Master Class

Master Class

Adult dystopia
In her debut novel, Vox, Christina Dalcher transported readers
into a terrifying world in which the president is a puppet of the Pure
Movement (kind of an amped up Moral Majority), people who don't
conform to their values are sentenced to labor camps, girls are
educated separately from boys and taught only housewifery, and females
are limited to one hundred words a day. When I finished that book I
wondered if we'd see another by Dalcher. Vox would be a hard act to
follow.
I am delighted to report that Dalcher has outdone herself.
Master Class crafts a dystopian future in which lives are distilled
down to and life trajectories are totally based on one number,
recalculated electronically each day, the Q; schools are grouped into
three tiers: the elite silvers, the in between greens, and the abysmal
yellows; and plans are underway to make sure that inferior children
aren't born. The trends woven into this story go way back before No
Child Left Behind and even Hitler's Germany. Try a century ago when
eugenics was a secular religion in academia and the Supreme Court gave
the green light to surgically sterilizing all "undesirables."
Elena and her family reside on the kind of posh neighborhood
where the woes of the rest of the world don't seem to intrude. She
teaches in an elite silver school. She's married, pretty much in
title only, to Malcolm, one of the designers and upper echelon of the
system. Her older daughter, Anne, attends an elite silver school
where students wear Harvard Crimson and Yale Blue uniforms. Her
younger daughter, Freddie, attends a green school...
...until she doesn't. One evening following a testing day Elena
and Malcolm receive the news that Freddie has been demoted to yellow.
In a few days a bus will take her from her Washington DC home to a
dorm in Kansas where she'll stay year round. Her parents will only be
able to visit her four days a year. Malcolm can't or won't lift a
bureaucratic finger to fix the situation.
Elena gets herself demoted to teaching at Freddie'a school in
hopes of rescuing her. She comes face to face with an institution as
cruel as those described by Charles Dickens. She learns of truly evil
experiments being carried out in secret by good old Malcolm and his
crew. There's no guaranteeing she'll be able to save her child or
expose the machinations of those in charge.
Dystopia fans will find Master Class to be a must read. The
only thing more horrific than its plot is its plausibility considering
current trends.
On a purrrsonal note, despite the challanges posed by over twice the
number of kids to help the backpack project is going beautifully. I
have wonderful people contributing. One woman ordered 18 brand new
backpacks off the Internet. My older daughter is filling the
backpacks of five of the littler girls with the kind of special
supplies younger her would have wanted. My church has publicized the
drive in their newsletter and will be putting out a collection box.
I'm getting money to buy anything needed at the end. I'm so looking
forward to filling and delivering the backpacks.
Today we're still in the heat wave, but tomorrow should be better.
(Jules)
I certainly hope so. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to all the people who are helping with
the project.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway


Sent from my iPod