Great Reads for Great Readers

 

 

 

 

The Merge, by Grace Walker.

  

        This is a very disturbing story.  Disturbing because some of the reasons for ‘Merging’ are already painfully evident:  summer wildfires laying waste to various European countries; overpopulation and consequent food shortages and, at the novel’s beginning, a new ‘privileged’ class springing up in the UK called Combines:  you have to give up your seat on public transport for a Combine – and your house, accepting instead inferior accommodation – while it is still available – for Combines are part of a new world order designed to reduce the world population by ‘combining’ through a radical new scientific process:  two souls  transforming into one physical body – a healthy one!  All kinds of major diseases will disappear.

            Like Alzheimer’s disease, with which Amelia’s mother Laurie has been diagnosed – if Amelia and Laurie sign up for the Merge of their separate consciousness into one body, Laurie will be well again – except, except that Amelia’s boyfriend Albie is implacably against the whole idea, in fact he is an integral part of a very strong protest movement which is starting to receive a lot of publicity, but Amelia decides to go ahead with the probationary period – she wants her beloved mum back – and she’s perfectly placed to expose all those Combines if it turns out to be a huge scam.  Surely it’s a win-win situation?

            And it is, but for whom?  The other candidates for the Merge have endeared themselves to Laurie and Amelia, but they are all at different stages of thought about whether it’s the Right Thing to do, and one young reformed addict starts talking suicide – which changes the minds of Laurie and Amelia, who eventually find that their new opinion means nothing:  they are part of the Merge whether they like it or not.

First-time novelist Grace Walker has produced the Dystopian Novel par excellence:  her depiction of life in a world under pressure in the not-too-distant future is chilling and all too real, and the increasingly desperate measures that ordinary people are forced to consider so that they and their loved ones may stay alive are all too poignantly written.  There are no happy endings here, but justice may be done on the very last page.  SIX STARS.