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In a near-future world of exurban decay studded with big box stores, daily routine revolves around shopping - for those who can. For Zoë, the mission is simpler: live.
Last girl Zoë Zindleman, numerical ID 009-99-9999, is starting work at AllMART, where "your smile is the AllMART welcome mat." Her living arrangements are equally bleak: she can wait for her home to be foreclosed and stripped of anything valuable now that AnnaMom has moved away, leaving Zoë behind, or move to the Warren, an abandoned strip-mall-turned-refuge for other left-behinds.
With a handful of other disaffected, forgotten kids, Zoë must find her place in a world that has consumed itself beyond redemption. She may be a last girl, but her name means "life," and Zoë isn't ready to disappear into the AllMART abyss. Zoë wants to live.
"Starred Review. It's a terrifying extrapolation of the here-and-now and, like much of Woolston's fiction, far too close for comfort." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Told in Zoe's flat, affectless first person voice - one that is beautifully articulated - the novel has an increasingly ominous tone that invites anxious speculation about the future of the three young people in a soulless world. The one is both haunting and unforgettable." - Booklist
"Starred Review. A gorgeous and gut-wrenchingly familiar depiction of the entropic fragmentation of society." - Kirkus
"Readers interested in thought-provoking stories set in unusual environments will enjoy this quick read, but those looking for a thrilling page-turner may be disappointed." - School Library Journal
This information about MARTians was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Blythe Woolston's first novel, The Freak Observer, won the William C. Morris Debut Award. She is also the author of Black Helicopters, an American Library Association Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection and a Montana Book Award Honor Book. Blythe Woolston lives in Billings, Montana.
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