Born Free

I didn't particularly enjoy this book. Quick evidence is how long I took to actually finish it, which was long. The manner by which it was an in-joke (at least to me) to reality and the clash of culture that happened in the fiction was certainly amusing. But I found it lacking in local colour and atmosphere that I look for in, well, everything.

As a dystopian novel (if we compulsively categorise things into genres), I would have wanted it to relay to me how differently it is there to here. And it takes much more than details to bring a reader or viewer into the story and breathe the same sterile air as our lead characters. It certainly had the details and I could see how different it was from this side of the looking glass, but I didn't really care.

This may also be partly because of the characters who are simply unappealing. I didn't want to read about their lives and I couldn't care less. Although even if I were, the plot came off as rather low. Things happened and we got somewhere, but it did take quite a long time for us to get there without all but one character progression, and one that although should-have, was undesirable from a selfish sense. It was all rather contrived and a bit too talky to be bearable or engaging.

As a portrait, it didn't arouse fear or wonder or alarm in me. It's something that had been written and had been praised for reasons beyond my understanding. Maybe it worked in a certain spatial context and as a philosophical counterpoint to what is drudgery and what is death. From an entertaining perspective, it's a bit like that piece of scrap plank rotting away in your garage.

(Brave New World - Aldous Huxley)