If given a chance to end all suffering on the planet, would you take it?
Genre: YA, Science Fiction, Contemporary, LGBTQIA+
No. of pages: 455
Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button.
Only he isn’t sure he wants to.
After all, life hasn’t been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimer’s. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriend’s suicide last year.
Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him.
But Henry is a scientist first, and facing the question thoroughly and logically, he begins to look for pros and cons: in the bully who is his perpetual one-night stand, in the best friend who betrayed him, in the brilliant and mysterious boy who walked into the wrong class. Weighing the pain and the joy that surrounds him, Henry is left with the ultimate choice: push the button and save the planet and everyone on it…or let the world—and his pain—be destroyed forever.
‘We Are The Ants’ follows Henry as he navigates alien abductions, grief and bullying, while trying to make it through high school. His abusive relationship with secret boyfriend Marcus comes into question when newcomer Diego transfers into one of his classes. His life is a bit of a dumpster fire, and when the aliens present him with a big red button that will end the world and give Henry a countdown to decide whether or not to press it… It’s up to Henry to decide whether humanity is actually worth saving, especially when he has little reason to want it to continue.
This was a difficult read for me – it has a lot of trigger warnings. Death and grief, assault and bullying, mental illness, attempted rape, miscarriage, suicide, homophobia, neglect… so I had tears in my eyes a lot and needed to put the book down from time to time and let my emotions get back to baseline. Henry is queer, outed earlier without his permission, and had recently lost his one true love, Jesse, who committed suicide. Henry doesn’t know why. One moment he was the happiest in his life, with a fun loving boyfriend. And then it was all over.
Now Henry is still grappling with the death of Jesse. He’s fallen into a friends with benefits relationship with popular jock Marcus, except the friends part means Marcus bullies and beats him and public, and kisses him in private because Marcus is still in the closet. Henry takes the abuse because this relationship because it is the only thing that makes him feel. The rest of the time he’s simply going through the motions.
Henry’s home life isn’t much better. His Nan has dementia and while adorable and hilarious at times, her memory slips are putting the family’s wellbeing in danger. Especially when she nearly burns down the kitchen. Henry’s Mom is in a dead-end job she hates and is exhausted when she gets home, so there is little energy to care or behave like a parent. She has moments where she feels like the type of mother she should be, but those times are fleeting and Henry is left to fend for himself. Especially in dealing with his grief. The family are fed up with him being sad all the time and don’t want to have to deal with it.
Henry’s older brother, Charlie taunts, teases, and beats him up. There is little brotherly love. So with no safe place at home or at school, it feels like Henry is the universe’s punching bag. No wonder he’s all for pressing the button and ending the planet.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Audrey, Henry’s best friend is compassionate and caring, she’s not afraid to stand up for him. And when Diego starts at the high school, Henry thinks he may have found a new friend, or potential boyfriend… if only he can work through the loss of Jesse… and the aliens stop abducting him.
Ms. Faraci, Henry’s science teacher seems to get Henry and is the only faculty investing in his future and attempting to stop the bullying. I loved how it shows that one good teacher in your high school years can change the trajectory of your life.
I feel like ‘We Are The Ants’ is about learning to trust people (even when they give you no reason to,) and learning to trust that good things in life will come to you (even if the past proves otherwise.) I spent a lot of time reading this uncomfortable because of the way Henry is treated and the people in his life that are so apathetic, that Henry himself adopts that trait.
The whole alien abduction thing – it’s never proven. You can view it of two ways: that it’s true and slug-like E.T.’s are beaming up Henry and offering him a solution to end his suffering (along with the rest of the world,) or, that because of the trauma Henry has suffered, he’s entering a fugue state and created a fictional world in order to interpret this trauma-response. It points to the mental illness and grief Henry is experiencing. So depending on if you’re a romantic and believe in the alien hypothesis or if you’re a realist and can see how Henry is desperately trying to escape his pain and suffering: it’s really up to you to draw that conclusion as a reader. Having ‘We Are The Ants’ being told in Henry’s perspective allows the reader to immerse themselves in his internal monologue and experiences, which can have a magical realism element to it as he struggles to deal and avoid his big feelings.
I liked ‘We Are The Ants’ and the topics it addresses. It’s a deeply emotional tale. But at times this was a bit too dark and traumatic. I remember wondering when it would all end, when we were going to get life turning a corner to see a rainbow. So in that respect, I think the narrative is a little divisive and may not appeal to every reader.
Shaun David Hutchinson has an incredible writing style, he takes symbolism to the extreme, in that it becomes a plot point for the whole story. I’ve seen this in his writing before in ‘The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley.’ Be prepared to bring tissues because it’s raw, visceral, and emotional. Hutchinson is not afraid to get messy – and while the narrative will wallow in depression and anxiety, his writing does not.
A solid recommendation from me, but be warned it’s not all unicorns and glitter. I do have ‘FML’ on my TBR shelf, so that is most likely the next book from Hutchinson I’ll be reading sometime in the future.
Overall feeling: A lot of pain
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Casey Carlisle 