Feed

Title: Feed

Author: M. T. Anderson

Publisher: Candlewick Press (February 2004)

Genre(s): Young Adult Fiction, Dystopian Fiction, Science Fiction

Length: 308 pages

Synopsis:  For Titus and his friends, it was just another day on the moon, a spring break vacation that wasn’t turning out to be as thrilling as they’d hoped.  The only bright spot is Violet, the strange, beautiful girl that Titus can’t believe he’s had the good fortune to meet.  When he convinces her to come along to a club that night, their lives are turned upside down by the touch of a hacker.  Like everyone in this future America, the teens have been implanted with a chip that allows a constant feed of entertainment, commercials, and information directly to their brains.  The brief disconnection from that feed caused by the hacker gives Titus and his friends a glimpse into what a world without the feed might look like, but when their connection is restored, no one gives that world a second thought.  No one, that is, except Violet.  As she and Titus grow closer, he learns that Violet’s discovered a way to subvert the system.  What neither realizes is that in a future where even thoughts are commercial, everything comes with a price.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion: 

This book is deeply disturbing.  With nods to classic dystopian tales like Brave New World and Farenheit 451, it presents a future America from the perspective of a future American.  The language is difficult to read at first; instead of relying on the reserved observations of an outside narrator, Anderson sends readers right along with his main character, Titus, and all the linguistic foibles of the internet-overloaded generation he represents.  It’s not just a matter of language, though.  There’s a simplistic way of thinking among these over-stimulated, information-saturated characters that doesn’t seem like too far a stretch considering our current age of Tweets and sound bytes.  There are hints of the decay and disintegration of society, from hordes of cockroaches to ubiquitous skin lesions, but even with infinite access to information literally at the speed of thought, no one seems to be thinking.  The feed thinks for these people, always ready with an ad for every scenario until words are no longer necessary and feelings are all but obsolete.  There are no subtleties to this book, no room for nuance of language as the narrative stylistically mimicks the feed.  Anderson doesn’t pull his punches, either.  This is a dystopian world without the scope of The Hunger Games, but with ramifications every bit as disturbing and, in my opinion, a good deal more likely.  Yes, this book is deeply disturbing, but only if you can unplug long enough to think about it.