Customer Reviews

The Unit

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

"The Unit" is one of the best books I've read in a long time. The story is engaging, modern and inventive, fantastical yet grounded. Holmqvist's prose (in translation) is crisp and thoughtfully paced, with a rhythm that underscores the action.

Dorrit's observations are carefully chosen; no words are wasted in description or dialogue. The reader is easily oriented in The Unit; sinister suspicion underscores the bright setting in a plastic world of plenty. Dorrit Weger is a character who continues to grow and change just as society as has deemed her "unnecessary." Her growth continues unabated as we join her and come to understand her choice to live life on her terms, even if those terms include eschewing ways to escape the inevitable entry into the Unit.

The characters are easily discernable and none are caricatures. I thought Johannes was particularly distinctive (even the absent Nils is someone I pictured easily and could understand). Dorrit's voice is clear, constant, and honest. We are truly taken along on her journey, taken from familiarity and guided into The Unit a her side. As the story evolves, I found myself having the same feelings as Dorrit, the same reactions, hopes and apprehensions.

"The Unit" is one of the best pieces of fiction I've read in a long time. I'm very glad I took a chance on the book and I hope that other do as well. I'm not particularly a SF fan but I like a well-written story and I want to be entertained. Holmqvist's work goes well beyond this, giving me a story that stayed with me every time I was forced to set the book down. It's the kind of book you grab on your way out, in case you might get a few minutes to read wherever you're headed. And when you finish it, with a quiet sigh, it's the kind of book you want to open to page 1 and begin again.

I agree with all of the positive things other reviewers have said about this book. It was well written. There was a great sense of atmosphere and the characters and relationships were all well done, with depth and nuance. The story was engaging, disturbing, and thrilling -- a real page-turner. Like others, I couldn't put it down. But . . .

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**

The author does a good job of showing that valid and positive choices and personality traits can lead a woman to end up single and childless at age 50. It seems like one of the points of the book is that people can be needed and valuable even if they don't pair up or procreate. But then what happens? On her first day in the Unit, the main character meets Prince Charming, then falls in love, is cherished, has perfect sex, and gets pregnant!!! I agree with her friend Elsa on this -- it's infuriating! I don't know exactly what the 'moral' of this story is supposed to be, but this 180-degree shift in personality, circumstances, and perspective seems to diminish rather than strengthen it.

The first thing I noticed when I received this book was the cover. It's beautiful. It's stark and immediately created an interest in the novel without even reading a word.

When I began reading I found that the cover is the perfect representation of this book. The novel itself is quite stark. You definitely get the feeling of captivity and restriction. I can honestly say that this was the most frightening book I have ever read. People who were not "needed" being used as veritable organ harvests for people who are needed is simply the most scary thing to me. For someone who plans on not having children, seeing my worth in relation to my willingness and ability to reproduce was a bit jarring. Nevertheless, it did not take anything away from my enjoyment of the novel.

There are so many things I loved in this book that it is difficult to remember all of them. First of all, the prose is beautiful. Every word is a joy to read. I really liked Dorrit. She was a really great character to follow. She was engaging and entertaining. I found it really interesting that of all the things she had to leave behind of her former life, she looks back on her dog, Jock, the most. Perhaps this is because dogs can't judge whether you are needed or not because they just want you not because you are useful or necessary but because you are there. Her relationship with Johannes was heart wrenching and heartbreaking. I cried more during her scenes with him than any other. I wished that they had gone back in time and met when they were younger and had many children so that they could grow old together.

This is the type of book that will stick with you. I loved it and I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good dystopian novel.

Imagine living in a society that declares you are dispensable and must submit to euthanasia. You disagree, are afraid and consider hiding or running away, but realize that your "sentence" is the law and there is nowhere to hide.

The Unit is a story about life in a special care facility where authorities send "dispensable" humans when society no longer wishes to tolerate their existence. Society values dispensable humans as organ donors, and as subjects in medical and psychological experiments. The unit is a dream world for society's rejects. The facility supplies every need, so the subjects require no money and have no worries.

People condemned to the unit typically are loners in life. They have no children, are relatively unskilled, and earn too little to support themselves. They are a drain to society, are ostracized, isolated, and alone. To many, life in the unit is much better than life in the outside world.

In the unit, residents meet other dispensables and make the best friends of their lives. In the unit they are no longer alone or with out purpose. They are assigned as subjects in experiments - some medical, some psychological, some physical, some social. Residents of the unit "donate" organs to be given to "needed" people. Eventually they make their "final donation" and their entire body is harvested for later medical use.

The main character in the story is Dorrit Weger, a fifty year old single woman with no children, a menial job, and no friends. In the unit Dorrit makes friends quickly and begins to engage in activities she could never afford before. Dorrit eats in fancy restaurants, attends first run movies and theater, and becomes a respected member of her new society.

