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Sometimes I feel as though this blog is actually just for my readerly therapy, so I do hope you’re getting something out of it too!  Confession time – I read Inspection because it got a ton of hype and I felt like they were telling me to.  I approached this book with a lot of side eye.  I read it while also reading nonfiction (which I don’t read much of), and it came off hold as a total accident (if you’re going to suspend, you need to be careful of when titles come unsuspended, although less so now that we can resuspend on Overdrive within the three day time period), and it got extra side eye because of it.  

I’ll sum up my reaction to this book for you – I am SO MAD there is no sequel expected.  I know this is my usual, but I HAVE QUESTIONS THAT NEED ANSWERS.  This does not end on a cliffhanger, the ending is solid, but the characters are not settled, not yet.  

What is Inspection even about you ask.  Great question.  Take a group of 26 boys as infants, put them in a tower with a staff of males to take care of them.  Cook, clean, teach, etc.  Doesn’t sound that intriguing?  Wait for it – there are no women.  They don’t know women exist.  At all.  It’s a super creative set up and I was intrigued from the start.  I want to say it sort of feels like The Giver but that’s not it.  It does make you think in similar ways though.  If you want more, the marketing copy has more, but really, this is what you need to know.  

The story is divided up in four sections and the chapters change perspective between J, one of the alphabet boys, and D.A.D., who’s in charge of the boys and the staff.  Slowly you learn about the world of the boys and you learn about D.A.D., and you also meet some of the other boys and staff as well.  I don’t want to say too much about this book, but it’s so well-written and creative.  I will say two things: this would be fabulous for book clubs of either or mixed gender, and there will be a spoilery section later on.  

DO NOT skip the acknowledgements!  Malerman mentions a 150-page idea his wife asked if he’d considered when he was about a week away from finishing a rewrite of the book.  He considered it, called his manager with the idea, and added it.  I am SO curious as to what that idea is (and I 100% have a theory)!  

Now for the spoilers- 

I have so many issues and thoughts about the set up.  If the argument is that the opposite gender distracts, that shouldn’t be a thing until the “delicate years” when they are teenagers, right?  Marilyn and Richard are convinced the experiment is a success because the alphabet boys are working at a collegiate level and the letter girls are working at a post-grad level, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with it (yet at least).  If you take 26 children and put them into an environment together with a staff dedicated to nothing but seeing to their needs and education, will they not generally excel beyond their peers who are living in homes with busy families and attending large schools?  They have a lower child to adult ratio and the adults have little to do besides tend to the children (there is no other work, no social life, and there appears to be little opportunity for anything else) and the children have limited distractions as well beyond their studies and very specifically designed and selected hobbies and leisure activities.  

I was originally amused that the girls were more advanced than the boys, but if you take a group of female adults who were (generally) raised to be nurturing and facilitate the growth and success of others, will they not raise children, of either gender, who are more advanced than those raised by a group of male adults who were raised to succeed in culture and in work, but not necessarily to nurture and raise tiny humans?  I am very aware that I am making broad generalities about the upbringing of largely unknown characters, however, there is a lot to look at with the way genders do (and do not) relate to each other in this book.  

Here’s my issue with the ending and why I desperately want a sequel – what happens when Warren walks into Milwaukee with a large group of 12-year-olds.  Children who will be amazed and awed by so many things they see because their world was so small.  I’m mystified by this.  I’m hopeful, but not very, that if Bird Box can get a sequel six years later, there is potential for Inspection to get one, eventually.

I give Inspection an excited four stars.  I might reread this, and definitely will if a sequel is gifted to the world, and I would LOVE to chat with any readers who have feelings about this book.  I’m also very interested in Malerman’s backlist, and will be paying attention to what else he writes too.  

~Nikki 

I’m going to admit to the universe that I haven’t watched “Bird Box” on Netflix yet, but maybe after I am done writing all about Josh Malerman and his myriad projects, including Inspection, I will settle into watching it in the dark, out in the middle of the scenic Sumner County, with no protection but two very cuddly Belgian Malinois, 4 cats, myriad wild turkeys, and several herd of deer who love corn. Bird Box was his debut novel publication, but, according to his biography on joshmalerman.com, he had written 14 other novels and not shopped one of them to publishers. He did the majority of his novel writing freehand in the passenger seat of a car while touring the country for the Detroit rock band The High Strung, for which he is a singer/songwriter/guitarist. Inspection was published in March of 2019 and it had been on our holds list for quite a while until we were able to pull it off in January of this year. For a little context Bird Box was published in 2014 and released by Netflix in December 2018, so Inspection was his first published work after “Bird Box” became an almost overnight sensation and the book was also a 2019 nominee for the Bram Stoker Award.

It’s a little ironic that during our back to school themed month this title is truly our first (and only) book with an actual school setting. The title for Inspection comes from the daily ‘inspection’ that the boys must endure in order to be sure that they aren’t figuring out the existence of the other gender or biological reproduction in pre-pubescent boys. Near the beginning of the book there is talk about what the boys like to find out in the Orchard, and J admits to keeping the secret of the Fighting Bugs: 

It was one of the many things the Alphabet Boys hoped to see in the Orchard. Rarely was a bug found inside the tower and never two at once. Certainly no two like the two small red ones they observed up close, one mounted upon the back of the other. … But the boys knew better. Nobody had ever seen a Fighting Bug win its fight. Rather, these two, like all the others, would simply go their separate ways when it was over.

How difficult it must be to keep the knowledge of all reproductive biology away from young, precocious, genius-level-educated eleven-year-old humans? It’s insects that are literally teaching these youngsters the birds and the bees, but they don’t know what it’s for because they have no concept for anything except ‘male.’ I questioned as I was reading what happens with the probability that one of these boys starts realizing he is not coded the same way the other boys are? That he begins to have intense ‘feeling’ towards one of the other boys or if he starts realizing that ‘boy’ isn’t the thing that makes him feel complete inside. Without some reference for gay or transgendered, how could the Parenthood take care of the very real needs of their child? These are only SOME of the questions that need answered by the end of Inspection, and I hope you’re intrigued enough by the premise that you decide to read it and then dip into Malerman’s backlist, I know I intend to (probably in the dead of winter and when everything is scary in a pandemic). Nikki covered a lot of my same points in her spoilery section above, so read the book, check out the spoilers, and come at us with your theories, cause I’m ready to deep dive this four star book with everyone, not just my buddy.

What’s a titles you’re ready to deep dive with more than just your buddy?  We’re excited to deep dive with you every six weeks!  Our next Virtual Book Club is Friday, September 18th at 7:30 p.m. CST to discuss  Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin.  Registration is open HERE.  You can also drop a note in the comments or slide into our DMs with a book you want to deep dive.  We need 2021 book club titles, and we’ve been known to schedule a bookish conversation with a limited number of readers from time to time as well. 

~Ashley