The Unit

The Unit was an easy read. It wasn't challenging to understand or keep up with the characters. The plot was interesting but wasn't engaging enough or exciting to keep me from putting the book down. I did enjoy the crazy concept of "the unit." It made me think of what could actually happen to a country with different leaders and ideology in charge. Overall, I was interested in the novel enough to keep reading but I kept wishing something more would happen.

As a female over 50 who would be considered "dispensable" in the world of this novel, I was completely creeped-out by this book. The world of The Unit is so believable, and the people of the world described are so accepting of their fate, that it makes you wonder if this could become a reality. Anyone who likes to consider the various issues raised in this book might want to check out Unwind by Shusterman for a similar treatment of the whole "donation" issue.

I enjoyed this novel so much that I finished it in one day. It's set in an unspecified time, most likely the near future, in Sweden, under a government that separates its citizens into those that are "needed" and those that are "dispensable." During the month of her fiftieth birthday, Dorrit Weger is plucked from her happy, simple life of freelance writing, liasons with a lover, and walks on the beach with her beloved dog and taken to a placed referred to as "The Unit". It is essentially a luxurious prison in which Dorrit and those like her are required to spend the rest of their lives submitting to medical and psychological experiments and organ and tissue donation, until they are finally killed by donating their hearts or other necessary organs to those that are "needed"--i.e. those that have spouses or children. Dorrit resigns herself to her fate at first until she falls in love with a fellow dispensable and begins to rebel against the indignities of living in a beautiful slaughterhouse. As other reviewers have noted, The Unit is reminiscent of such dystopian classics as Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Holmqvist has her own agenda, however, exploring such notions as human dignity, love, and friendship, and the extent to which ideas of equality and utilitarianism become perverted into something twisted and immoral. Dorrit is a compelling narrator and the other characters-even the unit staffers-are sketched with empathy and skill. Overall, a compelling, chilling, and thought provoking read, recommended for fans of dystopia and science fiction.

This novel had an odd effect on me. I found that I was holding my breath. Not for fear of what might happen next, but because I felt as though I was holding a bubble in my hands, and that any sudden movement would cause it to pop. Or I was holding a jagged piece of broken glass, and I might cut myself. The point is, this novel took me to a strange place, where things were not as they seemed, where the rules has been rewritten, and where death and disappearance was always a moment away. It's not horrifying - that is, the emotion produced is not horror. Or perhaps this is what horror looks like when it's institutionalized and renamed. This is a wonderful novel, filled with love, loss, friendship, and insight. It will make you think, which is good (if not always comfortable).

The first thing I noticed when I received this book was the cover. It's beautiful. It's stark and immediately created an interest in the novel without even reading a word. When I began reading I found that the cover is the perfect representation of this book. The novel itself is quite stark. You definitely get the feeling of captivity and restriction. I can honestly say that this was the most frightening book I have ever read. People who were not "needed" being used as veritable organ harvests for people who are needed is simply the most scary thing to me. For someone who plans on not having children, seeing my worth in relation to my willingness and ability to reproduce was a bit jarring. Nevertheless, it did not take anything away from my enjoyment of the novel. There are so many things I loved in this book that it is difficult to remember all of them. First of all, the prose is beautiful. Every word is a joy to read. I really liked Dorrit. She was a really great character to follow. She was engaging and entertaining. I found it really interesting that of all the things she had to leave behind of her former life, she looks back on her dog, Jock, the most. Perhaps this is because dogs can't judge whether you are needed or not because they just want you not because you are useful or necessary but because you are there. Her relationship with Johannes was heart wrenching and heartbreaking. I cried more during her scenes with him than any other. I wished that they had gone back in time and met when they were younger and had many children so that they could grow old together. This is the type of book that will stick with you. I loved it and I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good dystopian novel.

