wanted answered--that it didn't quite come together for me. Who is mandating these Care Hours? What/where is the government? What are the jobs women are working in? If pregnancy is so rare, how are there so many pregnant women? Where is the engineered food made? How do people purchase it? What are the jobs? Since there is no piped-in water, are there outhouses? Reading the book felt strange, as the world is very different (and very interesting)--yet the people seem to live, by and large, as we do today. Which also seems impossible.
    • 3/5
      In an America in the near future, there is little natural water and most is artificially engineered. The people have technological portals embedded in their skin, which keep track of their every movement. There’s a fertility crisis and those women who do become naturally pregnant are considered miracles but their independence is taken away from them and they’re fined for every small thing they do that isn’t within a certain code that has been set up to ensure the safety of these babies, a code that is practically impossible to adhere to.Carter Quinn is a marine who has fought the battle to protect the engineered water and now has come home after 2 and a half years. He’s obviously ill from the “triggers” used in battle. His sister, Fred, has miraculously conceived and now has permission to wed. She’s frantic due to the disappearance of their sister, Gard, a Nurse Completionist, one who helps women through their pregnancies. Carter sets off on a quest to find Gard.The author has created a unique and horrifying future world, yet doesn’t explain how we got to this point. Apparently, the problem was in the water and therefore there is now a need to engineer water. The main characters are each have their own distinctive voices and you can tell who’s telling the story or writing a letter just by their written voice, which I believe shows the author’s talent. The characters are very realistic and down to earth and believable, except for Carter. While I liked the guy, I found the character to be very frustrating. Granted, he was ill from whatever was being used as a weapon in the war and was not thinking clearly. But he was constantly drunk which just didn’t seem to go with his determination to find his sister. The thought “you can’t be that stupid” came to mind too often. The most problem I had with this book was that I found it to be very repetitious and far too drawn out. Also it seemed to be very unrealistic that such a ridiculous child care code would be set up, which defeated the purpose of protecting these treasured unborn children. But it was an interesting concept and I found it to be a horrifying world for women to live in. Just the fact that women’s independence was so jeopardized by this situation compelled me to keep on reading.This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      Siobhan Adcock has written a compelling novel set in a near-future in which infertility has caused a dramatic decrease in the birth rate, environmental disasters have caused catastrophic collapse, and water is no longer naturally available but must be engineered. She builds this world piece by piece, never descending to that annoying habit some authors have of just explaining everything up front. We learn how this new world works through various details that combine to paint a devastating portrait.At heart, this story is about family and the love and conflict that binds parents and children and brothers and sisters. Carter is a Marine, recently back from two years at war in what used to be California. His oldest sister is pregnant – a minor miracle – and his younger sister is missing. In his search for her, he learns just how far society goes to protect the few children who are born and what the cost of that protection is. Carter is a mess – he’s been badly wounded in war, has developed a severe drinking problem, and can’t seem to make a good or responsible choice most of the time. But he loves his sisters fiercely, and it is this love that redeems him as a character. Adcock writes him very realistically – flaws and all – and he is hard to like or root for. But in his insistence on learning what happened to his missing sister and on protecting his other sister as much as he can, we see that at his core, he is a good man.The Completionist started off a bit slow for me, but I am glad I persevered. It’s an intriguing premise, and while nothing is resolved neatly, the ending was satisfying in a way a lot of novels aren’t – it was in keeping with the story and the characters and the world that Adcock created.I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley. It is scheduled for publication in the US in June.