Glory O'Brien's History of the Future

Summary:   Glory O'Brien is about to graduate from high school and she has no future plans.  Her mother committed suicide when she was a young girl and left her and her father always searching for who they are. Glory and her friend, Ellie, decide to drink a bat one night and after that they can both see the future through "transmissions" from other people. Glory sees a second Civil War coming where women have lost all their rights and young girls are kidnapped in droves in the middle of the night. Glory is not sure of her place in the world but after graduation she begins going down to her mother's photography studio where she finds a journal. She decides to write a journal of her own documenting the "transmissions" she receives in hopes of providing insight to others someday, like her mother has in a way provided to her.  There are lots of things revealed in her mother's diary and the transmissions, like Ellie's mother sending nude photos to her father in addition to her mother "loaning" the land to her Ellie's mother that they are using as a commune, which they take back at the end of the story.

King, A. (2014). Glory O’Brien’s history of the future. New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Commentary:  The strengths of this book are that the only thing Glory knows about her future is that she does not want to go off to college like everyone else.  That is all that she knows. She is fearful she may end up down the same path as her mother.  She is looking for herself and probably has been since her mother committed suicide when she was 4 years old. She questions just about everything because of that one event in her life.  After graduation, she begins going down to her mother's photography studio much to her father's dismay.  She finds a book that her mother has created titled Why People Take Pictures, it is sort of like a journal.  

Connections:  I would consider this book a Fiction, low fantasy novel being that it is based in current times but with flashbacks to the past and flash forwards of the future after she and her best friend drink a bat. These visions or what Glory calls transmissions are revealing. Sometimes they come from the past and other times they are glimpses into the future.  It appears that there is an impending second Civil War, where women's right are the target. Similar to things that are going on in our world currently, not just women's rights but with human rights.   These transmissions are quite confusing at first but as she begins to get more and more Glory begins to embrace them and record them in her own journal The Origin of Everything, like her mother did with her photography journal.  Although I really liked this book, it was a difficult one for me to read because my father committed suicide.


Link to the author's page for A.S. King  I love that she touts herself as an author, thinker, juggler and wearer of magical writing pants.  I need some pants like that.

Book Trailer

Interview with A. S. King.

New York Times Book Review

Educator's Guide

Audiobook Excerpt from Audiobooks.com