But when she meets a man inside the Unit and falls in love, the extraordinary becomes a reality and life suddenly turns unbearable.
She is resigned to her fate and discovers her days there to be rather consoling and peaceful. Despite the ruthless nature of this practice, the ethos of this near-future society and the Unit is to take care of others, and Dorrit finds herself living under very pleasant conditions well-housed, well-fed, and well-attended. In the Unit they are expected to contribute themselves for drug and psychological testing, and ultimately donate their organs, little by little, until the final donation. Here, women over the age of fifty and men over sixty - single, childless, and without jobs in progressive industries - are sequestered for their final years they are considered outsiders. She is promised a nicely furnished apartment inside the Unit, where she will make new friends, enjoy the state-of-the-art recreation facilities, and live the remaining days of her life in comfort with people who are just like her. One day in early spring, Dorrit Weger is checked into the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. The book was Ninni Holmqvist's novel, The Unit. I picked up the first book I saw on my shelf and started to read.
Last night I decided to put an end to my reading rut. Holmqvist's exploration of female desire, human need and the purpose of life has its moments, but the novel suffers in comparison with similar novels such as The Handmaid's Tale Unfortunately, Holmqvist fails to fully sell the future she posits, and Dorrit's underdeveloped voice doesn't do much to convey the direness of her situation. But an unlikely development forces Dorrit to confront unexpected choices. Though the residents are under constant surveillance, their accommodations are luxurious, and in their shared plight they develop an intimacy rarely enjoyed in the outside world. When Dorrit Weger, who has lived her adult life isolated and on the brink of poverty, is admitted to the unit, she finds, to her surprise, comfort, friendship and love. Swedish author Holmqvist's unconvincing debut, part of a wave of dystopias hitting this summer, is set in a near future where men and women deemed “dispensable”-those unattached, childless, employed in nonessential professions-are checked into reserve bank units for biological material and become organ donors and subjects of pharmaceutical and psychological experiments.
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