Tomorrow will bring with it the third in my #dystopianfeb discussion posts with Lenore.  We’ll be chatting about Pure by Julianna Baggott.  Today, however, I have the author herself visiting to speak a bit on the novel’s genre classification.  It’s interesting to hear her speak to where she feels the book fits in.  Please welcome, Julianna Baggott.

Here’s my confession. I don’t know what kind of novel I’ve written. It is post-apocalyptic. It’s dystopian. It’s also a horror novel, according to a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. It has elements of a thriller and a romance. It’s an adult novel, but also a YA crossover. Is it sci-fi? No, I don’t think so. Is it speculative? Loosely. Is it based on historical fact? No, but it plays with a revisionist history. Is it magical realism? It nods to magical realism; maybe even bows. Is it poetic? I hope so. The word has been thrown out there. Is it literary? Well, I hope it bears up, sentence to sentence. Is it commercial fiction? Yes, that too. Is it cautionary? Yes, but I hope it doesn’t preach. Do I know where it should be shelved in bookstores and libraries? My answer is: How about everywhere?

[WARNING: Okay so there’s no way to talk about the following without sounding like a mouthy name-dropper. Sorry! But here, put on a helmet because here they go …]

The list of blurbs doesn’t help narrow the categorization any. Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler and Daniel Wilson author of Robopocalypse. Justin Cronin author of The Passage and magical realist/fabulist Aimee Bender. World Fantasy Award Winner Jeff Vandermeer and the producer of the Paranormal Activity franchise. William Giraldi who wrote Busy Monsters and Danielle Trussoni who wrote Angelology. Some Matt Bondurant for good measure. Robots, vampires, ghosts, monsters, angels … with film rights sold to the lead producer of The Twilight Saga.

I can basically summarize the book for you. I’ve learned how to do that, at least. PURE begins with a 16 year old girl hiding in an ash-choked cabinet in the back of a burnt out barbershop after the Detonations which wiped out the world as we know it and caused fusing, mutations, scars on the bodies of the survivors. She was holding a doll at the time of the Detonations, nine years earlier, and her fist is fused to the head of the doll… And there’s a boy who’s survived, unscathed, in the rigid order of the Dome. When he hears his martyred mother might be alive on the outside, he escapes to find her. Their lives are set on a collision course.

What the hell is PURE really about though? What kind of book is it? I don’t know. I know that it’s not for everyone, but I hope that when it does burrow into someone’s psyche, it goes deep. I hope that the dark finery of my subconscious mingles with the reader’s subconscious, stirring up the fine silt of memory and fear and loss and love. I hope it leaves an after-image in the mind’s eye, a bright stain.

Thank you for visiting Julianna, Pure is certainly a dynamic read and filled with interesting characters.  Folks, join me tomorrow to learn more about what I (and Lenore) thought of Pure.