There must be a reason why ninety-six per cent of people choose retirement over instant euthanasia. [loc. 622]
A near-future Britain in which secure employment and free (urban) housing are provided to those who earn their Right to Reside by consuming luxury goods. The cost is not financial, but social: when an individual can no longer work, they are entitled to a year's luxury retirement at a Dignatorium: after that, euthanasia.
Which actually doesn't sound so bad -- no more retirement homes, slow helpless undignified deaths, poverty et cetera. Except of course it's not that straightforward.
Alice is abandoned by her husband, who's missing presumed dead: within days, her carefully-tended consumer lifestyle is crumbling around her, and she is 'demoted' from High Spender to Low Spender. She begins, belatedly, to ask some questions about this new social order, and gets some answers she really doesn't like. She's forced to contact her estranged sister Sofia, now one of the elite Owners, who explains the horrifying truth behind the state's promises, and the fate that awaits Philip.
This is an odd book. It's not wholly successful, and the prose is unexciting: but it's a compelling read, though I found it hard to sympathise with selfish, blinkered Alice ("I used to be a brainwashed consumer zombie... how could I have known better?") even when she began to realise the real story behind the Dignatoriums and the Right to Reside. I'm not sure the finale fitted the rest of the book, and it certainly goes against the stated wishes of the person most drastically affected by it . And I would have liked more background on the world outside London. The British countryside's basically off-limits, and ordinary people are discouraged from venturing out of the cities by the threat of giant mutant wolves -- the reality of which could have been expanded upon. But what about the rest of the world? There are mentions of America, but little else.
An accessible depiction of a dystopia, but I don't think it's sufficiently consistent or coherent to be truly frightening.
No comments:
Post a Comment