When Dorrit Wegner turned fifty, the government transferred her to a state-of-the-art facility where she can live out her days in comfort. Her apartment is furnished to her tastes, her meals expertly served, and all at the very reasonable non-negotiable price of one cardiopulmonary system. Once an outsider without family, derided by a society bent on productivity, Dorrit finds within The Unit the company of kindred spirits and a dignity conferred by 'use' in medical tests. But when Dorrit also finds love, her peaceful submission is blown apart and she must fight to escape before her 'final donation'.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Book Description
One day in early spring, Dorrit Weger is checked into the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. She is promised a nicely furnished apartment inside the Unit, where she will make new friends, enjoy the state of the art recreation facilities, and live the few remaining days of her life in comfort with people who are just like her. Here, women over the age of fifty and men over sixty–single, childless, and without jobs in progressive industries–are sequestered for their final few years; they are considered outsiders. In the Unit they are expected to contribute themselves for drug and psychological testing, and ultimately donate their organs, little by little, until the final donation. Despite the ruthless nature of this practice, the ethos of this near-future society and the Unit is to take care of others, and Dorrit finds herself living under very pleasant conditions: well-housed, well-fed, and well-attended. She is resigned to her fate and discovers her days there to be rather consoling and peaceful. But when she meets a man inside the Unit and falls in love, the extraordinary becomes a reality and life suddenly turns unbearable. Dorrit is faced with compliance or escape, and…well, then what?
A Q&A with Ninni Holmqvist
Question: The Unit is not set in the present, but its echoes of present-day issues are clear and ominous. Describe the world of The Unit.
One day in early spring, Dorrit Weger is checked into the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. She is promised a nicely furnished apartment inside the Unit, where she will make new friends, enjoy the state of the art recreation facilities, and live the few remaining days of her life in comfort with people who are just like her. Here, women over the age of fifty and men over sixty–single, childless, and without jobs in progressive industries–are sequestered for their final few years; they are considered outsiders. In the Unit they are expected to contribute themselves for drug and psychological testing, and ultimately donate their organs, little by little, until the final donation. Despite the ruthless nature of this practice, the ethos of this near-future society and the Unit is to take care of others, and Dorrit finds herself living under very pleasant conditions: well-housed, well-fed, and well-attended. She is resigned to her fate and discovers her days there to be rather consoling and peaceful. But when she meets a man inside the Unit and falls in love, the extraordinary becomes a reality and life suddenly turns unbearable. Dorrit is faced with compliance or escape, and…well, then what?
The Unit is a gripping exploration of a society in the throes of an experiment, in which the “dispensable” ones are convinced under gentle coercion of the importance of sacrificing for the “necessary” ones. Ninni Holmqvist has created a debut novel of humor, sorrow, and rage about love, the close bonds of friendship, and about a cynical, utilitarian way of thinking disguised as care.
A Q&A with Ninni Holmqvist
Question: The Unit is not set in the present, but its echoes of present-day issues are clear and ominous. Describe the world of The Unit.
Ninni Holmqvist: The Unit is a dystopia set in a near future. It is about people who don’t have any children or anyone else who loves them and need them, and who aren’t useful to the society in any other way either. These people are called “dispensable,” and they are picked up at their homes at a certain age (women at 50, men at 60) and taken to special units (“reservbanksenhet” in Swedish) for biological material, where they are supposed to serve the society through participating in various tests (like animal testing but made on people), but also, eventually, by donating organs to those of the society’s needed citizens—the ones who produce and raise children, the loved ones, the ones who contribute to the economic growth—who are afflicted with severe illnesses and need organs from healthy bodies to survive. Dorrit Weger, who just turned 50, is one of those dispensable. She is a writer, childless, quite poor, and lives alone with her dog. The story begins with her arrival at the unit, an establishment/institution she immediately finds a lot more comfortable and human and loving and beautiful than she ever could have expected.
Question: The Unit raises a number of complex—and sometimes disturbing—ethical questions. Do you see the novel as having a central moral theme?
