Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

By David Nickle

The year is 1911.

In Cold Spring Harbour, New York, the newly formed Eugenics Records Office is sending its agents to catalogue the infirm, the insane, and the criminal—with an eye to a cull, for the betterment of all.

Near Cracked Wheel, Montana, a terrible illness leaves Jason Thistledown an orphan, stranded in his dead mother’s cabin until the spring thaw shows him the true meaning of devastation—and the barest thread of hope.

At the edge of the utopian mill town of Eliada, Idaho, Doctor Andrew Waggoner faces a Klansman’s noose and glimpses wonder in the twisting face of the patient known only as Mister Juke.

And deep in a mountain lake overlooking that town, something stirs, and thinks, in its way: Things are looking up.

Eutopia follows Jason and Andrew as together and alone, they delve into the secrets of Eliada—industrialist Garrison Harper's attempt to incubate a perfect community on the edge of the dark woods and mountains of northern Idaho. What they find reveals the true, terrible cost of perfection—the cruelty of the surgeon's knife—the folly of the cull—and a monstrous pact with beings that use perfection as a weapon, and faith as a trap.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ChiZine Publications
• Release date: Apr 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781926851945

David Nickle

David Nickle is an award-winning Toronto-based author and journalist. He has written several novels and numerous short stories. Nickle’s most recent book is Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination (2017).

Reviews for Eutopia

[jjaylynny · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

What the f%^$ was THAT?

[csweder · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a solid 4 stars, until the last 1/3 of the book, where the plot became harder to follow, and I think less developed?

So, fun while it lasted, but not a strong recommendation for others to read.

[strider66_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Pros: excellent writing, courageous, tight endingCons: the supernatural aspect isn't as scary as the historically accurate partsEutopia takes place in the early 1900's when the eugenics movement was becoming popular with a certain type of people. Mrs Frost, an agent of the Eugenics Records Office finds her nephew is the sole survivor of a plague ravaged frontier town. She brings him with her to Eilada, Idaho, where an industrialist has started what he intends to be a utopic community.But not everything's rosy in paradise. The town's black doctor, Andrew Waggoner, has had a run in with the Ku Klux Klan and discovered that his colleague, Dr. Bergstrom has been keeping a 'Mr. Juke' in quarantine. The more Dr. Waggoner learns of Dr. Bergstrom's actions and who, or what, Mr. Juke is, the more imperiled his life becomes.Because Mr. Juke's family is coming to get him back.For a novel that has such a horrifying supernatural creature at the heart of it, the true terror of the book was contained in the historically accurate parts. It's hard to be afraid of made up monsters when the Klan and practicing eugenicists show up. Indeed, when you see the unrepentant Mrs. Frost and delusional Dr. Bergstrom own up to their crimes, no fictional monster could possibly stand up to the horrors humans are willing to perpetrate on each other.I call this novel courageous because Mr. Nickle focuses on a period of history most people pretend didn't exist. The eugenics movement died after the holocaust showed the end result of such thinking. But denying that sterilization happened in other nations (including Canada and the U.S.), as painful as it is to admit, denies the injustices done to people in the past due to racism and elitist thinking. And allows the possibility of repeating such things. Fiction allows us to examine issues we'd rather not, in the safety of the present, when we hope such occurrences will never be allowed to happen again. In this way it reminds me of Blonde Roots, by Bernardine Evaristo, which flips history so Europeans are enslaved by Afrikaans. It shows how racism can go both ways and only the conquerors decide what is right and who are the elite.People will find reading this book uncomfortable, for the subject matter and the liberal use of the 'n' word. We have whitewashed our history and no longer want to acknowledge the attitudes and language of the past. Even the subtle put downs black men faced, like using Dr. Waggoner's Christian name when addressing him, rather than his title, are accurately represented in this book.The ending is tight, bringing all three plot lines together in surprising ways. It's an ending that is both satisfying, and thought provoking.

