More Than This, by Patrick Ness

I don't recall seeing a cover that sums
up the themes and style of a book as
efficiently and as effectively as this.
It's a transition, and it's walking a line
between two worlds.

Where do I start?  Where can I possibly start in explaining to anybody what an astounding piece of writing this is?  More than that, how can I do so without giving away any of the pieces of such a beautiful, intricate puzzle?  It's 2013.  People should have stopped being surprised at the emotional depth of Young Adult literature. The public will be aware that there are unimaginable levels of sophistication to all types of fiction, all kinds of themes and a multitude of ways to handle those themes.  More Than This is an absolute beacon of warmth, humanity for ANY fiction, not just YA fiction. There are no words.  But here are some words that will attempt it.

The story starts with a death.  Somewhere, cold and alone, a boy drowns in a turbulent sea.  We know he is dead, and he knows he is dead- his spinal chord unambiguously severed.  He- Seth, as it turns out, is as surprised as anybody when he regains consciousness outside his childhood home.  Thirsty, naked, and a bit unsteady on his feet- but certainly not dead.  Waking up to a dusty, deserted, but achingly familiar World, Seth has to work out where he is- Hell? Purgatory? The Afterlife? and how he came be there so alone.

Partick Ness so so skillfully drip feeds both the characters and the reader information, slowly layering up a picture of a life that ended in such a violent death.  As Seth gathers more information from his surroundings, memories and horribly vivid dreams, his past becomes revealed and memories begin to emerge- some intensely private, some buried so deeply as to be almost impossible to recall.  As the gaps are filled in for the reader and for Seth, his theories about the World in which he finds himself change and his understanding of himself and his life is blown apart. From the reader's perspective, you find things out, you think you know where the plot is going, you're pretty bloody pleased with yourself for working it out and then...what's that? It's another insane plot twist that will flip your stomach and blow your mind.  Ness weaves in and out of the past and the present, showing that we can walk a line between two worlds quite easily, withholding key pieces of information until the most essential moment, backtracking and sidestepping and ever so slowly unraveling the scrambled mass of plot strands.

This book really captures what it is to be a teenager disappointed with one's lot in life (so far).  There's a harmless self-centered-ness, an intense anxiety (and inability to believe that the suffocating anguish of being a teenager is temporary) and the fear of the dawning realisation that this might be it.  This might be as good as it gets, and that's pretty crushing.  Most teenagers feel misunderstood and alone at some point, and Ness really brings those feelings across brilliantly.  The book forces you to ask what is it that matters in life.  Is it knowing?  Is it feeling or loving or being satisfied that everything you are is real?  Or is it just being happy, however that is achieved?  

There are more things I would like to talk about- the reason for Seth's crushing guilt, the things he has to hide, the things he longs for and his pretty terrible family life, but the elements of this novel fit together so beautifully and so thrillingly that I don't want to reveal too much.  I enjoyed the breathless pace and the importance of these discoveries as they are made so much that I'd hate to take that away from anyone.

Such a beautifully written, insanely original and tightly plotted novel.  Written with the same tenderness and profound understanding of human nature, loss and pain that is a bit of a hallmark of a Ness novel, More Than This is pretty staggering.  It's a novel of afterwards: Afterlife, aftermath, after love and after loss and after everything.  It's being at the end and being ready for it.

I'd recommend this to people that want something more than the average dystopian future narrative, and to the technologically minded.  It would also be a great read for Video Game fans and seeing as it deals with a lot of "issues" (immigration, LGBT, domestic violence, bullying, berevement) there's a lot of ways in...

The Unit, by Ninni Holmqvist

This debut novel takes place in (presumably) very near future where the famously democratic nation of Sweden has implemented a new social policy. Designed to cut down the national cost of the elderly, the ill and the socially unproductive, all childless adults aged 50 for women and 60 for men are deemed 'disposable' and are taken to a facility called the Unit. At the Unit they can enjoy the best entertainment, leisure facilities, companionship, good food, theatre and comfortable living space, but they will be required to undergo constant medical tests (some harmless, some not so much) and ultimately to sacrifice their vital organs to those deemed to be 'needed' by society.

Dorrit has just turned 50. Intelligent but unsociable, an unpublished writer and all round bohemian, she has never married, never had children and never had a career that is considered to contribute to the nation's prosperity. She leaves her beloved dog, Jock, and her ramshackle house behind and signs her body over to medical science. The unit proves to be the only place in her life that Dorrit has met truly likeminded people, mostly 'pointless' intellectuals such as herself. Amongst the childless she is no social outcast, and now she has time and need for friendship. Her tragedy is that during her first week, she meets and falls in love with another resident who, had she met him on the outside she may have led a happy life with.

To begin with, I was convinced that this book was a Swedish re-hash of Never Let Me Go but with Borgen jumpers instead of boarding schools. I changed my mind. NLMG hides the true reason for the existence of the characters and of the school they attend- we understand it's not a normal school, but can't work out why. When its organ-farm purpose is revealed to the reader, the characters discover that there are organisations, such as their old school, working to determine the ethical implications of cloning and forced organ harvesting, and asking questions about what makes a person a true person and what makes one just a walking bag of spare parts. There's none of that here. We know from the beginning what the purpose of the unit is, and so does Dorrit. Society knows. The donors know where their organs go and the recipients know where they come from. It's the assumption that it's all fine and sensible and that it's the right thing to do because it's the economically sustainable thing to do that makes this book shocking.

The residents of the unit arrive shell-shocked and confused, they have outbursts throughout their stay of grief and rage as their friends and the people that they have fallen in love with within the unit are taken forever and recycled- but for the most part, they accept their fate. I think this is what intrigued me the most about these characters- the fact that they have lived in the outside world outside of social norms, but become so passive and so resigned within the unit. Are these people- artists, writers, poets- genuinely dissatisfied with their childless lives? Do they crave companionship and security? Are they really that conventional at heart? Do they really buy into the state's idea of the reuse of 'disposable' human tissue? Dorrit, faced with an unusual amount of options, decides her own fate in a very obvious way but the reasons for her choice are never confirmed in any real sense. The reader has a lot to consider when deciding what motivates the behaviour of the characters that they read about, which is a brave move on the part of the author.

I honestly did enjoy this book a lot, despite expecting not to. It's haunting, original and well written in a stylishly sparse way. I genuinely liked Dorrit and her friends; I felt the injustice of their social position acutely and hated the cruelty of the two-tier social system. Books like this prove that behind every supposed fictional Utopia there's some hidden (or in this case unhidden) horror that's necessary to keep the important people comfortable.

I look forward to discussing it at our meeting!