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One day every adult on Earth gets a box that contains a string that measures out the length of their life.
This premise seems designed in a lab to create a book to be read for book clubs, where everyone gets to discuss whether or not they'd open their box and how they'd react to a long or short string. It worked, too. And it is absolutely about the premise. Unfortunately, the book is bad: flat, dull, sappy, American in the worst possible way, and emotionally manipulative.
It follows multiple characters, all American, most New Yorkers, and all middle or upper class. Some get long strings. Some get short strings. The ones with short strings agonize over their short strings. The ones with long strings who are in relationships with people with short strings agonize over that.
One of them is black, a fact mentioned exactly once in the entire book, and one has a Hispanic name. One set is an old right-wing politician and his wife. But all of them have identical-sounding narrative voices. Other than the Hispanic-named dude, who is mostly concerned about job discrimination, and the politician, who just wants to exploit the issue, everyone is worried about having a relationship and children with someone who will die young/worried that they'll get dumped and not be able to have children because they'll die young.
Ultimately, isn't everything really about baaaaaabies? Shouldn't everyone have baaaaaaabies no matter what?
The book is so bland and flat. The strings are a metaphor for discrimination, as short stringers are discriminated against. It explores some other social issues, all extremely American like health insurance discrimination and mass shootings, but only peeks outside America for brief and stereotypical moments: North Korea mandates not opening the boxes, China mandates opening them, and in Italy hardly anyone opens their box because they already know what really matters: family. BARF FOREVER.
It was obvious going in that the origin of the boxes would never be explained, but no one even seemed curious about that. Once all adults have received them, they appear on your doorstep the night you turn 22. Video of this is fuzzy. No one parks themselves on the doorstep to see if they teleport in or what. No one has a paradigm-upending crisis over this absolute proof of God/aliens/time travel/magic/etc that the boxes represent. No one comes up with inventive ways to take advantage of the situation a la Death Note. No one is concerned that this proves predestination. No one wonders why they appeared now and what the motive of whoever put them there is.
The point that life is precious regardless of length is hammered in with a thousand sledgehammers, to the point where it felt like a bad self-help book in the form of a novel. The romances are flat and sappy. In the truly vomitous climax, someone pedals around on a bicycle with the stereo playing "Que Sera Sera" and it quotes the entire song.
It's only April but this will be hard to top as the worst book I read all year.
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I feel if it were part of one of those YA dystopias where everyone is issued the string of their life at the beginning of adolescence or something, I would as it were cut this premise more slack.
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Or some soon to be disappointed thief could steal the box off of someone's doorstep, leaving them the only adult they know who doesn't have a lifespan box.
Even within an obsessive focus on family, there's room for more varied angst. Finding out your adult kid has a shorter string than you! Wanting to open your box but not wanting your [insert family member here] to find out what's inside! Knowing for certain that your spouse will die before you and you'll have to mourn them! People tend to assume they'll outlive their parents, but knowing by how much could still be a shock! Someone who already has baaabies could find out they'll be dead before their kids are grown!
... I don't even like this premise, but there's still more to do with it than it sounds like this book did.
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I forgot to mention that multiple short stringers commit mass murders and attempt assassinations.
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