Feed by M.T. Anderson- 5 Stars!

Today's Tea Choice: Teecino (tastes like coffee!)

Trigger Warnings: violent war imagery, suffering, minor animal death scene

Genre: YA Dystopian

Pages: 299

Summary(goodreads.com):

Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains. Winner of the LA Times Book Prize.

For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play around with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who knows something about what it’s like to live without the feed-and about resisting its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires.

Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a brave new world - and a hilarious new lingo - sure to appeal to anyone who appreciates smart satire, futuristic fiction laced with humor, or any story featuring skin lesions as a fashion statement.

My Review:

Hi Everyone! It’s been a while since I posted a book review, but I’m excited to come back to this blog and share my love of reading with you. I just picked up some awesome books from the library, so you should see more reviews soon!

Regarding this book, I was truly blown away by the premise and emotion in Anderson’s novel, which reminded me of idiocracy but with more serious themes and dire consequences.

What I loved:

Worldbuilding: I want to begin this review with the worldbuilding details, because they are phenomenal. If you’ve read any YA dystopian books before, you know how critical setting and worldbuilding are to the success of the novel. In this world, everyone has chips implanted in their brain, which acts like a constant “feed” for social media, ads, instant DMs, and random content.

Everything we think and feel is taken in by the corporations, mainly by data ones like Feedlink and OnFeed and American Feedware, and they make a special profile, one that’s keyed just to you, and then they give it to their branch companies, or other companies buy them, and they can get to know what it is we need, so all you have to do is want something and there’s a chance it will be yours (Anderson).

To some, this sounds like an awesome idea! But I was instantly creeped out and dreaded the consequences of this, which are later explored in the novel.

Continuing with the worldbuilding, this society has also advanced to colonize the moon, and it becomes a Las Vegas-style hang out! One element of subtext is noted in how fast everything changes. The characters are looking for favorite stores they visited on past trips only to discover they are gone, showing how fads are constantly changing.

One of the grossest fads in this novel was the lesions! They are considered tattoos and a sign of keeping up with trends despite its damaging effects.

We had the lesions that people were getting, and ours right then were kind of red and wet-looking. Link had a lesion on his jaw, and I had lesions on my arm and on my side. Quendy had a lesion on her forehead. In the lights of the hallway you could see them real good. There are different kinds of lesions, I mean, there are lesions and lesions, but somehow our lesions, in this case, seemed like kid stuff (Anderson).

Consumerism is also another huge part of this world, all because of the feed implanted in their brains. They are constantly bombarded with ads showing what will make them the happiest and coolest, but one excellent scene shows how products aren’t bringing Titus and his friends any joy.

Link said he wanted to get cranked before we went, and he said was there any place where we could drink without IDs? Marty said he knew of this one place, which was called Sombrero Dot, and he went there before with his cousin. He said it wasn’t too out-of-the-way. We got there and it had been torn down. They had built a pretty nice stucco mall there, so Loga and Quendy said we should go in and buy some cool stuff to go out in. That seemed good to us. I wanted to buy some things but I didn’t know what they were. After we walked around for a while, everything seemed kind of sad and boring so we couldn’t tell anymore what we wanted. Our feeds tried to help, and as we were walking around we were getting all the prices of things, but really the only thing that I wanted to get was a pair of infrared knee bands, and I could get better ones off the feed, and have them sent to my house, than in the stupid physical moon stores. Quendy bought some shoes, but the minute she walked out of the store she didn’t like them anymore. Marty couldn’t think of anything he wanted, so he ordered this really null shirt. He said it was so null it was like ordering nothing (Anderson).

Another fantastic worldbuilding detail that Anderson uses is the approach to education. School has become a trademarked corporation! And based on what you can see with the POV approach, education is not a primary focus.

Now that School™ is run by the corporations, it’s pretty brag, because it teaches us how the world can be used, like mainly how to use our feeds. Also, it’s good because that way we know that the big corps are made up of real human beings, and not just jerks out for money, because taking care of children, they care about America’s future. It’s an investment in tomorrow. When no one was going to pay for the public schools anymore and they were all like filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps and stuff, some of the big media congloms got together and gave all this money and bought the schools so that all of them could have computers and pizza for lunch and stuff, which they gave for free, and now we do stuff in classes about how to work technology and how to find bargains and what’s the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom (Anderson)

Even though this book was written in 2002, it’s mind-blowing how much these concepts apply to our world, especially with the consumerism and trend aspects.

POV:  At first, I wasn’t sure if I could read an entire book in first person POV with an air-head style. The narrator uses a lot of filler words, rushes through his thoughts and it seems like he’s always overstimulated. However, once you understand the importance of this perspective, it enhances the reading experience to show how corporations are making these characters become mindless spending sheep.

Characters:  All of the characters were well described, especially Violet. She was a fascinating character to follow since she represents holding onto the past, acknowledging the truth about society, and how we all ignore major problems. She also learns how to resist consumerism and becomes an anthesis to current trends. Occasionally, she does fall for some of the trends within society, especially shopping, showing that even the most logical of us fall to consumerism.

The only character I had a hard time picturing was Titus, the main narrator. Contrasting Violet, he represents what society has created: vain, selfish teenagers who get bored quickly and want the newest and best products. I would've liked to see a bit more character detail for him.

The ending of this novel was tragic but beautiful, and really makes the reader consider what’s important in our ad-frenzied lives.

What Needed Improvement:

The only part that I wish was developed a bit more was the hacker scene. It was briefly mentioned once, but I was curious how this society handles these hackers.

Authors Can Learn:

-          How to utilize worldbuilding in a dystopian novel

-          The importance of character development and progression

-          How to add significant themes with social commentary.

Readers Will Love This For:

A fantastic yet dark dystopian novel that makes us consider what’s most important and how our “feed” interferes or enhances our lives.

A closing quote:

We Americans,” he said, “are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they were produced, or what happens to them” — he pointed at his daughter — “what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away” (Anderson).

I give this book 5 stars.

Kyla