Ninni Holmqvist: The book is above all written as a critique of society and the way political leaders today see everything in figures and numbers. But my aim was also to raise questions like: What is freedom? What is human dignity? How do we humans value our selves and each other? But The Unit is also very much a story about love (Dorrit meets the love of her life at the unit, a man called Johannes, and she also, miraculously, gets pregnant) and friendship and loyalty.
Question: Who did you write The Unit for? Did you have someone—personally, or in society—that you intended the story for?
Ninni Holmqvist: My intention was that it is for everyone. But I guess it might especially appeal to middle-aged single people, childless ones. But also people who are in or are close to other categories of “dispensable” people: disabled people for instance, long time unemployed persons, culture workers. And people who are critical of capitalism and economism. Perhaps also people who don’t mind being provoked.
From Publishers Weekly
Swedish author Holmqvist's unconvincing debut, part of a wave of dystopias hitting this summer, is set in a near future where men and women deemed dispensable—those unattached, childless, employed in nonessential professions—are checked into reserve bank units for biological material and become organ donors and subjects of pharmaceutical and psychological experiments. When Dorrit Weger, who has lived her adult life isolated and on the brink of poverty, is admitted to the unit, she finds, to her surprise, comfort, friendship and love. Though the residents are under constant surveillance, their accommodations are luxurious, and in their shared plight they develop an intimacy rarely enjoyed in the outside world. But an unlikely development forces Dorrit to confront unexpected choices. Unfortunately, Holmqvist fails to fully sell the future she posits, and Dorrit's underdeveloped voice doesn't do much to convey the direness of her situation. Holmqvist's exploration of female desire, human need and the purpose of life has its moments, but the novel suffers in comparison with similar novels such as The Handmaid's Tale and Never Let Me Go. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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45 of 46 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
The Unit tells the story of a near-future society that divides its people into two groups: those who are necessary and those who are "dispensable." The latter category is comprised of women 50 years and older and men 60 and older who are childless and don't work in a "necessary" industry. Many of the dispensables are artists. The primary character, a woman named Dorrit, is a writer who has just passed her 50th birthday.
Because they do not contribute to the future society by raising children, the dispensable people are considered selfish. They followed their dreams of self-fulfillment and therefore when they reach late middle age it's time to "pay the piper," so to speak, by offering themselves up for scientific experimentation and organ donation. The Unit is the housing/medical facility where they live while serving as test subjects, until it comes time to make their "final donation," usually their hearts and lungs. These donations are always made to people who are "needed" by their families.
Originally written in Swedish, the novel is marvelously translated by Marlaine Delargy. I say this not because I can read Swedish but because the English translation gave me chills as I read it. Anyone who can create prose that, quite literally, fills readers with anxiety and fear must, it seems to me, have created a superior translation.
One of the many things that is striking about the plot of The Unit is that, once inside the medical facility, the dispensables generally find freedom and an ability to be themselves that they lacked on the outside, where they were made to feel different and generally useless. Even though the unit offers them many creature comforts that they did not have before, it is still a prison and the place where they will be institutionally murdered. Yet most of the characters clearly value the acceptance and even love that they feel within the unit community. Through these characters, author Ninni Holmqvist raises some intriguing questions about the nature of "community" and how its various members become insiders or outsiders.
The one criticism I have of The Unit is that its central concept -- that of a society creating a separate, social caste of organ donors -- is strongly derivative of an earlier, brilliantly original novel by Kazuo Ishiguro called Never Let Me Go. Although Holmqvist devlops this idea in a different way than did Ishiguro, her plot seems too close to Ishiguro to warrant five stars. Nevertheless, I recommend this novel, especially to readers who enjoy stories in the genre of science fiction/future dystopia.
Because they do not contribute to the future society by raising children, the dispensable people are considered selfish. They followed their dreams of self-fulfillment and therefore when they reach late middle age it's time to "pay the piper," so to speak, by offering themselves up for scientific experimentation and organ donation. The Unit is the housing/medical facility where they live while serving as test subjects, until it comes time to make their "final donation," usually their hearts and lungs. These donations are always made to people who are "needed" by their families.
