Lauren Oliver
Hodder & Stoughton
Otago Daily Times, April 9th 2011
Imagine a world without anger, jealousy, sorrow, and heartbreak. What would you give up in exchange? This is what Lauren Oliver invites us to consider in Delirium).
Her protagonist, Lena Haloway, is eagerly counting down the days until her 18th birthday and the operation that will protect her from amor deliria nervosa; the disease formerly known as love that maddened humanity for thousands of years before scientists developed a cure. Occasionally the treatment fails (Lena lost her own mother to the deadly illness), and pockets of infection still exist in the Wilds outside the protective barriers surrounding the towns and cities.
Because of this and the fact that treatment is ineffective for those under 18, communities are vigilant in protecting their children and Lena looks forward both to life without pain or grief, and freedom of from curfews, supervision, and fear. Then she meets Alex and discovers the authorities that protect her are far from benign, and the walls that keep her safe are also a prison.
Like many good young adult novels, Delirium is just as accessible to the not-so-young, and in its depiction of a society living in elective passivity, evokes echoes of several of my favourite dystopian novels: 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale, Never Let Me Go. Reviving my own memories adolescent love, the story also carried the bittersweet knowledge that I will never feel that intermingling of joy and pain as intensely again. You cannot have one without the other and I would forgo neither. Love and loss are part of what make us human. This is Lena’s discovery and Oliver’s eloquently argued point.
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