Blog
My Favourite Books of 2013, Megan Radford
by Megan
Current Affairs / December 18, 2013
Let me preface this by saying that I adore YA novels, dystopian in particular. Yes, YA dystopia—fiction for teens. Which I suppose makes my choice of The Unwinding as my favourite book of the year an odd one.
But the current spate of Young Adult dystopia is a reflection of some deep and troubling undercurrents that run through our social fabric and show little sign of abating. To truly understand fiction, you need on some level to understand its contemporary roots; right now that lies in a suffocating sense of anomie, and a need to examine catalysts of that fragmentation of social values and identity. It’s easy to forget that the roots of the seemingly far-fetched dystopias readers like me devour often lead right back to our own feet.
There are so many books this year that I loved, but none has so unsettled and challenged me as The Unwinding. It sits in the corner of my bedroom in a pile of its own, as if relegated to the corner for the bad behavior of hitting where it hurts, cast out from the teetering stacks of ARCs that have made my apartment a fire hazard.
The Unwinding is an immensely personal and unflinching look at the unravelling of the so-called American Dream: the need for constant growth and improvement, development without reflection, and money without a soul. If you feel that the American flag on the cover of the book and its American overtones make it exclusionary, think again.
This is not a story about Democrats versus Republicans, but rather a story about the nostalgic myth of the small community, the small business, and the reality of more and more people living separate from wealth and purpose, the chasm yawning ever wider between reality and representation.
The son of a born-again, failed tobacco farmer; a young black woman, daughter to a heroin addict, growing up in the rust belt; an idealistic aide to then Senator Joe Biden, who discovers that the purpose and sense of belonging he’s always sought lies not in politics but in lobbying. The billionaire founder of PayPal, who by all means has snared a version of this elusive dream, but with it the sharp edges of a life with hidden shrapnel—nothing overt, but an uncomfortable whiplash and constant motion. I vividly recall dreams where I’m behind the wheel in a car without brakes, always going faster and faster, my insides calcifying into solid clumps of fear, then dissolving from the speed. These are the people Packer allows to tell their stories. Their successes and their failures, the loneliness that comes with individualism’s victories as well as its losses.
There is an unsettling loneliness inherent in the stories Packer tells—the feeling that each of his characters is fighting to emerge from a shadow into a startlingly bright dream that has been promised but remains out of reach, the way a recent dream flickers on the edge of consciousness, just beyond the edges of rational thought.
This is a book whose stories will sneak beneath your skin and settle in; the most unsettling element that the fears and disquiet expressed by the characters are our own, which we seek to hold in check just beneath the surface, lest they unwind and coil around us.
Megan Radford, Sales & Marketing Assistant