Originally written in Swedish, the novel is marvelously translated by Marlaine Delargy. I say this not because I can read Swedish but because the English translation gave me chills as I read it. Anyone who can create prose that, quite literally, fills readers with anxiety and fear must, it seems to me, have created a superior translation.
One of the many things that is striking about the plot of The Unit is that, once inside the medical facility, the dispensables generally find freedom and an ability to be themselves that they lacked on the outside, where they were made to feel different and generally useless. Even though the unit offers them many creature comforts that they did not have before, it is still a prison and the place where they will be institutionally murdered. Yet most of the characters clearly value the acceptance and even love that they feel within the unit community. Through these characters, author Ninni Holmqvist raises some intriguing questions about the nature of "community" and how its various members become insiders or outsiders.
The one criticism I have of The Unit is that its central concept -- that of a society creating a separate, social caste of organ donors -- is strongly derivative of an earlier, brilliantly original novel by Kazuo Ishiguro called Never Let Me Go. Although Holmqvist devlops this idea in a different way than did Ishiguro, her plot seems too close to Ishiguro to warrant five stars. Nevertheless, I recommend this novel, especially to readers who enjoy stories in the genre of science fiction/future dystopia.
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Dorrit Weger is dispensable; she lives alone with her dog and no one relies on her. She has not created a new family unit or added 'value' to society in some other notable way and so, as she turns 50, she is collected in a minivan and driven off to the Unit of the book's title. A cross between a retirement community and experimental medical center, her new home is comfortable, even luxurious, and for the first time in her life, Dorrit finds herself forming close relationships and even falling in love. She has become needed by others -- but she is still dispensable. And like all the Unit's inhabitants, over the coming years, she will participate in a range of human experiments, from the relatively benign (how does intense exercise affect the body; is bonding with children inherent even among those who haven't had them) to the more intrusive -- she must donate one of her kidneys to a "needed" member of the outer community. And she, like all her new friends and her new lover, Johannes, knows that with each day that passes, the day of her 'final donation' -- of her heart, lungs or some other part of her body that she can't exist without to someone whom society decides is 'needed' -- will arrive. In the words of one of Dorrit's new friends, she is now living in a 'free-range pig farm'. The only difference, Elsa notes, is that pigs and hens are "hopefully -- happily ignorant of anything but the present."
This novel is a stunning achievement, an imaginative tour de force. Holmqvist has imagined every detail of a society that could dream up such a plan in the first place for women over 50 and men over 60, and then put her imagination to work once more to dream up the nature of the world these "dispensable" individuals find themselves inhabiting, from the bizarre alcohol-free cocktails to the eccentric librarian, from the replica of Monet's gardens of Giverny where it is always spring and summer (the unit is sealed under a vast dome that means Dorrit will never again see snow or feel the wind in her hair or on her face) to the astonishing array of amenities.
At first, Dorrit is assigned to a relatively harmless experiment, so it is only slowly that she fully absorbs the magnitude of what lies ahead for her. She notices a man asleep in a chair in a library -- only later does she realize the reason he has fallen asleep is because the medication he's taking is causing him to do so. Her friend, Alice, is participating in a hormone study and developing an Adam's apple. In the sauna one day, she encounters six women. "They all had one or more scars from surgery ... Two of the women had distorted, swollen joints, their movements slow and jerky, as if their whole body ached."
As with all great dystopian books, it is sometimes what lies between the lines -- the assumptions of the dystopian society -- that are the most chilling. Dorrit notes, in an offhand manner, that women who become pregnant over the age of 40 are automatically encourage to abort the fetus; these children are more likely to have birth defects and be a cost to society. "If the overall number of defects and complications can be reduced to a minimum, there are significant financial gains to be made." At the outset of this book, anyone trying to argue that Holmqvist's particular dystopia is the result of a particular political point of view run amok will have a hard time making their case. The society's attention to the group at the expense of the individual is certainly a hallmark of socialism; on the other hand, the emphasis on the need to create value, to form new family units (having a sibling doesn't make you indispensable, only having a child), is more capitalist in tone. Dorrit has rationalized her presence in the unit, as she explains to her shrink. All that matters is what she and others produce, and "life is capital; a capital that is to be divided fairly among the people." If she can't believe that, she says, then her existence in the Unit would be unbearable.
