posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie at 09:55am on 22/01/2009
selkie at 09:55am on 22/01/2009I got this book in the post yesterday at 6.30PM. I finished the book at 11:00PM, which includes ignoring Top Chef. Yes, I said ignoring Top Chef.
It's a YA book, but it's not a short book. It is a damn good book, just skirting amazing (there's a plot fuddle near the end, featuring the main teen antagonist, that veers off at the last second to make some good suspense, but it didn't sell me). You should read it if you're pro-life or pro-choice. You should read it if you were ever punished harshly for an imperfect adolescent performance. You should read it if you had bouts of temper your parents didn't understand -- or if you ever had that feeling of not quite being related to your closest relatives. You should read it if your childhood socieconomic sphere/political climate/religion reared you to be one thing, and you really wanted to be that one thing because it was the wonderful summation of your existence so far -- and no matter how you wanted to, no matter what, you could not be that thing, and your fate led in another, complicated direction. You should read it if you still wake up some days feeling like an anarchist, an iconoclast, a Zionist, a feminist of the kind they used to call militant.
Yeah, so I may be biased in favor.
I don't want to give away more of the plot than can be found on Amazon, but in the future, pro-life and pro-choice armies have come to agree on the Bill of Life, which says all babies must be born alive, reared in a state home or by a family -- but can then be retroactively aborted by 'unwinding' between the ages of 13 and 18, so long as 99.44% of the teenager remains alive in pieces, in transplant lockers, in other people. Three such Unwinds attempt to escape (or not) this gruesome fate in a cross-country odyssey featuring a jive-talking mentor figure with only 7/8 of his own personality remaining, a bunch of planes in the Arizona desert, and a total takeoff on the Konzentrationslager Auschwitz Jazz Orchestra. (Neal Shusterman, he is not dumb.)
It's a super good read, Be forewarned, there are lots of babies bein' abandoned every-damn-where, and as in real life no one is completely good and no one is completely bad, and there's a smushy teen romance and Something Chilling and Awful Happens At the End To Make You Realize the Bad Guy Wasn't Bad Per Se (it really is chilling).
The world-building gets a solid score of 80+ percent, and the dialogue sounds mostly like real people could be saying things, even in those moments for which we do not currently have context (at a Harvest Camp for Teens, for instance). The smushy romance is not intrusive or bad. And I really like the way Neal Shusterman always has a "bogeyman" in his stories -- in this case, the unfortunate Humphrey Dunfee and his possibly murderous parents, out to track down all the parts of their unwound-in-haste, repented-at-leisure son. Because that's Information Sharing For Teens: I heard it from somebody, who knew a cousin, who lived in the same state as, who went to my school. That's how the fundaments get passed along, the kernels of truth cloaked over in rumor.
Very thought-provoking, really. You should go and read it.
It's a YA book, but it's not a short book. It is a damn good book, just skirting amazing (there's a plot fuddle near the end, featuring the main teen antagonist, that veers off at the last second to make some good suspense, but it didn't sell me). You should read it if you're pro-life or pro-choice. You should read it if you were ever punished harshly for an imperfect adolescent performance. You should read it if you had bouts of temper your parents didn't understand -- or if you ever had that feeling of not quite being related to your closest relatives. You should read it if your childhood socieconomic sphere/political climate/religion reared you to be one thing, and you really wanted to be that one thing because it was the wonderful summation of your existence so far -- and no matter how you wanted to, no matter what, you could not be that thing, and your fate led in another, complicated direction. You should read it if you still wake up some days feeling like an anarchist, an iconoclast, a Zionist, a feminist of the kind they used to call militant.
Yeah, so I may be biased in favor.
I don't want to give away more of the plot than can be found on Amazon, but in the future, pro-life and pro-choice armies have come to agree on the Bill of Life, which says all babies must be born alive, reared in a state home or by a family -- but can then be retroactively aborted by 'unwinding' between the ages of 13 and 18, so long as 99.44% of the teenager remains alive in pieces, in transplant lockers, in other people. Three such Unwinds attempt to escape (or not) this gruesome fate in a cross-country odyssey featuring a jive-talking mentor figure with only 7/8 of his own personality remaining, a bunch of planes in the Arizona desert, and a total takeoff on the Konzentrationslager Auschwitz Jazz Orchestra. (Neal Shusterman, he is not dumb.)
It's a super good read, Be forewarned, there are lots of babies bein' abandoned every-damn-where, and as in real life no one is completely good and no one is completely bad, and there's a smushy teen romance and Something Chilling and Awful Happens At the End To Make You Realize the Bad Guy Wasn't Bad Per Se (it really is chilling).
The world-building gets a solid score of 80+ percent, and the dialogue sounds mostly like real people could be saying things, even in those moments for which we do not currently have context (at a Harvest Camp for Teens, for instance). The smushy romance is not intrusive or bad. And I really like the way Neal Shusterman always has a "bogeyman" in his stories -- in this case, the unfortunate Humphrey Dunfee and his possibly murderous parents, out to track down all the parts of their unwound-in-haste, repented-at-leisure son. Because that's Information Sharing For Teens: I heard it from somebody, who knew a cousin, who lived in the same state as, who went to my school. That's how the fundaments get passed along, the kernels of truth cloaked over in rumor.
Very thought-provoking, really. You should go and read it.
There are 5 comments on this entry. (Reply.)