fiction
The Poppy Fields is an experimental treatment facility for those struggling with grief. Patients are placed into a coma-like sleep for 4-8 weeks and wake up better able to manage their despair. But there are many questions and doubts about the efficacy, benefits, and risks of this treatment. Ava, Sasha, and Ray meet randomly in the airport after their flights are canceled by a tornado and they end up driving across the country together with The Poppy Fields as their destination.
As with her previous novel, The Measure, Nikki Erlick is so astute with her understanding of the human psyche and sociology—ambitions, fears, concerns, social relationships, and coping mechanisms. All of her characters are realistic and knowable and their stories are all interesting. I looked forward to finding out how everything turned out for all of them. They all developed greater self-understanding during the journey to California and formed important relationships with each other.
As you might imagine, there is a significant amount of death and loss featured in this novel. But Erlick treats these topics with great care and empathy.
Making this novel even better, Erlick has loosely created a modern-day retelling of The Wizard of Oz. Remember that Dorothy, the scarecrow, the tin man, and the cowardly lion all fall asleep in a poppy field outside of Oz? The parallels to The Poppy Fields and the Wizard of Oz are many. For example, they drive across the country in a canary yellow car which is, essentially, their “yellow brick road”. I would list all of the Oz-isms I noticed but that would ruin future readers’ enjoyment and fun in discovering these homages and storylines themselves. Honestly, I think I experienced more enjoyment from the Oz “treasure hunt” than with the actual story! I will assure you that, thankfully, it wasn’t all a dream as it was for Dorothy. I really look forward to sharing all these Oz discoveries with my book club!
The audiobook has a huge cast of narrators. But the vast majority of this novel is voiced by Marin Ireland—a very skilled and experienced narrator—who did a terrific job as she always does. The other actors only voiced small sections which were meaningful interludes to the main story. These sections served as relevant tangents and back stories. I appreciated Erlick’s writing strategy as well as the audiobook’s narrating strategy. I’ll only grade Ireland since the others weren’t voicing their characters long enough to warrant a rating but they all did a good job. I’m giving Ireland a solid A. I was tempted to give her an A- because it sounded like she was nursing some nasal congestion but it never got to the point that it grossed me out or took away from my enjoyment of the audio.
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