The stuff that didn’t fit elsewhere.
Pete, who is playing Angry Birds in the backseat: Mama, what’s this song about?
Me: Hm. I think it’s about dancing.
Pete: No, I think it’s about math.
Me: Did you say it’s about math?
Pete: Yeah, it’s about math. Because he said they want to start sums.
It is the future, and we have turned our lives over to the geneticists and the statisticians. In return they have given us our ideal jobs, our ideal mates and even our ideal meals, with each nutrient specially chosen to meet our unique needs. A few generations earlier, they even honed our art — music, paintings, poetry — to an essential few pieces to ensure it wouldn’t be too taxing or distracting.
Our lives in Ally Condie’s “Matched” are programmed and predictable, safe and stolid, and we are content with that. Until one day when, perhaps, a few of us realize that there could be more.
“Matched” is the first book in a trilogy about “The Society” and a young lady named Cassia who lives within its bounds. When we meet her, Cassia is preparing to find out who her “match” is. She’s excited and nervous at the prospect of learning her future husband’s identity, and she’s thrilled to be wearing a pretty dress for the event as opposed to her everyday “plain clothes” provided by The Society. In other words, the 17-year-old girl is a pretty believable character. She’s pleased to learn her intended’s name, but the story really gets rolling a bit later when another boy’s picture briefly shows up in his place. Is it a glitch in the system? Can there be a glitch in the system? And what if this boy truly is a better match than that other boy?
I love dystopian fiction, and I enjoyed Condie’s vision of The Society’s sterilized world, a Utopia-with-a-price setting that owes a pretty big debt to Lois Lowry’s “The Giver.” It’s easy to imagine a world in which we’ve given up our right to choose even the most basic things in exchange for security and a guaranteed livelihood.
Condie also very nicely illustrates the power of art and ideas in “Matched.” I don’t want to delve too deeply into that, lest we get into spoiler territory. But I think it’s safe to say that The Society was right to worry about the power of words.
I didn’t actively dislike “Matched,” but I didn’t love the book either. I didn’t connect very strongly with Cassia or either of her potential beaus, which made it difficult for me to care much about what happened to them. For me, the balance of Action to Love Triangle was skewed a bit too heavily toward romance. If you like a heavy helping of romance with your young-adult dystopia, though, it’s a pretty good bet that you’ll enjoy “Matched.”
Nichole was compensated for this review via the BlogHer Book Club, but all opinions expressed are solely her own.
I never thought I’d be the kind of girl who’d cash in all of her husband’s frequent flier miles to go half way across country for a musician. Turns out I was wrong about that.
Rockford and I were both psyched (yes: psyched) when we saw that my very favorite group, Wilco, was going to be playing an outdoor show in Columbia, Missouri, this year. We lived in Columbia for five years, and we made a lot of great memories there. Not the least of which were the four Wilco shows we saw there. So we bought tickets, booked flights and on Sunday we got up before 6am and were in CoMo by lunchtime. Which was lovely timing, because it meant we got to have lunch at Shakespeare’s Pizza with our friends B and Rachel. After lunch we went back to our hotel — also paid for with loyalty points! — for a nap before going downtown to wander.
I’d decided that as a responsible grown-up, I would be just fine if we weren’t directly in front of the state at this show. The front of the stage is for hip youngsters, not stodgy homeschooling moms. I would be fine near the back, where it’s less crowded and your ears don’t ring quiet as much after the show. And then we got downtown, and Wilco was doing their soundcheck, and we watched it from directly in front of the stage, and it washed away all of that responsible-grown-up business. As soon as the soundcheck ended I joined the other 10-or-so people who lined up at the gate to get a shot at the front row.
This was our 15th Wilco concert, and I’d rank it in my Top Five Favorite Concerts. It was worth the flight, all the points and sitting on the sidewalk for an hour.
However: All that jetsetting does not put dinner on the table. Nor does it plan dinner, which is why Tuesday morning found me still puzzling over just what we’d be eating this week. I’m afraid nothing on our menu this week is even a little bit rock ‘n’ roll, though.