The characters in The Unit are well drawn and believable. Most of the residents are three dimensional with their emotions, beliefs, and reactions to events realistic and sometimes graphic. These "dispensables" are like your neighbors, people you meet every day. Some may be your friends or relatives.

Holmqvist's tale suggests hard questions. What is the meaning of life? When is a person's life important to society: is it through their children, their employment, their hobbies, church, political beliefs, or character? How do we decide who is useful? Are some people dispensable? What are the standards? Who should decide?

Ninni Holmqvist's book may be the springboard for social debate. Modern developed nations are struggling with the problem of "dispensables." As people age, the costs of programs like medicare, social security, and welfare become excessive. Do we decide that seniors, the unskilled and undereducated are expendable? Do we create a program like the unit to address our expanding crisis? The policy becomes like a slippery slope that starts with older people, then adds the disabled, the mentally challenged, misbehaving children, and people who aren't pretty. With this concept eventually politicians may wish to balance race, ethnicity, and gender.

The Unit is an easy read, and clearly paints a possible picture of what we could become. Hopefully people will read this novel and begin to propose and debate solutions.

In The Unit, Holmqvist takes us into a dystopian world that is more frightening because it seems so familiar. In this near-future or alternative society (it is never clear which), people are are deemed "dispensable" are confined to the unit, a dreamlike world where they have no wants unmet, while they are efficiently employed as subjects of dangerous experiments and their organs systematically harvested for the benefit of the "needed." To not have children is the primary means of becoming dispensable, although they seem to be drawn from the ranks of artists, writers and others who cannot conform to middlebrow society for one reason or another.

Dorritt is such a person. Before coming to the unit, her closest relationship was with her dog. But once there, she experiences for the first time true friendship, love and acceptance for who she is, which makes her quiet, detached descriptions of the emotional and phsyical tortures that her friend and, ultimately, she suffers there all the more horrifying.

The power of The Unit is its subtlety. We never really know how a supposedly democratic society instituted this practice of harvesting their fellow citizens, or why the people tolerate it, although we are given hints. As the story progresses, we learn that there are fewer and fewer dispensable people, so that the definition of who is unneeded must be expanded to keep up the supply of organs and test subjects. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the unit seem unaccountably resigned to their fates, but as Dorritt tells her story, we almost come to understand why -- which makes it all the more terrifying.

The Unit was originally published in Sweded and was translated into English by Marlaine Delargy. I haven't read a lot of Swedish literature, but given the quality of this novel, I should seek out more. Highly recommended.

Note: This review is based on a reading copy provided by the publisher.

"The Unit" reminded me very much of some of my favorite novels that are built around a chilling but very believable view of the future, such as Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World. I love reading these kinds of books because they really demand that we, as human beings, think about how we treat others and how we treat our world. There is a very slippery slope when deciding what is ethical and what is not, and these books reminds us that what we might find abhorrent could, if perceptions were to alter ever so slightly, could be viewed as not only acceptable, but perfectly humane.

The novel begins with Dorrit Weger entering the unit. As a "dispensable", she will live out the rest of her days as the subject of "humane" experiments and multiple organ donations. The unit is a beautiful place, and the residents there are treated well. Everything is provided to them at no cost, the facilities in which they live are top-notch, and they are able to enjoy luxuries that their outside lives on the fringe may have placed beyond their means.

What Holmqvist really does well in this novel is to provide small, very jarring and shocking details that jolt the reader out of the seductive beauty of the surface appearance of the Unit. The "humane" experiments to which these people are subjected are not without consequence, and what ultimately happens to the residents demands that the reader really think critically about policies that may benefit the greater good at the expense of the rights of the individual. For the most part, the characters in the story complacently go along with the carefully crafted philosophy of democracy because their society is structured in such a way that they are spoon-fed the conviction that it is right. However, there are cracks aplenty when one looks at the surface more carefully.

Ultimately, the novel offers up some tough themes of parental love and the idea of free will versus reality. The choice Dorrit makes is an extremely difficult one, and long after having finished the book, I found myself looking at it from multiple angles in an attempt to determine what I would have done were I in her shoes. The fact that the answer is not at all obvious speaks volumes about the ethical and moral questions that are raised by this book. I thought it was simply superb.

I bought this novel for my Kindle through Amazon.com, and at first I wasn't sure if I would enjoy it or not. But after reading the first few pages, I was hooked!!! The plot was a creative foray into a possible near future and the horrifying dystopia within that culture, the characters were beautifully conceived and had hopeless flaws that make them even more endearing, and the novel on a whole was superbly written and well executed. It was an easy, quick read, with mind boggling depth, and a haunting ending that, even after months of not picking up the book, I still think about. This is a fabulous novel which any fan of reading and literature should not miss!