Divided Kingdom (Hardcover)

by Rupert Thomson (Author)
Key Phrases: White People, Blue Quarter, Yellow Quarter (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Thomson's latest dystopian novel (after The Book of Revelation) begins in brilliant, unsettling fashion when a young boy is taken by government decree from his parents during the initial stages of the Rearrangement, which occurs in a totalitarian, near-future England. In this brave new world, the country's entire population is forcibly reorganized and relocated into autonomous zones according to psychology, or the four humors: choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine. Placed in an orphanage, renamed Thomas Parry and transferred to a new family in the Red Quarter (for sanguine types), he settles in with a father overwhelmed by the loss of his relocated wife and a promiscuous sister desperate for human connection. As an adult, Thomas takes a clandestine job with the government, but soon risks being charged with "undermining the state" when he begins a spur-of-the-moment voyage across borders in search, at first, of his real parents and his true self. Despite a cleverly imagined political system and the promise of sharp social criticism, this allegory limps to an ending that belies its inspired start.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
In this dystopian novel, the population of the United Kingdom has been divvied up into color-coded sectors determined by humor: the phlegmatic, the melancholic, the choleric, and the sanguine. Under this system, temperament trumps kinship—in a neat twist, the family unit is now considered responsible for "society's disintegration"—and separation is enforced by border guards and government informers. At first, Thomson's hero, Thomas Parry, seems content, as befits his sanguine designation. A rising star in the Red Quarter bureaucracy, he supervises the expulsion of unsatisfactory citizens to other regions. But when, on a rare visit to another quarter, he is issued a mysterious invitation to a night club, where he seems to return to his pre-division life, his faith in the absolute categorization of personality is shaken. Although Thomson's plotting is distinctly schematic—"Brave New World" is his obvious model—he succeeds in imparting a sense of urgency to his hero's search for identity.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition. first american states edition (June 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400042186
• ISBN-13: 978-1400042180
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,384,653 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "They took the worst part of us and built a system out of it and it worked", November 14, 2005

By	M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In Divided Kingdom society has become troubled and fragmented - obsessed with acquisition and celebrity, it is a place defined by misery, envy, and greed. Crime is rampant; the courts are swamped, the prisons overflowing, the divorce rate following marriage quickly and predictably. Faced with lawlessness and chaos, the current government - hidden in an underground bunker - is forced to make a radical decision.

The Kingdom is to be divided into four countries, this political solution, or "rearrangement" comes with considerable risk, but is seen as the only alternative to avert certain anarchy. Each citizen is psychologically assessed and placed, sometimes with force, into four administrative units, each corresponding to one of the medieval "humours."

There's the Red Quarter, inhabited by the cheerfully sanguine, and where Matthew Micklewright, our main protagonist, then aged eight, lives; the Yellow Quarter, where the choleric rage and beat each other up; the Blue Quarter, populated by the stoically phlegmatic; and the "Green Quarter that harbors melancholic depressives.

Concrete boundaries are thrown up, rigidly controlled by the border police, and each country is sealed, fearful of the threat of psychological contamination. The rearrangement deliberately manufactured to create a climate of suspicion and denial between each country - people burying parts of their personalities that don't fit, and hiding their secrets that could now be judged and condemned.

One night, as the roundup begins, young Matthew is cruelly separated from his parents and taken to an immensely sinister boarding school, where he is lectured on the Rearrangements political rationale. The country had become "a troubled place," an enthusiastic Miss Groves tells the class, and this resolution was seen as the only alternative. Subsequently our hero -now renamed Thomas Parry- is given a new family and groomed for advancement in the Red Quarter regime as a civil servant.

After years of studying and career diligence, Thomas is finally given the senior administrative job he has been aiming for; this involves the ongoing process of psychological testing and relocation of members of the population who fail to meet the demands of his quarter. Now he is able to attend commissions and attend cross-border conferences, a privilege available only to the autocratic elite.

Dispatched to a cross border conference in the Blue Quarter, Thomas clandestinely visits a nightclub, the Bathysphere. Shocking images of his past come back to haunt him, of his mother, and of his first true love. He isn't sure what to make of these memories, all he knows is that he has experienced something so totally profound and addictive that it skews his sanguine nature, setting him on a course of self-discovery as he travels through the divided kingdom's four quarters.

Thomas becomes caught up in a terror attack in the Yellow Quarter; is shipwrecked on the coast of the Blue Quarter, and is farmed off to an angst-ridden Green Quarter boarding house, eventually escaping and joining the itinerant and stateless White People, a band of nomadic outsiders who drift aimlessly from quarter to quarter, spurned and shunned by the populations of this new and unsettling world.