From the start, Dorrit has less trouble than she imagined getting used to life in the Unit, free of any financial concerns. On the other hand, most nights she dreams of walking along the beach near her home with her beloved dog, Jock, whom she had to give away to a nearby farm family. (The relationship between them, as portrayed by Holmqvist, is one of the most poignant and moving depictions of a human-animal 'friendship' I have ever read.) Then she discovers, to her astonishment, that her relationship with Johannes has resulted in a pregnancy. Suddenly, she finds herself facing a host of new decisions and her hard-won and very precarious peace vanishes. "I longed to go back to an age of ignorance," she muses, "before the heart lost its status and was reduced to just one of a number of vital but replaceable organs."
The discussion of what makes a person of value to society and what makes a life worthwhile is perhaps one of the key philosophical questions we all grapple with, and Holmqvist has found an unusual and creative way to explore those central themes of meaning and the inevitability of death. Perhaps it resonated so deeply with me because I could see myself in Dorrit's shoes -- childless and single, in her fictional dystopia I would be of no 'value'. As someone says to Dorrit, "You have simply lived your lives, without thinking too much of the future of the world around you." In the world of the Unit, that kind of lack of planning has consequences.
While both men and women are affected by the existence of the Unit, this is primarily a novel about women and women's relationships, with men and with each other. (In any event, men are granted an extra decade to make themselves 'indispensable!) Although the specific themes are very different, and the style and plot alike revolve less around anger, violence or even hostility (no one is dragged screaming to make their final donation), this reminded me somewhat of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library). The key similarity: both authors choose to base their dystopia on some fringe element in today's society that is clearly identifiable but hard to imagine reaching these extremes. In Atwood's case, it's Christian fundamentalism which has resulted in a theocracy; Holmqvist, meanwhile, focuses on the degree to which our society focuses on market values and society rather than the individual.
This is a haunting novel, one that it's hard to do justice to in any review. I found nearly impossible to put down until I had finished it and begrudged having to attend a work-related dinner about halfway through. I expect to re-read it many times over the years to come, to enjoy Holmqvist's simple and elegant prose as well as her imaginative plotting and characterization.
Highly recommended.
This novel is a stunning achievement, an imaginative tour de force. Holmqvist has imagined every detail of a society that could dream up such a plan in the first place for women over 50 and men over 60, and then put her imagination to work once more to dream up the nature of the world these "dispensable" individuals find themselves inhabiting, from the bizarre alcohol-free cocktails to the eccentric librarian, from the replica of Monet's gardens of Giverny where it is always spring and summer (the unit is sealed under a vast dome that means Dorrit will never again see snow or feel the wind in her hair or on her face) to the astonishing array of amenities.
At first, Dorrit is assigned to a relatively harmless experiment, so it is only slowly that she fully absorbs the magnitude of what lies ahead for her. She notices a man asleep in a chair in a library -- only later does she realize the reason he has fallen asleep is because the medication he's taking is causing him to do so. Her friend, Alice, is participating in a hormone study and developing an Adam's apple. In the sauna one day, she encounters six women. "They all had one or more scars from surgery ... Two of the women had distorted, swollen joints, their movements slow and jerky, as if their whole body ached."
As with all great dystopian books, it is sometimes what lies between the lines -- the assumptions of the dystopian society -- that are the most chilling. Dorrit notes, in an offhand manner, that women who become pregnant over the age of 40 are automatically encourage to abort the fetus; these children are more likely to have birth defects and be a cost to society. "If the overall number of defects and complications can be reduced to a minimum, there are significant financial gains to be made." At the outset of this book, anyone trying to argue that Holmqvist's particular dystopia is the result of a particular political point of view run amok will have a hard time making their case. The society's attention to the group at the expense of the individual is certainly a hallmark of socialism; on the other hand, the emphasis on the need to create value, to form new family units (having a sibling doesn't make you indispensable, only having a child), is more capitalist in tone. Dorrit has rationalized her presence in the unit, as she explains to her shrink. All that matters is what she and others produce, and "life is capital; a capital that is to be divided fairly among the people." If she can't believe that, she says, then her existence in the Unit would be unbearable.
