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Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

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May 19, 2020 ∙ 7:00pm - 8:00pm
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Add to Calendar 2020-05-19 19:00:00 2020-05-19 20:00:00 America/Chicago Borne by Jeff VanderMeer Join us online to discuss Borne by Jeff VanderMeer. Signup required through Zoom. external tplibrary@tplibrary.org

About this event

Borne is available to download with your Tinley Park Public Library Card.

Get the eBook: https://mediaondemand.overdrive.com/mediaondemand-tinleypark/content/media/2996766

Get the audiobook: https://mediaondemand.overdrive.com/mediaondemand-tinleypark/content/media/3248960

This is a virtual event—it will not be held at the library. The live event is interactive, and you may be visible to other participants.

Need help using Zoom? Visit tplibrary.org/faqs#zoom to get started.


Named one of the most anticipated books of 2017 by The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Book Riot, Chicago Reader, The Week, and Publishers Weekly.

"Am I a person?" Borne asked me.
"Yes, you are a person," I told him. "But like a person, you can be a weapon, too."

In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company—a biotech firm now derelict—and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.

One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump—plant or animal?—but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts—and definitely against Wick's wishes—Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.

"He was born, but I had borne him."

But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.

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