Happy Halloween Readers,
The concept of living forever has an eerie significance
in our modern world of biotechnology and cryogenics. Although the cryogenics
labs have admitted that defrosting a body 100 years from now may pose some
problems, it hasn’t stopped people around the world from signing up.
This book has a brilliant premise: in this future,
immortality is within grasp, but only for those who are classed as 'deserving'
and suicide is illegal, anything that might be construed as bad for your health
is illegal in fact. "Suicide Club" is a science fiction novel that is
set in near-future New York in which healthcare is the preserve only of people
whose genes tested at birth convince a shadowy ‘Ministry’ that they’re worth
spending money on. The population is in decline so to combat this, people are
strongly encouraged to live a super-healthy lifestyle and to get various
different body enhancements and replacements. Medical innovation has led to a
world where organs are augmented, skin can be built to be near indestructible,
and science has found out the best ways to live long and healthy lives.
America is divided into two classes of people: By an
unnatural selection, certain individuals become 'Lifers'. Those lucky enough to become are 'Lifers' are often able to live for over one-hundred years while
undergoing receive state-funded treatments to keep them alive for centuries
with the goal of attaining immortality as long as their behaviour conforms to
the standard imposed by agents. Then we have the ‘Non-lifers’ who don’t make
the grade are stigmatised as ‘sub-100s’, who live normal human lifespans and
they are classed and treated as second-class citizens and live and die just
like us mortals do. Surgically enhanced residents partake in a compulsory,
never-ending competition to see who stays alive the longest.
The city’s inhabitants are reminded daily by adverts
warning them of the dangers of reckless activity for example “A fat-encrusted
artery stretched out ‘Meat kills’ or the ubiquitous glowing red eyeball ‘Fruit
-#1 cause of diabetes blindness’. This enforces that the joy has been stripped
from life living in Rachels world, A famous opera singer no longer sings
because it supposedly weakens her heart.
As the novel opens, lifer Lea and her partner, Todd, are
hoping to be among those chosen for “the Third Wave”, a programme with such
amazing benefits that it paves the way for immortality. Lea suddenly becomes
derailed by the reappearance of her father, whom she hasn’t seen in over 80
years. She becomes mixed up with a woman named Anja, a fellow Lifer who helps
lead an underground movement called the Suicide Club that rejects society’s
sterile pursuit of immortality.
The contrast
between the two main characters is great and Heng is skilful at developing her
characters distinctive personalities. Lea spots her estranged, fugitive father
for the first time in 88 years, and she comes in contact with a group called
the Suicide Club, which advocates quality over quantity when it comes to
measuring a life and finds herself caught between two worlds. While Anja’s
mother was one of the people whose bodies were used to test new procedures and
now her heart keeps going even though she is brain-dead but isn't allowed to
die because life is precious. As the book progresses you get to know them both
well and we learn about Lea and Anja's past experiences as they are relevant to
the story that is being told here.
The world Rachel has created here is interesting and
developed in such a way that it never felt info-dumpy. There are connotations
of The Handmaid’s Tale when two agents who show up at Lea’s door to monitor her
increasingly erratic activity, but it seems fitting that Heng keeps them on the
compassionate side of dictatorial. Rachel has fun with the corporate jargon in
which the Ministry masks its genetic segregation as Lea is forced to attend
‘WeCovery’ re-education sessions. But a little spoofish and brilliant someone
gets cross in a diner because their ‘cabbage patties’ come with ‘regular
gluten-free’ buns instead of ‘carb-free’ ones.
L x
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