From the start, Dorrit has less trouble than she imagined getting used to life in the Unit, free of any financial concerns. On the other hand, most nights she dreams of walking along the beach near her home with her beloved dog, Jock, whom she had to give away to a nearby farm family. (The relationship between them, as portrayed by Holmqvist, is one of the most poignant and moving depictions of a human-animal 'friendship' I have ever read.) Then she discovers, to her astonishment, that her relationship with Johannes has resulted in a pregnancy. Suddenly, she finds herself facing a host of new decisions and her hard-won and very precarious peace vanishes. "I longed to go back to an age of ignorance," she muses, "before the heart lost its status and was reduced to just one of a number of vital but replaceable organs."
The discussion of what makes a person of value to society and what makes a life worthwhile is perhaps one of the key philosophical questions we all grapple with, and Holmqvist has found an unusual and creative way to explore those central themes of meaning and the inevitability of death. Perhaps it resonated so deeply with me because I could see myself in Dorrit's shoes -- childless and single, in her fictional dystopia I would be of no 'value'. As someone says to Dorrit, "You have simply lived your lives, without thinking too much of the future of the world around you." In the world of the Unit, that kind of lack of planning has consequences.
While both men and women are affected by the existence of the Unit, this is primarily a novel about women and women's relationships, with men and with each other. (In any event, men are granted an extra decade to make themselves 'indispensable!) Although the specific themes are very different, and the style and plot alike revolve less around anger, violence or even hostility (no one is dragged screaming to make their final donation), this reminded me somewhat of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library). The key similarity: both authors choose to base their dystopia on some fringe element in today's society that is clearly identifiable but hard to imagine reaching these extremes. In Atwood's case, it's Christian fundamentalism which has resulted in a theocracy; Holmqvist, meanwhile, focuses on the degree to which our society focuses on market values and society rather than the individual.
This is a haunting novel, one that it's hard to do justice to in any review. I found nearly impossible to put down until I had finished it and begrudged having to attend a work-related dinner about halfway through. I expect to re-read it many times over the years to come, to enjoy Holmqvist's simple and elegant prose as well as her imaginative plotting and characterization.
Highly recommended.
19 of 23 people found the following review helpful
By pleureur.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
The Unit is a gripping novel reminiscent of the surveillance and control of Orwell's 1984, the reproductive problems of Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, and the genetic experimentation of Huxley's Brave New World, with something of White's Charlotte's Web mixed in, but at its core, the story is hard to believe.
Dorrit is a 50 year old woman living in a version of Stockholm, possibly in the near future. She is a single woman with no children and no particular social attachments -- except to her dog. She has never had a romantic relationship, just a serious of "casual liasons," most recently with a man who "almost" loves her.
It is a cautionary tale, to be sure, but of what, exactly, I remained somewhat unclear. The obvious target is the idea of a utilitarian society bent on using the bodies of socially unnecessary people to keep the rest of society alive. These older people have their organs and body parts harvested through organ donation (in small bits at first, such as the cornea or one kidney, until the "final donation" is made) and as subjects of what seem to be amazingly poorly designed studies of various medical treatments. Apparently rats are too expensive in this society to figure out that one pill is contaminated with poisons, for example, and another study had 90% serious side effects, including death; we are led to believe that people are so desperate for organs that they readily accept these contaminated specimens. This model of health care and societal structure are clearly repugnant as well as hard to imagine.
After further reflection upon finishing the novel, I came back to something a member of the staff said to the new arrivals during Dorrit's orientation, and that is that finally they would be in a place where they would feel welcome and comfortable. And that, I think, is the most disturbing part of the book, and the one in which we can see Dorrit as much less sympathetic than she initially appears. It becomes clear that mainstream society is composed of a very distant, "efficient" sort of relationships, and Dorrit herself has been unable to find love and has not maintained her own family ties. She admits that she really gave the policy regarding "dispensables" no thought until she herself was ready to be checked in to the Unit, even to the point of not noticing the vanishing of anyone else who'd ever gone before her.