Reticent of Huxley's Brave New World, author Rupert Thomson, rather than focusing on the nuts and bolts, the mechanics of this dystopian world chooses instead, to chart Thomas's tortured emotional landscape, as he becomes an outlaw, a fugitive, traveling from quarter to quarter, experiencing first hand each facet of the human condition. Our hero starts off with such noble pursuits and intent, convinced that his role is safe guarding the values and integrity of the Red Quarter. "I realized that he had to fight for the system, had to believe in it, or my removal from my family will have been for nothing."

But as Thomas travels, and witnesses the Yellow Quarter's inhumanity, the Blue Quarter's innocently sweet nature, and the Green quarter's chronic depressives, he realizes that the divided kingdom is united after all, by just one thing: "longing," a longing by most people to perhaps be reunited again.

But like the Kingdom he journeys through, Thomas realizes early on, that there will be no going back, there would be no going back to the part of him that had been buried for so many years, and there would be no more glimpses of that forgotten life. Going to Club Bathysphere exposed the need in Thomas, the ache - the hollowness that lay beneath a life so seemingly well ordered, even charmed. Fragments of another life had been released, altering him forever. His experiences lead him to admit that everything he had built had been revealed for what it was - "mere scaffolding."

Thompson evokes a bleak, desolate, almost apocalyptic world, where the psychological outlines of the different Quarters are sharply defined; its landscape of fleeting female figures, semi-erotic encounters, and of canals, waterways, and even underwater seas. It's also a world of transient, almost spiritual figures, fighting for survival in cities that embody all that is selfish and self-absorbed about capitalism.

Although the narrative tends to lose impetus towards the end, Divided Kingdom is mostly a gripping saga, a part adventure story, and part treatise on the human experience, a portrait of a world that is divided into a type of "psychological racism," where misguided authorities " have force-fed us our own weakness - our intolerance, our bigotry, to create a world where the people seem to need it, and even thrive on this type of prejudice." Mike Leonard November 05.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely, September 15, 2005

By	Margaret (Pearland, Texas United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about a future "United Kingdom" that has become divided. Imagine a world where everyone is sorted by which medieval "humour" they fit into -- all the choleric people are together, separate from all the melancholics, etc. I thought it an interesting premise that gave structure to the author's exploration of identify, value, etc. My only qualm comes from the fact that I'm not an intellectual and usually like my books to end in a happy summation wherein all mysteries are solved. But, as in real life, it doesn't happen here. I happened upon this book by accident -- I was locked out of my house and forced to spend the evening at the local library, with the reward of discovering a new author whose books I look forward to reading. I recommend this book to anyone with an evening to pass and a desire to read something that isn't in the common run of things.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ignore the premise, enjoy the ride if you can/, March 22, 2006

By	B. Capossere (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Divided Kingdom begins with the main character, 8 years old, rousted out of his bed the night the kingdom (a parallel sort of Britain gone to misery and chaos) is divided into quarters based on the four humours in a last ditch attempt to salvage society. Hustled off to a reeducation facility, Thomas Perry is eventually transferred to a family still grieving over the loss of their wife/mother in the Red "sanguine" quarter, where he gradually moves up the political ladder within the ministry responsible for assignments/transfers. The book really starts going when he is sent to a conference in another quarter. There, in a club called the Bathyscope (it reminded me somewhat of Steppenwolf's theater), he sees images/scenes that drive him to skip out on his responsibilities and began a border-crossing trek that will eventually bring him to all four quarters.
The premise of the story isn't all that plausible. The fact that it is barely explored in any pragmatic/realistic sense leads one to think it isn't meant to be seen as particularly plausible anyway. Much as Parry does in the Bathyscope. the reader is being taken on a dreamlike experience and shouldn't look for the nuts and bolts dystopia of an Orwell or Bradbury.
And dreamlike it is, as Parry moves among the various citizens of each quarter, encountering a wide variety of character types, including the mysterious White People, those who can't be assigned a humour (they don't seem to gravitate towards one) and who move in speechless, nomadic packs.
Kingdom is a hard novel to pin down. As mentioned, it doesn't work at all on a pragmatic dystopic level as nothing of how the societies function or not is ever really explored. And for me, it only worked hit and miss on the more surreal level. There is strong writing in much of it, though sometimes overly noticeable as crafted. There are as well some moving sections and moments that deserve some pause and meditation. But its picaresque plot never really compelled, nor did the character, and while I followed what happened it was with somewhat moderate interest. The ending, unfortunately, I thought the weakest section and so that colored the entire reading somewhat negatively
I can't say Divided Kingdom pulled me along or startled me with its language or style except for every now and then. It was a serviceable read with moments of highlights, but the latter part diluted those moments for me. I'd be interested to read more by the author for his inventiveness and his ability to create a beguiling tone/atmosphere, but I can't really strongly recommend Divided Kingdom.