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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Thomson, R. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Following his highly acclaimed The Book of Revelation, Thomson now explores a radical social experiment in a novel compelling for its brilliant improvisation of a political future and its timeless grasp of individual lives.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Thomson's latest dystopian novel (after The Book of Revelation) begins in brilliant, unsettling fashion when a young boy is taken by government decree from his parents during the initial stages of the Rearrangement, which occurs in a totalitarian, near-future England. In this brave new world, the country's entire population is forcibly reorganized and relocated into autonomous zones according to psychology, or the four humors: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine. Placed in an orphanage, renamed Thomas Parry and transferred to a new family in the Red Quarter (for sanguine types), he settles in with a father overwhelmed by the loss of his relocated wife and a promiscuous sister desperate for human connection. As an adult, Thomas takes a clandestine job with the government, but soon risks being charged with "undermining the state" when he begins a spur-of-the-moment voyage across borders in search, at first, of his real parents and his true self. Despite a cleverly imagined political system and the promise of sharp social criticism, this allegory limps to an ending that belies its inspired start. Agent, Amanda Urban. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A dystopian vision of social "rearrangement." This time out, the stylish British author (The Book of Revelation, 2000, etc.) depicts a future England "reorganized" to reverse the nation's descent into "envy, misery, and greed," a catastrophe that has made a formerly functional society "northern, inward-looking, barbaric." Matthew Mickelwright, Thomson's narrator, is forcibly removed from his home when he's eight years old, later relocated and renamed ("Thomas Parry"), as part of a government redistribution of its populace into one of four "Zones" or "Quarters" distinguished according to the ancient theory of the human body's ruling "humours": choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine. Designated sanguine, Thomas is raised among children of similar temperament, reassigned to the family of a railroad engineer (whose wife was sent to a different Zone) and his teenaged daughter. Upon graduating from university, Thomas finds employment with "an organization whose job it was both to guide and to protect society," becomes a civil servant entrusted with "transferring" people from Zone to Zone--and, attending "conferences" that take him to all four Quarters, becomes painfully aware of public resistance to The Rearrangement and flaws in his government's exercise of societal control. Like Gulliver adrift in contrasting alien lands, Thomas encounters radicalized victims of "the new [psychological] racism," survives shipwreck and introduction to the idealistic "Church of Heaven on Earth," crosses borders illegally, is detained and "re-evaluated," lives briefly with the reviled White People (in whom no "humour" predominates), meets a "shape-shifting" girl employed as a "spirit guide" easing people toward death, and ends up energized by a hopeful vision of his own future--which the reader sees receding at the close. Thomson makes it work intermittently, but has stretched his material too thin, pushing clarity outside the reader's field of vision. A flawed effort, from a writer capable of much better work. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In Thomson's intriguing new novel, the leaders of a morally bankrupt country resembling the author's native Britain pursue reform by redistributing the population according to personality type. The Rearrangement results in four distinct quarters: Red (sanguine), Green (melancholic), Blue (phlegmatic), and Yellow (choleric). Details of the eerie social experiment are revealed by the novel's narrator, Thomas Parry, who is snatched from his childhood home and indoctrinated as a Red Quarter civil servant. As a government official, Parry is allowed passage between quarters, while everyday citizens are forbidden from leaving their specific psychological realms (borders are reinforced with concrete barriers and razor wire). During a conference in the Blue Quarter, Parry visits an ethereal nightclub that forever alters his outlook on life. Thomson delivers a steady stream of clever metaphors: the pub in a dilapidated city stands like the last remaining tooth in a punch-drunk boxer's mouth. In the author's ingeniously surreal world, the most fortunate souls may be achromatics, who are perceived as having no character . . . allowed to cross borders at will. --Allison Block Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The most unsettling nightmares are those that feel as though they could really happen, and Thomson's novels (e.g., Book of Revelation) have been a study in these kinds of psychological nightmares. In his latest, the government splits the United Kingdom and its populace into four quarters that correspond with four distinct personality types or humors-Yellow for the aggressive, Blue for the melancholics, Green for the apathetic phlegmatics, and Red for the sanguine. A small child when he is severed from his parents and relocated to the easygoing Red quarter, Thomas Perry grows up with little memory of life before the reassignment and is easily indoctrinated into the new regime and its dogmas. As an adult, however, Thomas has a job that takes him across the zone borders, and he begins to question his fractured country. With the haunting quality of David Bowie's postapocalyptic Ziggy Stardust melodies, Thompson's novel draws favorable comparisons with other dystopian classics like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and George Orwell's 1984. His cautionary vision of the horrible controlling power of politics is an immensely riveting, highly recommended read for all public libraries.-Misha Stone, Seattle P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.