Book Review: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Genre: Dystopia, Science Fiction, Young Adult

Series: Unwind Dystology #1

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Publication Date: June 2009

Author Info: www.storyman.com

Wendy’s Rating: 5 of 5 stars:  Every time I thought I knew what was going on, Shusterman yanked the carpet out from under me so damn fast that it left my head spinning.

There are many stories about clones used for their body parts to save their original counterparts. We go along their horrendous journey with them as they learn the truth about their purpose and prove their humanity to the reader. Unwind twists all of that around by making the organ donors very human. Not grown in a vat. Not stored in a special facility. Real kids who live and breathe and grow up next door to you. All thanks to the Bill of Life that resulted from the pro-choice/pro-life war that tore the country apart. The Bill of Life tabled as a solution to the war permits the retroactive abortion of unwanted children between the age of 13 and 18. With revolutionary technology that allows their body parts to be used in all manner of ways, this is bill is hailed as a triumph and unwinding becomes the ideal solution for dealing with unwanted children and for saving lives. Win-win, right?

Unsurprisingly, few unwinds agree.

The moral of this story isn’t the answer to the pro-life/pro-choice debate. The overriding theme is organ donation. If more people donated their organs rather than letting the rot with their dead bodies, there would be no need for unwinds.

The unwinds tend to come in three forms: wards of the state, like Risa, for whom there just aren’t enough resources to take care of, delinquents, like Conner, whose parents willingly sign the unwind contract, and tithes, like Lev, who lovingly raise their tenth child as the the blessed ten percent that they will return to God.

As expected, these three are literally thrown together. Their lives become intertwined as they come to terms with their fate and try to survive. But after the soon-to-be legendary highway crash and hostage taking that results in their meet up and escape, nothing else goes as expected. Every time I thought I knew what was going on, Shusterman yanked the carpet out from under me so damn fast that it left my head spinning.

With two hours left on my audiobook, I met up with some friends and sang the praises of the book which had already leapt from four to five stars. One friend who had already read it in her book club warned me that I still had one very harrowing scene to go, which I ended up listening to on my drive back home. Um. Yeah. Bookflail happened as soon as I got off the road and Songza decided to play creepy tricks on me by offering the following themes for my listening pleasure:

This is a YA novel, but one I would recommend to any reader. I prefer my YA without obnoxious, petulent teenagers, and this one served me well. The three characters are still very much teens, making impetuous decisions and revealing their immaturity and emotions at times, but they are also intuitive and even wise. Shusterman presents teenagers respectfully, giving them credit for their status as young adults. Yes, they have their negatives, but they also have their positives, which for me, means the characters can be appreciated by both adults and teenagers alike.

Shusterman wastes nothing in this story and ensures that even the smallest detail will come back and haunt you later in the story. And I do mean haunt you. There are some really disturbing situations and concepts presented, such as the afterlife of an unwound child, the “storking” process and, of course, the unwinding itself, which my visual mind pictured in its chilling, clinical entirety.