There are many unanswered questions about the complicity of Dorrit and all the other "dispensables" in their own abuse. And this reminded me of the scene in Charlotte's Web where Wilbur has the chance to escape from his pen, and does so, only to decide that it is entirely too overwhelming -- indeed, too much work -- to be on his own, and it's so much easier to follow the farmer, with his bucket of slops, back into the pen. This is, of course, before he learns that he is meant to be killed and transformed into dinner, the reality of which leaves him horrified, outraged, and depressed. Neither of these emotions seem to be the case for Dorrit, who knows her fate before she checks in to the Reserve Bank. She quietly goes right along, not bothering with detailed plans of escape, resistance, attempts to bring about a change in the law, or even emigrating before her 50th birthday (considering that several of her siblings live in other countries, not such a bad idea). She doesn't even observe exits in the Unit. She is too busy gorging herself on the free buffets.
Holmqvist sketches only briefly a picture of the society in which Dorrit has been living -- a society that is rigidly ridding itself of traditional gender roles. It is, Dorrit tells us, a crime for a man to fix a woman's car while she cooks him dinner in appreciation. Now a man and woman must share parental leave equally for 18 months, and then it's off to 8 hours a day of mandatory babysitting until the age of 6, leaving no excuses for not having children. Relationships are about convenience and seem mostly devoid of any warmth. Nevertheless Dorrit seems to have found friendship and companionship in a way that is completely opposite to what is found in the outside society. She maintains a deep connection to her dog, finding great satisfaction in obtaining a photograph of him in his new home with his new "family," but refuses the chance to have another, seemingly more important photograph of someone else in her new home, with her new family. That, as far as I am concerned, demonstrates that she has remained aloof from her own soul and has completely given up normal human desires.
I found "The Unit" to be a page-turner, but the second half of the book was disappointing, and I found the ending to be emotionally unsatisfying. I found the lack of self-concern, the lack of the desire for self-preservation, to be rather un-human, and quite chilling. The idea that all it takes is a nice garden, free food, and feigned concern for people to happily allow themselves to be murdered is extremely disturbing but ultimately unrealistic. But wondering if someone could really be so distant from the self was certainly troubling.
Dorrit is a 50 year old woman living in a version of Stockholm, possibly in the near future. She is a single woman with no children and no particular social attachments -- except to her dog. She has never had a romantic relationship, just a serious of "casual liasons," most recently with a man who "almost" loves her.
It is a cautionary tale, to be sure, but of what, exactly, I remained somewhat unclear. The obvious target is the idea of a utilitarian society bent on using the bodies of socially unnecessary people to keep the rest of society alive. These older people have their organs and body parts harvested through organ donation (in small bits at first, such as the cornea or one kidney, until the "final donation" is made) and as subjects of what seem to be amazingly poorly designed studies of various medical treatments. Apparently rats are too expensive in this society to figure out that one pill is contaminated with poisons, for example, and another study had 90% serious side effects, including death; we are led to believe that people are so desperate for organs that they readily accept these contaminated specimens. This model of health care and societal structure are clearly repugnant as well as hard to imagine.
After further reflection upon finishing the novel, I came back to something a member of the staff said to the new arrivals during Dorrit's orientation, and that is that finally they would be in a place where they would feel welcome and comfortable. And that, I think, is the most disturbing part of the book, and the one in which we can see Dorrit as much less sympathetic than she initially appears. It becomes clear that mainstream society is composed of a very distant, "efficient" sort of relationships, and Dorrit herself has been unable to find love and has not maintained her own family ties. She admits that she really gave the policy regarding "dispensables" no thought until she herself was ready to be checked in to the Unit, even to the point of not noticing the vanishing of anyone else who'd ever gone before her.
