But when a friend mentions that she’s “reinventing” herself, Eden embarks on a hopeful plan to do the same. For the remainder of Eden’s freshman year, she withdraws from her family and becomes increasingly full of hatred for Kevin and the world she feels failed to protect her. Not ever,” and a chillingly believable death threat. In the three years following Eden’s brutal rape by her brother’s best friend, Kevin, she descends into anger, isolation, and promiscuity.Įden’s silence about the assault is cemented by both Kevin’s confident assurance that if she tells anyone, “No one will ever believe you. LeGuin, inside this lyrically written, suspenseful tale is a deeply humane thematic core.
But even if giving rein to unfettered individuality can cause harm, singularity just might be a precondition to empathy. Complex issues play out in fast-paced action without oversimplification.
Uncovering secrets of Vispera’s past, they discover Jack may be the key to its future. When he’s blamed for acts of vandalism that threaten Vispera, she risks everything to defend him. Though Jack’s poetry and music disturb her, she resists her sisters’ attempts to comfort her with their touch. She intervenes when the Carsons bully him, and she provokes widespread ire when she breaks with her sisters to choose a Hassan instead of a Carson at the Pairing Ceremony.
She wonders how Jack, barred from their games and ceremonies, can bear life without the constant presence and comfort of nine identical siblings. (After centuries of genetic manipulation, racial characteristics vary among models, but all have brown eyes.) Rarely, minor differences affect individual appearance, like the tiny scar on her wrist that Althea-310 covers. Gestated in tanks and born 10 years apart, each 10-member generation of the nine models appears identical. Humans, now extinct, used their DNA to create Vispera’s nine clone models, and subsequent generations eliminated human diseases and defects the choice to create Jack, 17, genetically human, gray-eyed, with asthma, is a troubling and intriguing mystery to Althea-310.
0 kommentar(er)
