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A review by alexisrt
Suicide Club by Rachel Heng
4.0
In some unspecified future New York, your future is determined by a cheek swab at birth. If your life expectancy is over 100, you gain access to life extending treatments and you become a "lifer," a privileged class. If it isn't, too bad for you.
Extended life comes at a price, however: endless regulations and advice about your life, designed to make sure only the worthy benefit. Lea, just turned 100 and poised to become an executive in health finance, becomes ensnared in the system one day when she sees her long absent father in a crowd.
the theme becomes obvious--almost too obvious. With everything in life so tightly regulated (no music, only a healthy diet, no stress, no outside air)--what's the point? The lifers have 300 years to look forward to, but no joy in it.
The writing is excellent and I felt that the characters did ultimately develop, but I felt there was a problem with the structure. Too much backstory was hinted at. It's preferable to giant info dumps in a novel of this length, but it left me wondering about all the details that were vaguely sketched in. On the one hand, artificial organs; on the other, people apparently left as organ farms and a well developed exchange in organs. There's a shadowy Ministry, information that other countries have not chosen the US' route (hinted at the US' tendency towards being pro-life; in the future, the sin is to be "antisanct"). Heng came up with an idea that could have supported a more elaborate story than she gave it.
Extended life comes at a price, however: endless regulations and advice about your life, designed to make sure only the worthy benefit. Lea, just turned 100 and poised to become an executive in health finance, becomes ensnared in the system one day when she sees her long absent father in a crowd.
the theme becomes obvious--almost too obvious. With everything in life so tightly regulated (no music, only a healthy diet, no stress, no outside air)--what's the point? The lifers have 300 years to look forward to, but no joy in it.
The writing is excellent and I felt that the characters did ultimately develop, but I felt there was a problem with the structure. Too much backstory was hinted at. It's preferable to giant info dumps in a novel of this length, but it left me wondering about all the details that were vaguely sketched in. On the one hand, artificial organs; on the other, people apparently left as organ farms and a well developed exchange in organs. There's a shadowy Ministry, information that other countries have not chosen the US' route (hinted at the US' tendency towards being pro-life; in the future, the sin is to be "antisanct"). Heng came up with an idea that could have supported a more elaborate story than she gave it.