There are many unanswered questions about the complicity of Dorrit and all the other "dispensables" in their own abuse. And this reminded me of the scene in Charlotte's Web where Wilbur has the chance to escape from his pen, and does so, only to decide that it is entirely too overwhelming -- indeed, too much work -- to be on his own, and it's so much easier to follow the farmer, with his bucket of slops, back into the pen. This is, of course, before he learns that he is meant to be killed and transformed into dinner, the reality of which leaves him horrified, outraged, and depressed. Neither of these emotions seem to be the case for Dorrit, who knows her fate before she checks in to the Reserve Bank. She quietly goes right along, not bothering with detailed plans of escape, resistance, attempts to bring about a change in the law, or even emigrating before her 50th birthday (considering that several of her siblings live in other countries, not such a bad idea). She doesn't even observe exits in the Unit. She is too busy gorging herself on the free buffets.
Holmqvist sketches only briefly a picture of the society in which Dorrit has been living -- a society that is rigidly ridding itself of traditional gender roles. It is, Dorrit tells us, a crime for a man to fix a woman's car while she cooks him dinner in appreciation. Now a man and woman must share parental leave equally for 18 months, and then it's off to 8 hours a day of mandatory babysitting until the age of 6, leaving no excuses for not having children. Relationships are about convenience and seem mostly devoid of any warmth. Nevertheless Dorrit seems to have found friendship and companionship in a way that is completely opposite to what is found in the outside society. She maintains a deep connection to her dog, finding great satisfaction in obtaining a photograph of him in his new home with his new "family," but refuses the chance to have another, seemingly more important photograph of someone else in her new home, with her new family. That, as far as I am concerned, demonstrates that she has remained aloof from her own soul and has completely given up normal human desires.
I found "The Unit" to be a page-turner, but the second half of the book was disappointing, and I found the ending to be emotionally unsatisfying. I found the lack of self-concern, the lack of the desire for self-preservation, to be rather un-human, and quite chilling. The idea that all it takes is a nice garden, free food, and feigned concern for people to happily allow themselves to be murdered is extremely disturbing but ultimately unrealistic. But wondering if someone could really be so distant from the self was certainly troubling.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review for The Unit
I loved it. Very well written and makes you think... and it made me consider other people's feelings. It is worth the time to read it.
Published 14 days ago by Diedrae Ramsey
2.0 out of 5 stars
Editor, where are you?
In need of serious editing to fix problems with the reasoning behind the story. If the unit is a "human spare part" bank, then why would they be experimenting on the... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Caribeazul
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved this book
This was very well written. It kept you reading and hoping this would never happen in our country. You will think about this book for a long time afterwards. Read more
Published 2 months ago by FisherOH
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scary but possible
What a concept but it seems a very likely scenerio. I was entertained throughout the read and would recommend this book to others and already have.
Published 2 months ago by Bonnie Lockhart
5.0 out of 5 stars
You can't have everything
The sad fact is, you can't have everything.
Confront it by reading Ninni Holmqvist's The Unit and ask yourself: how do you imbue your life with value? Read more
Confront it by reading Ninni Holmqvist's The Unit and ask yourself: how do you imbue your life with value? Read more
Published 2 months ago by BP Gregory
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Book
At first I thought this a very strange plot but the more I read, the more I began to believe that it could happen. Read more
Published 3 months ago by T. Honeycutt
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hopefully, Not Our Future
A future where they retire you and recycle you for spare parts if you're not 'useful'. A thought provoking story.
Published 3 months ago by Shiloh
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good read. Sad but good
Sad. But very well written. Will read this author again. I like that the staff working in the unit was not over the top.
Published 3 months ago by Gia Gordon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow! This will stay with me for a while !
I really liked this book. It grew on me like the girl with the dragon tattoo (which I did like better). The whole concept was eerie and completely appalling. Read more
Published 4 months ago by jmravinet
4.0 out of 5 stars
Swedish Sci-Fi
What would happen in a world where older people are taken to a "unit" and treated to every spa luxury, only to be held indefinitely to have their organs harvested as needed... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Ozoner
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