Circular Motion
In Alex Foster’s alarming novel Circular Motion, loners seek purpose as technologically advanced transportation veers the world toward the apocalypse.
Fleeing small-minded Alaska, Tanner becomes the assistant to the new spokesperson for CWC, a company facilitating high-altitude rapid travel between major cities. In San Francisco, Winnie, abandoned by her father at birth, struggles to fit in at her new high school after her mother’s suicide attempt forced her to move in with her aunt. Meanwhile, public outcry about connections between CWC’s aircraft and Earth’s accelerated rotation, leading to shortening days, amplifies.
An intense character study, Circular Motion‘s moody prose is entrenched in bottomless loneliness and emotional disrepair. Early on, Tanner wallows in quiet anguish and self-pity; his desire to escape his abusive, ultrareligious survivalist father is sympathetic. And self-conscious Winnie struggles with depression, which is described with a searing, graphic poignancy: “Her pale hair was always frayed. Like the hair of a corpse.” Warmth and desperate respite arise from issues of tenuous companionship, as when Tanner confronts his internalized homophobia as he becomes close to a coworker, and when Winnie befriends her environmental-activist peers. But there are also tense, embittered interpersonal conflicts amid the book’s increasing ecosystemic instability.
Intensifying global ethical concerns reveal the greedy manipulations of corporations like CWC, which prioritize power and public image over the environment and people. The book’s portrayal of social media is ambiguous and cautionary: It unfolds a wider world to isolated individuals like Tanner and Winnie, but the virtual connections are shallow and unfulfilling. Colorful, fanciful digitizations and advertisements distract people from feeling the alarm of preeminent ecological and social devastation, yielding tragic consequences.
In the pessimistic but thoughtful future-set novel Circular Motion, existential anxieties intermesh and explode as the sun rises and sets with increased frequency.
Reviewed by
Isabella Zhou
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
