Helpful Score: 1
I thought this was a very interesting and compelling novel from Oates. It starts out in the near future where the United States has been restructured to include Canada and Mexico and is called the North American States or NAS. It is now a state where surveillance is the norm and is run by whomever can provide the most money. Subversive behavior is not tolerated and can result in exile, execution, or deletion. Deletion is not the same as execution. If deleted, you are vaporized and all memories of you are deleted as well.
The protagonist and narrator of the story is Adriane Strohl, a 17-year old high school senior who is the valedictorian of her class. But in her valedictorian speech, she asks questions that are considered treasonous. For this she is punished to exile and sent back in time 80 years to a small town in 1959 Wisconsin where she is put in the freshman class of Wainscotia University. She must stay within 10 miles of the university or face possible deletion. While there, she is pretty much adrift on her own, with a new name and identity, and lost in the peculiarities of the past. She is perplexed by a typewriter that her dorm roommate has and can't at first understand how it works without electricity or being hooked to cyberspace. Of course, cyberspace does not exist in 1959 nor do most of what she was used to in the future world of 2039. She enrolls in a psychology class where she meets an instructor who she feels a kindred for and falls in love with. Is he also in exile there?
The novel portrays the dangers and fallacies of the dystopian future where people are constantly monitored and is very reminiscent of 1984 and Brave New World where Big Brother is always watching you. But the novel also shows the misconception of ideas of the past including the buildup of nuclear arms and social engineering (such as trying to treat homosexuality with shock treatment). I found this novel to be very thought-provoking and compelling. I've read a couple of Oates' other novels and a collection of her short stories and enjoyed them quite a lot. I especially liked her fictional account of Marilyn Monroe in her award winning novel, Blonde. And I have a few other novels by her on my TBR shelves that I will be looking forward to reading.
The protagonist and narrator of the story is Adriane Strohl, a 17-year old high school senior who is the valedictorian of her class. But in her valedictorian speech, she asks questions that are considered treasonous. For this she is punished to exile and sent back in time 80 years to a small town in 1959 Wisconsin where she is put in the freshman class of Wainscotia University. She must stay within 10 miles of the university or face possible deletion. While there, she is pretty much adrift on her own, with a new name and identity, and lost in the peculiarities of the past. She is perplexed by a typewriter that her dorm roommate has and can't at first understand how it works without electricity or being hooked to cyberspace. Of course, cyberspace does not exist in 1959 nor do most of what she was used to in the future world of 2039. She enrolls in a psychology class where she meets an instructor who she feels a kindred for and falls in love with. Is he also in exile there?
The novel portrays the dangers and fallacies of the dystopian future where people are constantly monitored and is very reminiscent of 1984 and Brave New World where Big Brother is always watching you. But the novel also shows the misconception of ideas of the past including the buildup of nuclear arms and social engineering (such as trying to treat homosexuality with shock treatment). I found this novel to be very thought-provoking and compelling. I've read a couple of Oates' other novels and a collection of her short stories and enjoyed them quite a lot. I especially liked her fictional account of Marilyn Monroe in her award winning novel, Blonde. And I have a few other novels by her on my TBR shelves that I will be looking forward to reading.
