In his much anticipated new novel, Tochi Onyebuchi takes the innovative blend of science fiction and reality he is known for in his young adult works and translates it to adult fiction for the very first time.
Goliath is a near-future tale which imagines a cross-section of humanity as they face the fallout from a planet battered by climate change. While the privileged are afforded the option of evacuating Earth to lead a more comfortable existence in space colonies, everyone else is left behind doing their best to simply survive rampant radiation and pollution. And not surprisingly, these two ways of life are divided greatly among lines of race and class.
This novel hosts quite the cast of characters. There’s a white couple, born and raised in space, who decide to move back to Earth for all the wrong reasons. A group of Black men and women that scrape by day-to-day by salvaging bricks from what remains of their New Haven neighbourhoods. And a journalist who follows them around to document it all (and assuage her own white guilt in the process). There’s a prison full of men who are subjugated by the crooked system they are trapped within. And a bold female marshal who leads a vile excuse for a man across the country to locate the grave of his victim in hopes of charging him with murder.
Goliath is a wild ride of a story, incorporating reflections upon and imitations of so many—perhaps too many— current events and issues: a viral pandemic, economic recession, racism, classism, gentrification, even ventures of the wealthy into outer space, to name a few. Onyebuchi gushes forth a barrage of ideas, of words; which on one hand serves a function in spinning a tale as complex as the issues he is tackling here, but on the other hand creates a constantly meandering narrative which is difficult to connect with. And for as much time as the reader spends with them, the characters aren’t as fully fleshed out as expected, which feels a bit strange in a novel that reads as more character than plot-driven.
Despite these reservations, Onyebuchi is undoubtedly a skilled writer at the sentence level; his words set a clear tone here. Line after line slice through with smart commentary on the systems that constructed and continue to uphold racism and classism in America, an obvious yet necessary warning for a planet in peril from both its own climate and those who inhabit it. The dialogue is also often sharp and well-paced; the disjointed form of storytelling deliberate, jumping back and forth between characters and timelines in ways both anticipated and not.
In Goliath, Onyebuchi creates an alternate future which certainly reflects the issues of our own day and time. For readers who may begin the novel feeling perplexed or disinterested, the payoff is there in the second half if one can hold on long enough to watch the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place. It remains to be seen, however, if readers will do so, as the first half of the novel proves considerably more difficult to engage with.
Goliath is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of January 25th 2022. Many thanks to Tordotcom Publishing for providing me with an advance copy for review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
In the 2050s, Earth has begun to empty. Those with the means and the privilege have departed the great cities of the United States for the more comfortable confines of space colonies. Those left behind salvage what they can from the collapsing infrastructure. As they eke out an existence, their neighborhoods are being cannibalized. Brick by brick, their houses are sent to the colonies, what was once a home now a quaint reminder for the colonists of the world that they wrecked.
A primal biblical epic flung into the future, Goliath weaves together disparate narratives—a space-dweller looking at New Haven, Connecticut as a chance to reconnect with his spiraling lover; a group of laborers attempting to renew the promises of Earth’s crumbling cities; a journalist attempting to capture the violence of the streets; a marshal trying to solve a kidnapping—into a richly urgent mosaic about race, class, gentrification, and who is allowed to be the hero of any history.
