Matched, by Ally Condie. Read-a-thon # 4

[rachelmanija]

A YA dystopia in which a computer arranges marriages for everyone. Since I spent much of my childhood in India and my own culture invented the yenta, the concept of the arranged marriage, despite being obviously horrible if non-consensual, does not exactly spell out “terrifying dystopia” to me.

janni has mused that dystopias tend to be either extremely ordered or extremely chaotic. This is the most orderly dystopia I’ve ever encountered.

Things which are chosen for people by the Society:

- The food they each individually eat at every single meal. They are not allowed a single bite of someone else’s food.

- The clothes you wear. You can only select the color on very special occasions. Otherwise, red, yellow, pink, and purple are banned.

- The day you die. Everyone who survives so long is euthanized on their 80th birthday.

- The total art of the society. All art has been destroyed except for the 100 Best Poems, 100 Best Paintings, 100 Best Songs. Etc. No new creation is allowed.

- Love letters, farewell letters, etc, are clipped and pasted from official templates. Handwriting and pens are banned – only typing is allowed, presumably so they can track everything you write.

- Your job, your entertainment options, your schooling, the mysterious pills you must carry at all times, where you live, what you can know, what you can own, how many kids you can have and when, and of course, who you marry.

Teenage Cassia Reyes is happy to be Matched with Xander, her childhood friend. But the computer briefly flashes an image of Ky, the neighborhood oddball, who is forever forbidden to marry because his father committed an Infraction. Cassia is told that it was a prank or mistake, but she begins to wonder.

I expected the book to be amusingly awful, but to my surprise, I liked it. Despite the anvillicious premise, it’s also a sweet, well-observed romance and coming of age story, detailing all the fleeting emotions of teenage love and personal growth with earnest, heartfelt delicacy. Cassia, Ky, and Xander are well-meaning and likable, which made the inevitable love triangle less annoying than usual.

Given the total lack of conclusiveness, I’m guessing this will have a sequel.

Matched

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

From your synopsis I am already guessing a twist - there was no prank or bug, the AI is deliberately subverting the dystopia out of boredom.

[rachelmanija]

Close! It was an experiment.

[bravecows]

What I wonder when I read your description of the world is why would they bother controlling every detail? Was that convincingly handled in the book?

[rachelmanija]

Well, it's kind of one of those "go with it" premises. It's completely over the top, but on the other hand, there are certainly RL examples of societies which do control many, many aspects of people's lives: prisons, military (especially military academies), some schools, etc. I didn't think it was totally believable, but it was at least consistent.

Why: ideology, efficiency, and revolt-prevention.

[bravecows]

*nods* When I was at secondary school there was a discipline teacher who prescribed the type of wristwatch we could wear (plain black straps only) and the diameter of our earrings (tiny!). Still, I wonder whether it would work across a country! It didn't even work with twenty teenage prefects.

[rachelmanija]

I think that sort of thing works better when the environment is fairly small (one city) and they can execute you if you disobey.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

Well, phooey. I voted for this in the hope it would be amusingly awful, as you say. But I suppose I shouldn't begrudge you the pleasure of reading something decent. :)

[cicer.livejournal.com]

I love YA-lit dystopia stories, so I may have to give this one a look. Thanks for the heads-up that it's not awful; I'm often skeptical about the quality of stories like this. When they're good, they're good, but when they're bad...blech!

(By the way, I've been meaning to ask: what's the story behind that icon of yours?)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

It's a quote from my memoir, the one I'm signing in this icon, spoken quite seriously by a very, very strange person who lived on the ashram I grew up in. When someone pointed out that sex was necessary to create babies, he retorted, "They can go into the forest and pluck them from the trees!"

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

...just like in The Twelve Kingdoms!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think this was a free giveaway for Kindle and I skipped it 'cause it looked not so good.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Well, hunh. I came across this book just last night at the end of Across the Universe, and after finishing that, went straight into Jazz in Love, which continues the theme of arranged marriages (although she gets to pick from a list drawn up by her parents).

Annoying about the lack of conclusiveness, but this still sounds worth checking out.

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

I thought the book was well written also, but was futilely hoping that in a world full of mandated heterosexual marriage, the issue of 'some people are gay' might come up. There were the Singles I guess? But other than that, alas no.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I was assuming that any form of non-straight sexuality was banned, including the mention of its existence. But yeah, I would have liked to have seen it come up.

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

I would've loved a side plot of some people trying to cope with that taboo-ness alongside 'behold this forbidden heterosexual romance between white people!' *daydreams*

[janni.livejournal.com]

Now, just for fun, read The Carbon Diaries (ideally the second book, but do start with the first), and see if your brain explodes, too. :-)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I read The Carbon Diaries a while back, but didn't review it. I liked it but wasn't blown away. It made a nice comparison with the better-written and far more emotionally devastating, but less realistic and hopeful Life as We Knew It.

What was the comparison you were thinking of? Carbon Diaries, if I recall correctly, had a rather realistic state of neither extremely over-controlled nor extremely chaotic, but of an ordinarily orderly society sliding into breakdown.

[janni.livejournal.com]

The breakdown gets worse in book 2, I think.

I don't really believe in Matched's orderliness. I actually had very few strong feelings about the book overall ... didn't dislike it (aside from a tstl moment or two that on reflection could be justified by Cassia's upbringing) or regret reading it, didn't like it enough to feel any need to reread.

It was rather nice that neither boy was abusive or harmful to Cassia's well-being.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I didn't think Matched was great, but it was much better than I had expected.

I didn't believe in the orderliness either, but it's funny how we always find very orderly societies unbelievable when they do exist in real life, albeit to a lesser degree. For instance, if I have time today I'm going to read the semi-autobiographical West Point novel, which I imagine will also depict an incredibly orderly society, in which everyone does indeed have all their work time, free time, study time, food, clothing, manner of dress, etc decided for them.