Lavender Spike
Art is a tool of the oppressor in Rachel Tremblay’s postapocalyptic novel Lavender Spike.
After the revolution, Skylah, the nation’s leader, abolished religion. Seeing the need for connection, she turned sanctuaries into art galleries and established the New Art Government in Mahl City. Now, art does more than evoke emotion: it triggers mind-altering ecstasy.
Izzy, a purist artist from the decaying dumps, creates illegal pieces that will not induce a high. When her home is ransacked, Izzy turns to the Half-Lights, a rebel group with no great love for art or the government. Seeing an opportunity, the Half-Lights send Izzy into Mahl City undercover. Seduced by the comfort of being a trigger artist, Izzy must decide if her new life is worth abandoning her beliefs.
The perspective shifts between Izzy and an omniscient narrator, chasing romance. In the process, Izzy exhibits willful innocence: she is deliberate in sheltering herself from the worst aspects of the dumps. Indeed, the characterizations are sometimes shallow: villainous Skylah, for instance, luxuriates in her constant high. She abhors the old ways, but recreates the same structure with different materials. In taking the emotional experience of art and expanding it into a somatic and psychoactive experience by turning it into narcotics, Skylah makes art an addictive pseudo-religious experience.
The book stretches upon and exploits the dichotomous existence between Skylah’s pristine utopian society and the violence and addiction in the gritty dumps. This leads to an inevitable, explosive confrontation, as it is unsustainable to believe that the denizens of the dumps would be willing to live in squalor and dependency in perpetuity.
Lavender Spike is a speculative novel about the necessity of art and rebellion.
Reviewed by
Dontaná McPherson-Joseph
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