Swarm

July 1, 2013
Carter makes the leap from poetry and nonfiction to full-length fiction in this quiet tale of life, death, and rebirth, set against a near-future backdrop of economic collapse and increasing hardship. Cassandra ekes out a meager existence on an island along with her lover, Marvin, and their ailing friend, Thomson. Of late, she’s obsessed with feeding and taming a feral girl haunting the nearby area. Cassandra’s experiences before arriving on the island are slowly revealed through a series of flashbacks, including her dalliances with both community service and violent activism, as civilization crumbles around her. The quiet desperation and bleakness of the story line is balanced by faint optimism, personified through an ongoing focus on beehives in both past and present. The language is beautiful and emotional, fitting for a book where the action is understated and the focus is on introspection and day-to-day survival, but there’s little to connect the reader with the characters. Agent: Samantha Haywood, Transatlantic Literary Agency.

August 1, 2013
Imbued with dark lyricism and a disturbingly credible view of the end of the world, Carter's debut sifts through the lives of people existing on an isolated island, grappling just to survive a time of enormous social upheaval and change. Cassandra Sandy Burch-Bailey fled her crumbling city just before the power finally went out and plunged it into a mire of chaos and crime. Her practical, hard-eyed boyfriend, Marvin, and the elderly, ill Thomson are her only companionsuntil Sandy notices missing food and tiny footprints in the garden. Convinced a wild child is also on the island and stealing their food for sustenance, Sandy begins to narrate her story to what she envisions is a little girl while also putting out plates of their very meager food supply. Creating a quite convincing view of how our economic system and social conveniences might dissolve, the story is carried by strong, descriptive writing by poet Carter, further impelled by the sense of mystery around the feral girl and wonderment over what will become of the characters. A somberly melodic, literary foray into the current dystopian trend.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)