Delirium

This post first published July 30, 2011.

Author: Lauren Oliver
Published: February 1, 2011
Publisher: HarperTeen
Series: Delirium #1
310 pages (eBook)
 
I got a Kobo eReader recently, did I tell anyone?! :P The first book I read on it is this one, Delirium. Did you know, I never noticed that the words had a face in the background until just now … haha.

This is a book I’ve heard quite a bit about, at least among my book-reading friends. Everyone’s either likes it or REALLY likes it. I’m a bit late to jump on the bandwagon, but better late than never. I fall in to the “like it” camp — it was an enjoyable read and I’d love to continue reading the series.

Delirium is a story that takes place in a future dystopic version of the city of Portland. Love has been identified as a sickness, as a disease, long ago, and people go through a procedure (called the Cure) when they are 18 to “fix” them so they do not feel love. There’s talk about brain cutting, so I imagine it’s some sort of lobotomy.

The protagonist, Lena, is going to be 18 soon, and her Cure date is in roughly 90 days (if I remember correctly) at the start of the story. Lena’s a rather obedient citizen and fully believes in the Cure, because her mother killed herself long ago, destroyed by the delirium — love. Thus, Lena has come to accept that love is a dangerous disease that must be eradicated in order to feel happiness. However, Lena’s beliefs are threatened by her best friend, Hana, who shows great interest in the idea that Invalids (unCured people living in the wilds) may possibly exist, begins listening to illegal music and attending — gasp! — illegal co-ed parties.

Her beliefs are further challenged (and pretty much destroyed) when she meets Alex, a young man posing as a Cured citizen when in reality, he is an Invalid. At first, Lena is simply interested in the idea that Invalids exist, hence her continual contact with Alex, but not much time passes before she realizes she has fallen in love. At first she is scared, thinking she has the disease and is just like her mother now, but slowly, Alex shows her that love is anything but a disease.

There’s one thing I had to kind of “get over” before I could appreciate the story, and that is the idea that people treat love as a disease. I … don’t really understand how an entire society would agree on that. In fact, in this story, people are so afraid of love that they will imprison, beat up or even execute (“death by torture”!!) those who continue exhibiting love. To me, that is TOO BIG of a leap from today’s perspective of love, which is that it is wonderful thing. All that was explained in the book was that scientists one day ‘realized’ love was a disease and later, found a cure. It’s a pretty unconvincing idea, to me. And at times, I wasn’t sure if they removed only the emotion love, or all emotions. Some characters still seemed pretty normal — just loveless — but others, like Lena’s sister Rachel, is described as being in a zombie-like state.

Ironically, it is the idea of love as a disease that had me hooked onto the story as well. I think I had to push the idea of this book being speculative out of my mind (which a lot of dystopian novels traditionally are), and instead look at it a different way, as simply a story with message underneath. There’s many different kind of messages you can take away from the book, but I think overall, it’s about the importance of love, of sacrifice, and of life. I think at one point, Lena wonders what is the point of living if there is no love? Just going through the motions of living without a care for anything? Love as a disease is a really interesting idea, so that is why I ended up liking the story, even though I didn’t particularly buy the whole idea of it (at least, the way it was sold to me by Lena).

The idea was backed up with lots of in-story government paraphernalia, one at the beginning of every chapter. An example they use is the story of Romeo and Juliet as a cautionary tale against love. They also have ‘banned dangerous quotes’ which, to us, talk about how powerful love is, but to them, is about how people crazy people are, if for example, they are willing to die for love. The little snippets at the beginning of each chapter is a very nice touch and really adds to the story world.

I also liked Lena. She starts off as a very obedient citizen, fully believing in love as a sickness. In fact, she’s scared that love is ‘genetic’ and she’ll end up like her mother — crazed by love. However, she has just enough curiosity and daringness to see for herself if it is really all as bad as the government says. I liked reading about her changing attitudes towards love. It’s admirable of her to try to think for herself when the whole world is trying to think for her. With that all being said, Lena can be rather melodramatic at times, and truth be told, she’s not the world’s most interesting narrator.
If you like dystopian novels or YA romances, I think you’ll like Delirium as well.

My Rating: 3.5/5