Our Future...Matched

Last night, I finished the book Matched, written by Ally Condie, after being unable to put it down for the previous 24 hours! What surprised me the most about not being able to put the book down was there was never extreme action, explicit love scenes, harrowing characters. It was just so real – I was drawn in by the consistent pace, slightly building tension. The lives of the characters are so simply intertwined, carefully put together, and I was right there with them. The opening of the story is very ethereal; the reader was placed in a time in the future, in an undisclosed place, with no real connection to the society we were observing, except that I felt connected.

The main character, Cassia, moved along as though this could be one of us, projected in the future; this could be the lives of my great-great grandchildren, and the artifacts they hold so dear could be the ones I have in my home – given to me by MY grandmother. The commentary was there, subtle enough, though, to be woven in throughout the plot line. What kind of society is this? How real can it be? Are we headed to a place where no one stands out, but everyone has secrets that need to be washed away with colorful pills? The details of the traditions gone by and replaced by simpler ones were just enough that you could see why this society chose to be the way it is. But, you remain skeptical about how these people can really remain sane with little or no individualism.

But, there is not the perfect Utopia without dissent, people who don’t belong, characters who wanted to have choices. A general theme throughout the whole story was, “how much freedom do you have, without real choices, to live a full, happy life?” What is the cost of true equity?

The addition to the story of the complete distinction of the poems (and other art forms) that have changed so many of our lives, poems urging us to go forward be unique, challenge ourselves, was brilliant. The society had to choose 100 poems to represent the centuries of literature gone past. The underworld craved these poems and so you have a commodity by just knowing something written that has not only been destroyed, but erased. The author placed the characters in direct conflict with a piece of paper, a line from a poem, a drawing that is forbidden. I have not been so moved by a book, as I have by Matched, because ultimately, I believe that the author just might have our future pinned down to a pretty close projection of where we just might be heading.