Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

genre: romance in dystopian world (emphasis on romance)
age: YA
rating: 5/8 tentacles

In the future, scientists have recognized love, or “amor deliria nervosa,” as a mental illness… and they have found a cure. All eighteen-year-olds undergo a procedure that promises to relieve them of the threat of love’s horrifying symptoms: obsessive attachment to another person, sweating palms and fluttering hearts, and the irrational behavior often triggered by this madness. Lena Holoway’s eighteenth birthday approaches and she can’t wait to have the procedure, to be safe from the strange behaviors exhibited by her own mother before she eventually succumbed to madness and then death. Lena is desperate to escape the risk of this horrible disease—whose effects she has witnessed firsthand—and is counting down the days until the moment she will be examined, cured, and then assigned a partner in what will be a loveless marriage of convenience.

Delirium’s premise is far-fetched, but intriguing and I was curious to see where Lauren Oliver would go with it. Generally, the story takes the most obvious route: girl thinks love is disease, girl wants cure for disease, girl meets boy, girl likes boy, girl’s heart stops (Is she dead? No, in love!), girl realizes love is good! But underneath this extremely predictable plot line, there is a government that advocates a medical cure for love (why?), that fights to keep “un-cured” rebels at bay, and that harbors great secrets, and a conclusion that is not quite as predictable as the course the novel takes to reach it.

Delirium struck me as having a similar premise as Matched because both plots rely heavily on a dystopian system where individuals are evaluated and assigned spouses. Oliver’s take on this idea is much more thoughtful and better written than Condie’s effort, with its fluid prose and strong, vivid descriptions. For example:

It’s only slightly better than the other word that followed me for years after my mom’s death, a snakelike hiss, undulating, leaving its trail of poison: Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms of murmured behind closed doors. It was only in my dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.

These moments of sharply poetic prose provide useful and striking descriptions of Lena’s thoughts and world. Key word: useful. (I’m looking at you, Condie and Steifvater.)

Despite the lovely writing, I had some issues with melodrama, continuity, and annoying boys. Delirium definitely contains some of that melodramatic fluttering heart garbage that is really becoming one of my biggest pet peeves. This is partly because I do not like romance novels. I enjoy romance as a subplot, but the main plot has to be something more creative, more original, more interesting (no, I don’t find two people sighing and drooling over each other at all interesting). And although Delirium is set against a dystopian backdrop, it is, at its palpitating heart, a romance novel. I generally steer clear of romance novels, but I am occasionally fooled into mistaking one for, oh, I don’t know, a dystopia. Once I get sucked into reading them, the obsession with abnormal heart activity and tingling body parts makes me fake gag and roll my eyes. This close attention to the bodily indications of attraction reminds me of a hypochondriac tracking his symptoms (Which is kind of funny when you remember the topic of this book. Maybe romance novels are a disease). In short, I do not find these types of descriptions romantic at all. So maybe it isn’t that I dislike romance, but that its common portrayal in literature fails to appeal to my particular romantic sensibilities. Especially the overly angstified romance rampant in YA. Yuck.

Contributing to my dislike of the romance is the rather ordinary, uninteresting love interest, golden-eyed Alex. I didn’t like him or his weird habit of laughing with his head tipped back so that Lena can see the roof of his mouth. What is he, an animated super-villain?

Something about Delirium, despite its attempts to conquer the deep and complicated topic of love, feels superficial and contrived. Lena is presented to us as an intelligent person who is somehow more discerning than her peers, somehow, deeper. She has a “poetic” soul (supposedly). But these qualities that allow her to transcend the oppressive norm are presented to us in very superficial ways. Her favorite color, for instance, is gray, as opposed to the acceptable blue… adopted by mindless drones everywhere? Maybe this is meant to be symbolic of the phrase “shades of gray” and how they are no longer accepted in Lena’s society, but when I read this part, I rolled my eyes.  Reciting poetry and enjoying the color gray doesn’t tell me that a character has more emotional depth than her peers. It tells me that the author is trying really hard to make her seem like she does.

I do like the descriptions of Lena’s struggle to put on an act for the world and I think a lot of people will be able to relate to the pressure she felt to stamp down her personality in favor of a socially approved persona.

Sometimes I feel there are two me’s, one coasting directly on top of the other. The superficial me, who nods when she’s supposed to nod and says what she’s supposed to say, and some other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams and says “Gray.” Most of the time they move along in sync and I hardly notice the split, but sometimes it feels as though I’m two whole different people and I could rip apart at any second.

This book certainly has its pros and cons, but overall I’m left with a kind of “eh” feeling.

I did enjoy Oliver’s writing, and I kind of want to know how other aspects of the story pan out… So although this did not make it into my favorites, I will be reading the sequel. Probably.