Dorrit Weger is dispensable; she lives alone with her dog and no one relies on her. She has not created a new family unit or added 'value' to society in some other notable way and so, as she turns 50, she is collected in a minivan and driven off to the Unit of the book's title. A cross between a retirement community and experimental medical center, her new home is comfortable, even luxurious, and for the first time in her life, Dorrit finds herself forming close relationships and even falling in love. She has become needed by others -- but she is still dispensable. And like all the Unit's inhabitants, over the coming years, she will participate in a range of human experiments, from the relatively benign (how does intense exercise affect the body; is bonding with children inherent even among those who haven't had them) to the more intrusive -- she must donate one of her kidneys to a "needed" member of the outer community. And she, like all her new friends and her new lover, Johannes, knows that with each day that passes, the day of her 'final donation' -- of her heart, lungs or some other part of her body that she can't exist without to someone whom society decides is 'needed' -- will arrive. In the words of one of Dorrit's new friends, she is now living in a 'free-range pig farm'. The only difference, Elsa notes, is that pigs and hens are "hopefully -- happily ignorant of anything but the present." This novel is a stunning achievement, an imaginative tour de force. Holmqvist has imagined every detail of a society that could dream up such a plan in the first place for women over 50 and men over 60, and then put her imagination to work once more to dream up the nature of the world these "dispensable" individuals find themselves inhabiting, from the bizarre alcohol-free cocktails to the eccentric librarian, from the replica of Monet's gardens of Giverny where it is always spring and summer (the unit is sealed under a vast dome that means Dorrit will never again see snow or feel the wind in her hair or on her face) to the astonishing array of amenities. At first, Dorrit is assigned to a relatively harmless experiment, so it is only slowly that she fully absorbs the magnitude of what lies ahead for her. She notices a man asleep in a chair in a library -- only later does she realize the reason he has fallen asleep is because the medication he's taking is causing him to do so. Her friend, Alice, is participating in a hormone study and developing an Adam's apple. In the sauna one day, she encounters six women. "They all had one or more scars from surgery ... Two of the women had distorted, swollen joints, their movements slow and jerky, as if their whole body ached." As with all great dystopian books, it is sometimes what lies between the lines -- the assumptions of the dystopian society -- that are the most chilling. Dorrit notes, in an offhand manner, that women who become pregnant over the age of 40 are automatically encourage to abort the fetus;

The near-future world Ninni Holmqvist has created is horrifyingly realistic, and entirely possible. We follow the main character, a somewhat sad and empty Dorrit, through her shocking entry and assimilation into the Second Reserve Bank for Biological Material. The author deftly creates a joint experience between reader and Dorrit as she gradually becomes inured to the horrors awaiting her life as a human test subject. Over the course of the novel, the cumulative death and inflicted illness is presented in gradual, almost unnoticeably normalized degrees, until by the very end one might understand how perfectly rational sacrificing for the greater good of all can seem, when divorced from the spirit, inner life and suffering of those affected. And there, it is where Holmqvist shows her real talent, in underscoring the dangers of applying exterior measurements of merit to human life. Holmqvist has possibly created a modern classic, and Marlaine Delargy has done an outstanding job of translation. Anyone with even an ounce of empathy in their soul will find this story by turns wrenching, chilling, and thought-provoking. Being a typical American, I would have liked a stronger ending, that played more into the sense of story with an emotionally comforting resolution -- but perhaps the lack of that contributes to an extended raw wariness intended by the author. A neat, wrapped-up ending might let us mentally file the story away... "aha, it all worked out in the end." But the lack of that? It keeps us emotionally and mentally engaged past the end of the novel, and past the end of Dorrit's story. Comparisons are sure to be made between "The Unit" and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." Readers who enjoy one, are sure to enjoy the other. They are both eminently readable, well-written pieces of literature, both deal with issues of control and oppression, and both have multiple layers of story and meaning to be explored. However Holmqvist has pushed past the theme of female-oriented oppression, and explored what it means to be oppressed in the name of the greater good, indiscriminate of sex. "The Unit" is both enjoyable as a superficial read, and an extraordinarily current thinker. Highly recommended for all fiction readers.