[jbrubacher_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In 1911, something odd is happening in a quiet mountain town. A group of people are trying to create paradise, while alongside this the original inhabitants continue their lives, worshipping a creature that can be beautiful to some and a monster to others. Jason Thistledown is collected by his aunt after a plague kills his mother, and taken to this place, while Andrew Waggoner, a doctor employed there, fights the ku klux klan and ends up discovering terrible secrets. Both are heroes of a sort in a story that illuminates the dangers of eugenics and the horrors of, well, quiet mountain towns.The pace is right on and the horror is perfectly balanced between showing us enough to disturb but not so much that it's out of hand. There are villains aplenty, and they aren't always obvious. Andrew is a compelling character, and Jason has his strengths, although they're never developed beyond the needs of the moment. Most of the characters are just what they need to be, and there are so many that sometimes their names and roles blend together. This happens particularly near the end of the book when the pace speeds to such that each fight and discovery become somewhat soft at the edges.Overall this is pretty good horror, and the developed story shows a talent worth watching. I'll be interested to read what David Nickle produces next.

[bibliotropic · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ah, the good old days. Where people dropped N-bombs with impunity, where doctors gave out morphine for broken bones, and where the improvement of the human race was worked on by sterilizing the feeble-minded and the crippled.The title of this book is a deliberate and disturbing pun, referencing a path to utopia via eugenics, the selective culling of the less desirable aspects of the human race. If only the best exist and breed, then only the best babies will be born. At least in theory. Eugenics in itself is a chilling subject, and is mostly known as part of the Nazi agenda, but people don't often realize that the Nazis were not the first to experiment with it. Just one of the most villified and thus the most famous. David Nickle acknowledges and plays with this fact by having the book set in American shortly after the turn of the 20th century. We follow the joint stories of Jason and Andrew, the former an orphan and only surviver of a plague that qiped out his hometown, the latter a black doctor hated by some and tolerated by others, as more and more of the secrets of Eliada's so-called utopian ideals are unveiled in a truly disturbing fashion.If there's any real flaw in this book, it's the transparency of the author's writing. It was clear to me very early on that Germaine was not Jason's aunt, and obvious also that Jason's discovery of this was supposed to surprise the reader also. I felt no surprise, just a faint sense of, "I saw that coming half a book ago." It was mostly this that counted against the book in terms of a final rating, for if some things had been less obvious, there might have been more of a sense of edge-of-your-seat suspense and drama going on.But while nothing may have come as a surprise, that does not mean that it was all smooth sailing. Nickle has a real talent for writing disturbing and frightening scenes, not all of which rely on blood and gore to make their impression. The book was written with cinematic clarity, in a style that left little or no doubt as to what's going on and how you're supposed to see it.The book's ending also felt weak and rushed, and not so much open-ended as unfinished. The heroes get away, but don't go too far from where all the horror of Eliada and the Jukes took place. We never really do get to find out just what was going on with the Jukes, nor what they were or what their purpose was. It would be easy to dismiss them as mindless monsters if it hadn't been demonstrated that they possess a fierce cunning, a culture and drive and interaction with humans that can't be dismissed so easily.Still, in spite of the flaws it contained, it was still a good book, presenting a terrifying image of our past even when you exclude the monsters! Nickle is definitely an author to keep an eye on, and a real treat for casual horror fans!

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful, creepy, amazing, thought-provoking... A proper review is going to take some thought. It will be coming later.

[eliendriel · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting when I read this book. From reviews and from the jacket, I thought I was getting a provoking, unique thriller sort of novel, something that evoked images of horror while challenging preconceptions. What I got was... well.. Was a well-written, fast-paced novel that at times really understood itself very well, and at other times, lost itself in attempting to create moments simply for the sake of having them. The two main characters, Andrew Waggoner and Jason Thistledown, are extremely compelling, if at times a little one-dimensional - there really should be limits to the times and ways they just wind up in the right place at the right time. Sam, the main Pinkerton, is another at times believable character who has to suffer through some moments of cardboard cutout-ness. The Jukes, while never adequately explored nor fully recognized, are at the very least intriguing and their powers of creating a shared community are pivotal for driving the ending of the novel. But some of the other characters (Germaine and Dr. Bergstrom, for example) are simply tools to move the narrative, and never really seem "real". However, Nickle's writing is clear and effective, written with an eye for creating an atmosphere that certainly is unique. Overall, however, I guess I don't know how I feel about it - I didn't regret reading it, neither did I feel ... moved, or changed, or impressed... by the tale.