feed is officially young adult fiction. but that category, i'm finding, can be really misleading. i would say this is a great work of fiction, that anyone in 8th grade or older could read (which, really, is true of a lot of great fiction, right?). of course, the fact that the main characters are all high schoolers doesn't hurt.
so, here's the deal: feed takes place in some kind of distant future. it's not clear how distant; but it is clear that the grandparents of the high school students in the book remember what life was like in the fairly close future. one of the brilliant things anderson does in this book is paint all kinds of passing descriptions of this future, details all over the place, without focusing the narrative lens on them. for instance, he never directly addresses the stacks of suburbs, vertical and self-contained, each with their own artificial sun and weather voted on by the home owner's association, but the description is there, like great framing.
the focus of the book is the "feed" that almost everyone has implanted in their brains in early childhood. it started as a brain-connected educational tool (or, at least, was marketed that way), much like the internet was talked about in its early days. but quickly, the feed became a replacement for theaters and television, radio and all other forms of listening to music, m-chatting (almost like esp -- a form of text communication brain-to-brain, along with file attachment options and such), purchasing, and - mostly - advertising. the feed provides a constant customized barrage of marketing, based on the emotions of the moment, experiences of the moment, things you're looking at, and much more.
the nutty thing about all of this is that it makes sense. the book plumbs, without being overly preachy, some of the "how we got heres" and "what this means" aspects of the feed.
on the surface, it's a story of a titus (a teenage guy), his group of extremely shallow friends, and a somewhat mysterious antagonist girlfriend who is suspicious of the feed, and has complications due to getting hers installed when she was 7 years old. but, of course, it's about much more than that.
so here's my grandiose statement:
aldous huxley's book, brave new world, published in 1932, took cutting edge technology of his time, along with current trajectories in religion, philosophy, science, and other areas, and projected a potential reality (told in story form, of course) of our current day. feed does the same - it takes our current technology, consumption, relational dynamics, political climate, and much more, and projects a trajectory for something like 80 years from now (give or take). some of it will crack you up, and some of it will freak you out.
a great, fun, somewhat uncomfortable, read.
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From the Publisher
Feed
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The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge
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| Read more from the award-winning author M. T. Anderson! | A National Book Award finalist! Titus and his friends’ spring break is cut short when a hacker messes with their feeds, sending them to a hospital. There, Titus meets Violet, a girl who’s decided to fight the feed that’s implanted their heads. | A Newbery Honor Book! After a global plague brings Clay’s summer to a halt, he’s only too happy to retreat to the woods. There, he finds mysterious dog Elphinore among the trees and they go on an adventure that will change their lives forever. | A major motion picture! After aliens called the vuvv take over Earth, Adam’s parents lose their jobs. Now that they have no money for food, clean water, or the vuvv’s miraculous medicine, Adam has to get creative to survive. How far will he go? | A National Book Award finalist! Uptight elfin historian Brangwain Spurge is on a mission to spy on the goblin kingdom, but a series of extraordinary misunderstandings throws him and his host Werfel into the middle of an international crisis! |
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- Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2008
Top reviews from other countries
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- Arlo MarlonReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 3, 2017
Underrated, brilliant YA-crossover novel
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