I could NOT put this book down. I'm not sure whether those will prove to be empty calories, but I just wanted to be reading all the time. The day after I finished, after talking myself out of going down to the bookstore to buy Insurgent, I started it again. Lovely.
Blah blah YA dystopia. And love story. Young woman discovering she is stronger and more important than she ever imagined. So this world is a future Chicago, and society is split among five factions. At age sixteen, young people take a test that will tell them to which faction they are inclined, and then they get to choose one. That choice, determines the rest of their lives.
"Decades ago, our ancestors [...] divided into factions that sought to eradicate those qualities they believed responsible for the world's disarray. [...] Those who blamed aggression formed Amity. [...] Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite. [...] Those who blamed duplicity created Candor. [...] Those who blamed selfishness made Abnegation. [...] And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless."Beatrice, raised in Abnegation, has her test results covered up: she is what they call Divergent, with equal inclination toward more than one faction. (Or, you know, what we call being normal and human.) This is dangerous, and she must keep it a secret. And then she chooses her faction, and ... well, you know the drill. Exciting stuff happens.
But since I'm already doing a bad job of making this book sound as compelling as I found it, let me switch to why I found it so philosophically interesting. The end matter includes an interview with the author, where she mentions that she hadn't meant to create a dystopia, and makes the (obvious but sometimes overlooked) point that dystopias arise from the utopian systems put in place to make a better world. And her utopia is a little like the world she's created here. And I get it, because how cool to be trained to really amp up your natural inclination toward friendliness, knowledge, selflessness, straight-forwardness, and courage. Except the division seems so much like the way our current society is self-segregating by politics and socioeconomic status. The latter has always been a problem, but the way we congregate so much with those who share our world view... it's dangerous. And then suddenly I was tweaking Roth's creation, and imagining a world where you rotate through the "factions," honing your abilities in each one and creating a more well-rounded personality, and interacting with people much different from you.
And since our main character is Divergent, maybe that's sort of what we'll see happen in the next two books.
BTW, I am definitely Amity, with a strong undercurrent of Erudite. Which is to say, almost exactly Beatrice's opposite.
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