Review Detail

Good book. This novel succeeded in spades in all the ways that ACROSS THE UNIVERSE crashed and burned (I compare the two only b/c I read them so close together, and I was harsh with ATU for its failure to properly place the characters in the context of their frame of reference). The protagonist of MATCHED, Cassia, took the full length of the novel to slowly awaken to the horrors of her twisted, dystopic reality. The voice was engaging and I sympathized well with the characters. The world was intentionally drab, simple, and boring, yet Condie managed to maintain my interest throughout. I enjoyed her vision of a future that is dictated largely by a nearly-religious reliance on probability and percentages to effect outcomes and therefor exact control. I think that the profession of her matchers and "sorters" won't seem so strange to readers of this novel a hundred years from now; we're ineluctably heading in that direction.

Condie's writing is superb. Her patience with plotting and with Cassia's slow development as a would-be rebel are rewarded with a story that feels utterly plausible. The creepier aspects of her dystopia are genuinely creepy (everyone is mandated to carry a set of three pills, one for anxiety relief and one for which no one knows the actual purpose; mandatory euthanasia at the age of 80; etc...). There are several nice allusions to the best of dystopic literature and film, titles too obvious to bother naming. I think this novel aspires to be a celebrated master of its genre. Ultimately, it doesn't reach that pinnacle for me. I'm afraid the YA focus on the main character's romantic entanglements hold the story back. This is a criticism I often have with YA novels, so dismiss it if you like. Regardless, the novel embraces an overly-simplistic larger world structure in which this control through mastery of probabilities is too tidy within the story to be taken too seriously. Granted, Cassia's awakening isn't "tidy," and the hint of unrest in the outer provinces is welcome, but still, the control aspect is too one-dimensional for this novel to achieve the high status it aims for.

Anyway, I'll probably keep reading the series (you almost have to--the story doesn't "end." We're left with too many questions about characters we've grown to care about. This is another gripe I have...a first novel, even in a series, should be able to stand alone. I don't like to feel that my continued readership is assumed.) If you're interested in how to write a story in which a character slowly awakens to surroundings that they've otherwise taken for granted their whole life, this is a good study. I would recommend it to any reader.